For more information on both manual and electric wheels - particularly Brent pottery wheels - check out the AMACO website. AMACO also carries a complete line of clay, glaze, manual and electric clay extruder and other tools for potters.
Traditional and Electric Wheels For Throwing Pottery
Potters' wheels were widely used throughout the ancient Old World, but were unknown in Pre-Columbian America where pottery was always - and still is - made by coiling and beating. Today a full range of pottery wheels are available, ranging from models not so different from those used in Egypt five thousand years ago, up to fully-computerized electric wheels. In traditional mechanical wheels the potter molds the pot with both hands while operating the wheel with his or her foot. The earliest potters' wheels date from around ten thousand BCE in Mesopotamia. These wheels turned rather slowly. A raised turning platform was connected by an axle to a heavy flywheel at floor level. The potter kept the platform turning by kicking the flywheel by foot, so that both hands were free to model the clay. Faster wheels embodying the fly-wheel principle (heavy stone wheels which retained their momentum) were introduced in the seventh century BCE. These wheels were wound up and pushed around with sticks, and reduced the amount of time needed to make a pot from hours or days to a few minutes. This invention made pottery an industrial rather than artisan process, with specialized practitioners.Eventually the axles were replaced with crankshafts and levers, so that up-and-down motion was converted into rotary motion, which is ergonomically easier to manipulate and allows the potter to change position easily to work on the clay from different angles. In modern times motor driven wheels have become common. Some wheels, such as Brent pottery wheels, feature digital controls which sense the speed of the wheel head and the weight of the load of clay, and automatically adjust the torque so that the pedal response is smoother and the potter has maximum control over his or her work. But there are still some potters who prefer to use the old human-powered designs of long ago.Many different techniques are employed for throwing pots on wheels. Usually a round lump of moist clay is thrown down upon a bat attached to the wheel head. The lump of clay is evened out and forced into the center of the wheel by pressure from the hands. The center of the clay is found by moving the thumb across the clay until friction ceases, and then the thumb is pressed into the center almost to the bottom, forming a hole. This hole is widened slowly and the sides are pulled up and thinned out with pressure between the two hands. The pot is shaped, its mouth is smoothed, and then the finished pot is cut from the bat with a cheese wire and allowed to dry until stiff. Sometimes the stiff pot is inverted on top of the wheel and excess clay is trimmed with a knife. Feet can be added to the pot by fastening hand-rolled coils or shapes formed with a manual or electric clay extruder with slip (liquefied clay) which acts as a glue. Then the finished pot is glazed and fired. An accomplished potter can throw a 15-kilogram clay pot quite quickly. Large pots can be thrown in sections. Some very large Chinese pots were made by pairs of throwers working at the same time.