Art for the Home: Designing with Pottery
Updated: 4 days ago
Walk through your home and notice how many objects were designed by someone else. Lamps, planters, serving dishes, wall hooks, canisters, tiles, vases. We usually shop for these things, choosing from whatever shapes, colors and sizes someone else has created.
Think of the pottery studio as an arena for designing and thinking outside the box. Clay gives you the freedom to start with an idea, experiment with it, change direction as you work, solve a problem in an unexpected way, or invent something that may not exist anywhere else. Instead of searching for the right object for your home, use your imagination to create what you want, then explore ways to make it yourself.
Maybe it's a planter designed for a particular corner, a serving platter made for something you love to cook, a lamp unlike anything you've seen in a store, or an object that simply began as an idea in your head.
And you don't always need to know where you're going when you start. Pottery lends itself to intuitive design. A slab bends in an interesting way. A coil suggests a different shape. Two forms suddenly work together. Something that began as one idea becomes something entirely different as you respond to the clay.
That's part of the appeal of designing with pottery. You can invent, experiment and create objects that are useful, beautiful, whimsical or completely unexpected, then bring something genuinely your own into your home.
Design for Your Own Table
Making your own dinnerware lets you think beyond what is available in a store. A mug can be shaped for the way you like to hold it, a bowl sized for something you make often, or a serving platter designed specifically for your table.
And pieces don't have to match. Different forms, glazes, textures and clay bodies can work together because they share something more personal: they were made by you.
Personal mugs designed in the Big Mugs class. Handmade dinnerware can combine different forms, glazes and colors while still working together as a Drinking Vessels and Bowls designed by Danny.
Make the Planter You Can’t Find
Plants give you a perfect excuse to design for a particular place in your home. Maybe you need a tall planter for a narrow corner, a low bowl for succulents, or something sculptural enough to become part of the room even before you add the plant.
Designing your own planter lets you think about the plant, the space and the object together. Wheel throwing can create strong, simple forms, while handbuilding opens the door to asymmetry, texture and shapes that would be difficult to find in a store.
Pottery in Unexpected Places
Once you start thinking of clay as a design material, ordinary objects become possibilities. A spoon rest, paper towel holder, toothbrush cup or wall hook doesn't have to look like something you would find in a store. It only needs to do its job. Everything else is open to interpretation.
And not everything needs a practical purpose. Pottery can be playful, sculptural, strange or simply something you wanted to make. Part of designing with pottery is giving yourself permission to follow an idea just to see where it goes.
Handbuilt ceramic votive holders by Quinn turn candlelight into part of the design. Ring holders, lemon juicers, and candlestick holders by Andy. A handmade ceramic candle holder turns an everyday object into a personal piece of home design.
Designing with Light
Lighting is a perfect example of what can happen when you stop thinking about pottery as simply making pots. A ceramic form can become a lamp base, a pendant or a sculptural source of light designed specifically for your home.
Shape, texture, carving and openings all become part of the design. You can build around the room where the lamp will live, experiment with how light interacts with the ceramic surface, or simply begin with a form you love and discover how to turn it into lighting.
Completed handbuilt lamp by Bailey on desk made by Bailey Walters. Bailey creating the lamp base. Ceramic lamp base designed and made by Throw Clay LA member Mia Kundert.
Pottery Beyond the Shelf
Pottery doesn't have to be an object that sits on a table or shelf. Handmade ceramic tile can become part of the architecture of your home, from a backsplash or fireplace surround to a bathroom wall or smaller decorative installation.
Designing your own tile opens up possibilities for shape, pattern, relief, texture and color. Tiles can repeat precisely or intentionally vary from one to the next. They can form a planned pattern or evolve more intuitively as you make them.
Design for the Way You Gather
Serving pieces are another opportunity to create specifically for the way you live. A large platter might be designed around a dish you make often. A bread basket can be handbuilt to fit your table. Butter dishes, pitchers and serving bowls can be made in proportions and forms that suit how you actually use them.
When you make the piece yourself, practical considerations become part of the design rather than something that limits it.
Rethinking Storage
Storage doesn't have to come from a container store. Clay can become canisters, lidded jars, baskets, trays and containers designed for a particular place or purpose.
This is where designing with pottery becomes a problem-solving exercise. What needs to fit inside? Does it need a lid or handle? Where will it sit? Once those questions are answered, everything from the shape and texture to the glaze and decoration is yours to decide.
Hand-painted ceramic tile shows how pottery can become part of the design of a home. Handmade butter dishes combine personal design with an everyday purpose. A sculptural ceramic vessel shows how an everyday container can become a distinctive design object.
Designing with Pottery: Developing Your Ideas
The most interesting part of designing with pottery may be that you don't have to begin with something that already exists. You can begin with a need, an idea, a shape, a color, or simply the thought, “I wonder if I could make that out of clay.”
As you learn to work with clay, you gain more ways to answer that question. Wheel throwing, handbuilding, surface design and glazing become tools you can use to experiment, solve design problems and turn an idea into an object.
Some pieces will be carefully planned. Others will develop intuitively as you work. And some of the best ideas may come from mistakes, changes of direction or simply seeing a possibility you hadn't considered when you started.
That is what makes pottery such an exciting medium for the home. You aren't limited to choosing what someone else has designed. You can create something that reflects your own taste, imagination and way of living.
Take Your Idea into Design in Handbuilding
Once you’ve learned the fundamentals of handbuilding, the next step is learning how to turn your own ideas into clay.
Throw Clay LA’s Design in Handbuilding course is built around that process. Bring an idea for something you want to make, whether it’s functional, sculptural or somewhere in between, and learn how to work through the design and construction decisions needed to create it.
Design in Handbuilding is a Refine & Explore course for students who have completed Slab & Pinch or Creating with Coils. Rather than everyone making the same project, you’ll develop your own work with guidance from your instructor.
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.
