Course Catalog from Throw Clay LA 2026
- Throw Clay LA
- Jul 16, 2025
- 6 min read
Pottery isn't something most people learn in a single afternoon. It develops through repetition—returning to the wheel or worktable week after week, practicing the same movements, solving new problems, and gradually building confidence with clay.
At Throw Clay LA, our courses are organized around two stages of learning. Some courses focus on building core skills and creating a strong foundation. Others invite students to refine techniques, explore new approaches, and continue growing their personal voice as makers.
There is no single path through pottery. Some students focus on wheel throwing, others on handbuilding, and many explore both. The diagram below shows how our courses are organized, from foundational skill-building courses to more specialized opportunities to refine techniques, explore new ideas, and develop your own creative voice. Detailed course descriptions follow.
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
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!
Courses from Throw Clay LA also include handbuilding. Explore the potential of slab construction in this dynamic course that blends functional and sculptural work. Students will roll, cut, layer, and manipulate clay slabs to build objects with bold form and creative surface treatment. Below are two slab trays made with press molds.
Sculpting with Coils
For students drawn to handbuilt sculpture, this course focuses on building expressive, larger-scale forms using coil technique. You’ll learn to plan and execute more ambitious work, with guidance on structure, scale, and storytelling in clay. From left to right, beautiful form results from coil building, a member achieves large scale through patient coil building, and a beginner creatively builds creative vessels - easy with coils, but a longer learning curve on the wheel.
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.
Courses in this category:
Improve Wheel Skills:
Throwing Big
The Cup: Design & Refine
Vases & Bottles
Explore Decoration and Surface:
Surface Design
Pursue Personal Projects:
Design in Handbuilding
Creatures & Critters
Throwing Big
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
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
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
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
A great next step for students who have completed Slab, Pinch, Sculpt! or Sculpting with Coils, or who have similar handbuilding experience. In this course, students focus on designing and constructing original handbuilt forms, from functional ware to sculptural pieces.
Come to the first session with an idea or reference image you'd like to explore, using roughly a 12" × 12" scale as a starting framework. Not sure? We will have plenty of ideas to help inspire your direction as you begin the course.
Expect demonstrations of handbuilding techniques, guidance on translating ideas into buildable forms, and individual feedback as you plan, construct, and refine your work. Designed for students who wish to create their own projects, the experience is different every session. This course is a space to develop new ideas, tackle more ambitious forms, and continue growing your pottery skills as your work evolves.
Creatures & Critters
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. Please 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 if you prefer.)
Clay, glazes, and firing for work completed as part of the course unless otherwise noted in the course description.
Guidance from experienced instructors in a supportive, community-oriented studio environment.
Ready to get your hands in clay?
Whether you’re curious to try the wheel for the first time or ready to dive deeper,
Throw Clay LA offers One-Time pottery classes, 6-week Build Skills courses, 6-week Refine & Design courses, and studio memberships.
As a member, explore our full range of cone 5/6 clay bodies, enjoy practice time in the studio, and connect with our creative community through free member clinics throughout the year.
