Mastering Hand Building

Mastering Hand Building teaches everything you need to know about building with clay by hand, from the basics of coils and slabs through more complex form design.



Join esteemed ceramic artist and instructor Sunshine Cobb for an inspiring exploration of hand building, from foundational skills to next-level techniques.

In Mastering Hand Building, discover a robust array of options for constructing both simple and complex clay forms without a potter’s wheel. Richly illustrated with color photography, this comprehensive volume includes:

• Essential techniques in hand building, covering pinch pots, coil building, and slab building
• Advanced techniques and tips for designing templates and replicating pieces, lidded vessels, using molds, a variety of decorative techniques, and other avenues of exploration
• An overview of kilns and firing schedules, plus slip and glaze recipes
• Slab-building and molding templates for creating plates, bowls, cups, and boxes
• Artist features and inspirational galleries, including work from today’s top working artists, such as Bryan Hopkins, Lindsay Oesterritter, Liz Zlot Summerfield, Bandana Pottery, Shoko Teruyama, Courtney Martin, Sam Chung, Deborah Schwartzkopf, and many more

The Mastering Ceramics series is for artists who never stop learning. With compelling projects, expert insight, step-by-step photos, and galleries of work from today’s top artists, these books are the perfect studio companions. Also available from the series: Mastering the Potter’s Wheel, Mastering Kilns and Firing, and Amazing Glaze.