Course Catalog from Throw Clay LA
Updated: Sep 19
Pottery develops through practice: returning to the wheel or worktable, repeating movements, solving new problems, and gradually building confidence and control with clay.
At Throw Clay LA, our courses are designed to build on one another, giving students a logical path for developing their skills. Build Skills courses establish the fundamentals: learning how clay behaves, developing essential techniques, and gaining confidence through practice. Refine & Explore courses build from that foundation, with opportunities to work more intentionally with form, scale, surface, function, and personal ideas.
There is no single path through pottery. Wheel throwers and handbuilders may follow different routes, and many students explore both. The goal isn't to check courses off a list, but to find the right opportunities as your skills develop, your interests change, and your own voice as a maker begins to emerge.
Looking for a course that isn’t currently on the schedule?
Tell us which course you’re interested in and when you’re generally available through our Course Interest Form.
INTRODUCTORY COURSES - BUILD SKILLS
These courses focus on the fundamentals of working with clay. Students learn the techniques that support everything that comes later: centering, forming, joining, trimming, surface preparation, glazing, and understanding how clay behaves at each stage of the process.
The goal isn't perfection. It's building confidence through practice and developing the habits that make future growth possible.
Courses in this category:
Potter's Wheel Basics
Slab, Pinch, Sculpt!
Creating with Coils
Potter's Wheel Basics
Pottery course on the wheel. 
Pulling a pot on the wheel. 
Personal instruction at the studio.
If you’ve been wanting to learn the fundamentals of wheel throwing, this is the perfect place to start. In a course with 8 others, you'll get hands-on instruction in class on centering, shaping, trimming, and glazing — all in a relaxed, supportive studio setting. Perfect for first-timers or anyone wanting to rebuild a strong foundation. Below left are the first attempts at throwing by beginning students. On the right, instructor Bella's calm and thorough instruction guides students successfully through the throwing process.
Pinch, Slab, Sculpt!
Pinching and shaping clay by hand. Building with slabs opens up a wide range of forms. Finished slab-built trays with two very different surface treatments.
Discover how much you can make with clay without ever sitting down at a potter’s wheel. Pinch, Slab, Sculpt! introduces the essential techniques of handbuilding, giving you the skills to create functional pottery, sculptural forms, and pieces that combine a little of both.
Over six weeks, you’ll work with pinch and slab techniques while learning how to roll, cut, shape, join, and manipulate clay. You’ll explore form and construction as well as ways to add texture, pattern, and surface interest, building an understanding of how clay behaves along the way.
This is a course for beginners, but the possibilities are wide open. The skills you develop here provide a foundation for continuing into more specialized handbuilding courses or simply taking what you've learned in your own direction.
Sculpting with Coils
Coil vase with dried flowers. 
One of our members going big with coils. 
A beginner building beautiful coil vessels.
Build bigger, freer forms by hand. Creating with Coils explores one of pottery’s oldest and most versatile techniques, using coils of clay to create vessels, sculptural forms, and pieces that can grow well beyond the scale of typical beginner work.
Over six weeks, you’ll learn how to build strong, stable forms gradually, control shape and proportion as a piece grows, and use coils as both a construction method and a design tool. Projects can be functional, sculptural, or somewhere in between, with plenty of room to explore your own ideas.
Coil building is wonderfully accessible to beginners, but it can take you surprisingly far. As your skills develop, you can work larger, experiment with more complex forms, and begin making pieces that would be difficult to create using other methods.
No previous pottery experience is required.
INTERMEDIATE COURSES - REFINE & EXPLORE
Once the fundamentals become more familiar, many students discover that pottery becomes less about learning a technique and more about exploring possibilities.
Refine & Explore courses focus on repetition with intention. Students continue practicing core skills while experimenting with form, scale, surface design, function, and personal style. Each course offers a different lens through which to approach clay, allowing students to deepen their understanding while continuing to build technical ability.
Many students move through these courses multiple times, discovering something new with each cycle.
Thursday Night Rotation
These courses rotate on Thursday nights throughout the year. Class size is limited to eight students, so early registration is recommended.
Offered on Demand
These specialized Refine & Explore courses are offered based on student interest. Join our interest list and we’ll contact you when we’re considering one for an upcoming six-week session.
Course Descriptions
Throwing Big
Danny teaches you how to Throw Big. 
A five pound bowl thrown on the wheel. 
Wheel thrown large pitchers.
Ready to size up your wheel work? Throwing Big focuses on the techniques needed to create larger forms on the potter's wheel. Working progressively from 3-pound forms to larger projects, students learn how to manage the physical and technical challenges that come with more clay.
Topics include spiral wedging, efficient centering, pulling and shaping larger forms, managing wall thickness, and trimming with intention. Along the way, students develop the confidence and control needed to create larger bowls, vases, planters, and serving pieces.
Designed for students who can comfortably throw a two-pound cylinder with even walls, this course provides the skills and practice needed to move beyond smaller forms and explore new possibilities on the wheel.
The Cup: Design & Refine - Refine & Explore
Small speckled stoneware cup with a natural clay base. Thrown porcelain cup exploring form and proportion. A series of cups exploring surface, form, and decoration.
In this six-week course, students focus on designing and refining a single functional cup. Rather than making something different each week, participants create multiple versions of the same form—studying proportion, balance, comfort, handle placement if applicable, and surface treatment. By working in a series and comparing iterations side by side, students develop greater control, consistency, and a clearer personal design process. The goal is not to make more cups, but to make one that truly works and can be replicated.
Vases & Bottles - Refine & Explore
Two wheel-thrown vase forms in unfired clay, each featuring a rounded body and a narrow neck. Textured ceramic bottle with a tall, slender neck and speckled blue glaze, shown in front of green h Tall wheel-thrown bottle form in smooth unfired clay with a rounded body and narrow neck on a table.
Vases & Bottles focuses on shaping form on the potter’s wheel, exploring how to widen, contain, and control volume.
Designed for students who can throw a cylinder or bowl, this course helps develop greater control when pushing walls outward, pulling height with intention, collaring in a neck, and creating forms that hold their shape.
Over six weeks, students work through a progression of vase and bottle forms, developing smooth, continuous curves and cohesive profiles from base to neck. Emphasis is placed on managing wall thickness during expansion, refining proportions, and creating strong transitions between forms.
Students learn how to collar and define necks, push and shape bellies, and trim narrow-necked pieces using a chuck. Through a series of variations on core forms, this course helps build consistency, control, and confidence on the wheel. Open studio time is strongly encouraged to support progress.
Surface Design
Paper resist surface design technique. 
Learn to inlay incise your slip. 
Handmade clay stamps used in surface design.
Surface Design explores the many ways clay can be altered, decorated, and enriched beyond its form. Through demonstrations, guided projects, and individual experimentation, students investigate how surface choices can add pattern, texture, imagery, and visual interest to their work.
Each six-week session focuses on a different set of techniques and approaches, offering returning students new opportunities to expand their creative toolbox. Whether you're interested in subtle decoration or bold visual statements, this course encourages exploration, experimentation, and the development of your own design language in clay.
Designed for students with basic pottery experience, Surface Design pairs well with both wheel-thrown and handbuilt work and can be taken multiple times as topics covered rotate throughout the year.
Rotating Topics cover:
Slip, Underglaze, Resist, Carving & Pattern Development
Texture, Layering, Mishima & Surface Composition
Underglaze Illustration, Transfers & Narrative Surfaces
Carving, Sgraffito, Resist & Repeating Patterns
Design in Handbuilding
Sculpted body form designed in class. Wood handled vessel in dark glaze colors. Rustic red designed tabled top sculpture.
Bring the ideas you’ve been wanting to make in clay. Design in Handbuilding is a six-week course built around your projects, not ours. Come with a sketch, photograph, reference image, or simply an idea you’ve been wondering how to build. From functional ware to sculptural pieces, this is your opportunity to explore an original idea and develop it with the time, instruction, and support to make it work.
Your instructor will help you translate your idea into a buildable form and guide you through the decisions and challenges that arise along the way. Expect demonstrations of handbuilding techniques, technical guidance, and individual feedback as you plan, construct, problem-solve, and refine your work. Because instruction responds to the projects developing in the room, the experience is different every session.
Projects generally use roughly a 12" × 12" × 12" scale as a starting framework. Not sure what you want to make? That’s fine too. We’ll have plenty of ideas and references to help you find a direction and get started.
This is a chance to move beyond assigned projects, tackle more ambitious forms, develop new ideas, and continue growing your handbuilding skills as your work evolves. Design in Handbuilding is intended for students who have completed Slab, Pinch, Sculpt! or Sculpting with Coils, or who have similar handbuilding experience.
Creatures & Critters
Handbuilt ceramic parakeet perched among the plants. A gathering of creatures made by Bailey, instructor of Creatures & Critters. Every creature develops its own personality.
A handbuilding favorite! Creatures & Critters explores sculptural animal forms using pinch, coil, and other handbuilding techniques. Whether inspired by real animals, favorite pets, folklore, or your own imagination, this course encourages students to bring character and personality into clay.
Through demonstrations, guided projects, and individual feedback, students learn techniques for creating expressive forms while developing their sculptural and handbuilding skills. Designed for students with basic handbuilding experience, this course offers a playful environment for exploring sculpture, storytelling, and imagination through clay.
Why take a course from Throw Clay LA?
Learning pottery takes time, practice, and a willingness to experiment. Our six-week courses are designed to give students the space to develop skills, explore ideas, and build confidence with clay in a supportive studio environment.
With small class sizes and experienced instructors, students receive personalized guidance while learning alongside others who share their curiosity and creative goals. Many students begin with a single course and continue exploring new techniques, forms, and challenges as their pottery practice grows.
Just as important, our courses create opportunities to connect with a community of makers. Friendships form around worktables, conversations continue outside of class, and students often find themselves inspired by the ideas and accomplishments of those around them.
At Throw Clay LA, learning pottery is about more than making objects. It's about developing skills, exploring creativity, and becoming part of a welcoming community that values curiosity, craftsmanship, and the joy of making.
Most Courses Include
Open studio time to practice on your own between classes. Practice hours vary throughout the year. See the Student Practice page on our website for current hours.
Basic tools for use during class. Feel free to bring your own apron and towel.
Clay, glazes, and firing for work completed as part of the course.
Guidance from experienced instructors in a supportive, community-oriented studio environment.
Don’t see the course you want on the current schedule?
Use our Pottery Course Request Form to let us know what you’d like to take and when you’re generally available.
About Throw Clay LA
Whether you’re curious to try pottery for the first time or ready to develop your skills, Throw Clay LA offers one-time pottery experiences, six-week Build Skills courses, and six-week Refine & Explore courses in wheel throwing and handbuilding at our studio in Downtown Los Angeles.
We also offer pottery workshops and private pottery events for groups, while studio memberships provide experienced potters with dedicated space and time to pursue their own work, along with access to studio equipment, glazes, firing services and free weekly Member Clinics.
