#100Mugs100Ways

Day 55

Here is #Mug #55 - Wedging Clay

Yesterday I listed all the steps a ceramist takes creating a mug. Each day I will briefly explain each of those steps; I am not planning on going into great detail. I wanted to explain, mostly for my followers, who are not necessarily very familiar with the making process, what it takes to create a mug.

Before each throwing or hand-building, I want to start with a well-wedged chunk of clay. Why, you may ask? With wedging the clay, there are four things that one wants to achieve.

1. Mixing up the clay well
2. Remove moister from the clay
3. Remove air bubbles and make the claymore consistent
4. To align the clay molecules to make the clay more workable and make it more conducive to create a nice ceramic form

There are four ways to wedge a chunk of clay:

1. The European Wedging technique, also called the Rams Head Wedging
2. Spiral Wedging
3. Stack and Slam
4. Puckmill

When using 1 and 2, I prefer to wedge about 50-100 times.
I prefer to use the Spiral Wedging method mostly.

For more details, check out the YouTube video by Mugi Pottery