How To Make Pottery?

I just would like to share about making a pottery. I have experienced making a pottery in my home when I was a little kid. My grandmother was a great pot maker. She used to make pretty pot for selling or for use. At the time she also used to ask me and my brothers to help her making clay, and we were very happy. And now this memory comes in my mind to share with others. Of course, it may not be a special research but to share something that I have and adding some information from contemporary pot making strategies.

Traditionally, we use a sticky clay that would be good and sustain for long time carrying as pot. First of all we search the clay and dig it and bring it at home. Keeping the clay in the place where it is very clean. The secondly, we put water into the clay and mix it up using our feet. The clay is needed to be pugged by feet or hand. Third, we start designing the pot by hand. 

But the making pottery in Canada is also interesting. They also have steps making pottery. The process of making pottery at their studio is basically the same as you will find at any other true pottery studio in the world today. From raw clay to finished product we follow the steps that have been established over the centuries by potters on every continent. Every piece of pottery they make is hand crafted. They do not use the shortcut methods of press moulding, buying bisque ware from outside suppliers, or using mechanical devices to make the pots. They do all the wheel throwing on an electric potter's wheel and all the slab pottery is built by hand. The only moulding they do is some slump moulding of platters, and even then each is made from a slab rolled on the slab roller and cut by hand before being draped into a mould. Their clay is purchased from the Plainsman Clay Company which is located in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Plainsman processes clays from Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan, as well as Montana to provide raw materials for potters all over Western Canada.

They work with different clay bodies depending on what we are building and to obtain a bisqued product with which our glazes will fit well. For wheel thrown pottery the red and brown clays are first "pugged" in a pug mill to thoroughly blend them. White clay is simply wedged straight from the box.