The next thing we should talk about is handles and placing handles on to our throne pieces. Now handles can be a great way to add some points of interest and nice detail work. You know, this piece here you know I have a number of pieces here some of our minds some of our from friends. This is a handle list cup, generally referred to as a Tumblr, but even with these nice little indentions these undercuts, they give a nice little finger catch, so it feels very comfortable to hold. So that can be a great way to add some veto work as well. But handles themselves can really change the form and do a lot of things within a piece.

Now the handle that we're going to be talking about today is a pooled handle a traditional folder strapped handle and this is generally what you see on most throne Where's because the shape process itself lends itself very naturally to the throwing process. It's a very fluid forming process a lot of water, so it has this natural extension of that thrown form. Now as you're looking to do this, you want to start considering what kind of handle Do you want on your piece? Is it a singer, single finger handle, like so this has this nice little extra piece of clay up here for that thumb catch. Maybe a downward slant on this handle to finger handle and very comfortable to fail to hold. Another two, three finger handle straight out from the piece.

All these have different angles and they're going to create very different fields within the piece, or this piece by Matt long, very organic, very fluid pieces get a nice two finger handle. They can see this natural flow, the lift of this piece, it matches very well with the organic natural fluidity of this throne form where if this was to have a hand built, handle on it stays To get out of a slab or a coil handle, it will create a very different feel and it might break up the Unity the flow within the piece. It's not to say that you're never going to want to hand build your handles. This piece here has a hand built handle some tubes that I made and constructed out of it. So it's a nice more Stein type shape, and I spore finger fingered handle, but it goes along with the entire theme of the piece, which is this more rough, organic, inspired by like oil can type shape.

But right now, just as a general rule of thumb of starting to make your handles try to think about it as just a natural extension off of the form. So it should have a nice natural flow to it a natural extension like a tree to a branch or an arm to a tour so it looks like it belongs it feels right in Once you're comfortable with these basic techniques and steps of pulling these handles, then you can start to experiment with more expressive, more aggressive handles that can start to make more of a more of a statement that Have a different intent to them. But first again, we want to install a technique now and learn the basics. So let's pull a handle here. First you want to start off with a small piece of clay, a nice wedge chunk of clay here. It's wedged up so the clay has been modernized, the air bubbles have been worked out of it.

Next on your wedding table, just give the clay a couple tosses down onto your wedding table. Okay, and what that's going to do, it's going to begin to stretch the clay and it's also going to compress that clay compression is very important during these forming processes. It's going to strengthen that clay up and allow you to push it a little bit farther and make it a little bit thinner. Okay, so the three main points for pulling a handle. One, use lots of water if the clay gets too Dry on you, it's going to tear in half. Keep your eye on the taper.

It should always move from thin to thick which I've already started by slapping it down on my wedding table right there. Again, keep an eye on the taper thin to thick, and three, don't try to pull too much. If you try to pull too much, again, the handle is going to want to tear it half on you. Okay, so lots of water, I'm gonna go ahead and dip my hole into my piece in the water. I'll get my hands wet. My beginning motion of my hands is going to be something like this moving this clay shaping it into somewhat of an ice pick type look, but again, starting at the very bottom of it, fanning that out.

So we are establishing our taper and working that taper up into the form. Now this is plenty of clay here. Consider I'm just doing these smaller cuts. I can probably do three or four handles off of this one chunk of clay so it doesn't take a lot of clay to pull your handles. Now that we've established our taper or icepick shape, notice I keep dipping my hand in the water using lots of water, just moving a little bit of clay at a time. Now we're ready to start shaping our taper are strapped for our handle.

For this, I'm going to move my hand my fingers into this position right here. I'm going to be squeezing the clay in here to thin those walls while bracing it up against this fatty part of my hand right here. By bracing the wall up against this fatty part of your hand is going to keep the edge of the handle rounded and slightly thicker which will be comfortable to the hand comfortable to use. If the edge of those handles become too sharp, it can feel uncomfortable on the hand. Lots of water starting at the base of the piece, beginning to smooth it out, then it out and moving up. Now if you notice, as I am doing this, the handle is moving towards my hand to counter that just ever so often rotate to the other side, and then the opposite side and you'll begin to shape your handle starting from the base working up.

Okay, and we look like we're starting to get a nice workable handle here. Just a little bit thinner so it's a good idea to have the cup nearby you so you can make sure check your size your handle. All right and we are looking pretty good right there to place our handle on. If you want to you can add some detail work in your handle at this point. I'm simply going to drag my thumb down the handle and create a little detail work here we go. Going along our nice strapped handle here.

That's going to thin it out also a little bit here. also keeping the edges thick enough to be comfortable to the touch and slightly thicker on the center. Which again is going to feel very natural to the hand. Now generally, you're going to need to let this handle set up a little bit before you attach it especially the bigger the pieces you get, the more you need to eat to let your handle set up a little bit, just 1015 minutes, you do not want it to set up to a leather hard state because it could crack on you during the shaping process, but just didn't have to hold this shape. So I'm going to go ahead and put this off to the side for just a second. Then we'll come back and talk about slipping scoring.

Now to let this set up over here on the side. What I recommend doing is just taking it to the edge of your work table, your workbench laid over the side and pinch it off. So what that is going to do, it's going to allow the handle to dry evenly because Eric can circulate all the way around it while establishing the shape or the arch of the handle. If you were to take that handle and simply laid on the table, it could flatten out a spot on the handle and you're going to lose some of that fluidity to it. If you know that you want an a half circle or a Pacific shape. You could shape them On the table and that it dried in that position, but this is a good general safe position here.

Often when we're working with the handles, say we're doing a series of cups or we're going to do a series of pictures, we have several of them here. 510 cars 510 pictures, often what I will do is I'll have my 10 cups thrown tramp, pull my 10 handles by the time I'm done with the 10th handle, I'm going to come back and that first one I pulled is ready to be attached to the neck and start attaching them in working in a cycle that way. I should mention as a note here as well, just like throwing itself the handles so much that ceramics, it is a skill based medium it is going to take some practice that first handle you pool is not necessarily going to be your best. It's going to take some practice and expect to tear someone half it's gonna happen. But again, just keep practicing and the technique will come.

With these first handles, I'd also would recommend pulling two to three handles per cup because again, that first handle you're going to do is not going to be your best, most likely it's going To be that second or third handle. So pull a couple, pick out the best one and then attach. Now let's talk about some basics of ceramics. Because these cups have been set up to this leather heart state so that we can trim them, but our handle is still going to be very soft, very plastic clay. We need to make some adjustments when we're attaching this handle. And that being said, that's going to be slipping and scoring.

Now what is the slipping scoring I also heard it referred to as scratch and attach. And basically what that means is I'm going to scratch the surface of the clay, if this is the cup, and I'm going to scratch the surface of the handle. Now right now I'm just using a simple fork which works great. They also have scratching tools they can purchase or these perforated ribs which work pretty well. The standard fork is a pretty good all around tool. Once we scratch that surface, we're scored, it's slipping score scratched and we're going to add a little bit of slip onto the handle that we're going to be attaching.

Work that into the surface of our clay. shape our handle and complete our process. Now slip itself is not glue, this is not going to be enough to hold us in position, but you're still going to need to come in and work that clay together into your form. nice smooth transition, and then you can continue to shape and finish your handle. Now we pulled our handle off of the lug set it off to the side to dry before we attach it. Smaller handles can also also be pulled off the form itself directly off the form like this by attaching your clay and then going through the same pulling motion, keeping your eye on the taper but this can be little trickier technique because it's easier to warp or distort your shapes during that the handle forming process.

So instead, I prefer this technique we're just starting off. Let's take a look at our handle. Now move over here to our handle and we have our cup that we're going to attach it onto. Now I know I want the handle to be coming off of here and attaching down in here. I want to follow this natural line up to the piece to can you continue the natural flow of the vessel and have a slight lift to it. That is the look I'm going to go for.

So I'm going to go ahead and score where I'd like to handle the come off of score where I'm going to attach it. And now let's move over here to our handle. Now, the direction that we cut this handle off is going to have a direct impact on how this handle is going to extend all of our vessel. If I was to cut this handle straight off of our lug here, then it's going to come straight off of our cup our ceramic piece. If I wanted to have a lift, I need to cut it in one angle. If I wanted to angle down, I'm going to cut it in another angle.

So I would like this cup to have a little bit of an angle. So I'm going to cut it at are a little bit of a lift. So I'm going to cut the handle at an angle like so. Now if you see how this is going to work by cutting that at that angle right there. Before I do any shaping to this piece, if I just follow the angle that I cut it when I go to attach it to my streaming piece, you can see how it just naturally lifts because it's following that angle. Next score, score the bass a little bit of slip We're ready to attach.

Working that into the surface of our vessel. Now by lifting that slightly, we have that taper we can come back in here and start to shape this between that natural transition off of our cup, shape it down, attach, make sure that our handle is vertical. Fine tuning our shape. If you need to, sometimes you can add a little cubic coil of clay along there if you need a little extra clay to thicken it up, or some possible detail work as I did here by adding that little cash to the thumb. Details details details are always so on Quarter depending on the theme of the piece, maybe you want some little bit of texture in here, things like that. There we go, we have a nice two fingered handle, and looks pretty good.

Now, if you find that you attach this handle too early before the the handle itself has some time to setup, you may find that the handle is wanting to slump and lose its shape, what you can do is simply take that over to the edge of the table, where to order workbench, flip it upside down, and allow the handle is finished drawing in that position. And that'll keep the handle in its proper shape. handles again, they're a great way to add some personality to your forms. Think about the handles and again, this is the traditional strapped handle. And this is where I recommend people start off with because it's going to have that real natural unity between the vessel and the piece. But there are a number of different handles and as we move to the chapter, I'll talk about some of these other techniques for expression are handles, but even just a slight little lug handle or a little ball, even just a little bit on there like that, it's going to create a nice little finger catch.

Nice little detail work. Come in with a little stamp or a little texture just ever a little bit. It's going to take this this plane round vessel and give it a little bit more of a personality. We could reference a little bamboo within our handle. A little bit of sex to there. shape, slip, slip.

This could be a fun handle for a little piece like this as well. Or a great handle for the side of a bowl, that color that we just made. This could be a great little handle for that. Go there you can just say when that small little detail work that only took a matter of 20 seconds, but is totally changed this, this form now has added this point of interest, maybe this historical reference or these little handles of these larger Coltrane pot type things. But handles are definitely something to play with. And again expect to tear them in half because it is so much of what we do is it's skill based.

It's gonna take some practice to get those really good handles.