Throwing a Straight Cylinder for a Mug
Okay. You've made bowls. You've trimmed them, signed them, called them finished. Now we're doing something different, because a mug isn't just a shorter, deeper bowl. It's a cylinder. Straight walls, going up instead of out. It's a different muscle memory and it's going to feel a little foreign for the first couple tries.
Here's the thing about cylinders: they're less forgiving than bowls in one specific way. A bowl can flare out a little unevenly and it still reads as a bowl. A cylinder that leans or bulges reads as a mistake immediately, because your eye knows what straight is supposed to look like. So we're going slower today.
Centering, same as always
Nothing new here. Get your ball of clay on the wheel, hands wet, elbows braced against your hips, and center it the way you've been doing. If your centering's still shaky, that's fine, but say so before we move on, because everything after this depends on it. I've said it before and I'll say it again: centering is the whole game. A crooked cylinder almost always started as a crooked center. Nobody wants to hear that when they're four inches into a wall, but it's true.
Opening up
Open your hole down into the clay, leaving about a half inch of floor at the bottom — thicker than you'd leave for a bowl, because mugs take a little abuse and I'd rather you trim off extra than crack through nothing later. This is where I'll admit something. There's a technique some people call the magic ring, where you open the clay a certain way and it's supposed to give you a clean, even floor with almost no fuss. I've tried it maybe five times over the years because people keep swearing by it. Never once has it worked for me. I don't know what I'm doing wrong and at this point I've stopped trying to find out. So we're doing the plain method today: thumbs in, straight down, straight across. It's boring. It works.
Pulling the wall up straight
This is the actual new skill. Instead of pulling out and up like you did for the bowl, you're pulling straight up with almost no outward angle. Knuckle or fingers braced inside, thumb or fingers outside, squeeze gently and lift, and resist the urge to let your hands drift outward. Your instinct is going to be to flare it, because that's what your hands learned on the bowls. Fight that instinct for a few pulls. Straight up. Straight up. Straight up.
Do three or four pulls, checking the wall thickness with a light pinch between pulls so you're not going paper-thin on one side. If it starts leaning, that's almost always uneven pressure — one hand pushing harder than the other. Stop, breathe, even it out, keep going. A slight lean is not a disaster and you don't need to scrap it. But if it's really listing, that's a good one to cut loose and start over rather than chase.
Keeping it wet
I run wetter than most people teach, and this is a spot where that really matters. Dry hands drag on a tall wall and can tear it right where you don't want a tear — near the rim, where it's thinnest. Keep a good film of water going the whole time you're pulling. Yes, it's messier. That's fine. The mess is part of the deal here, not a sign you're doing it wrong.
Shaping the rim and finishing the pull
Once you've got your height — three and a half to four inches is a solid mug, give or take — you can taper the top in just slightly if you want a hint of curve, or leave it dead straight if you're going for that clean cylinder look. Either is fine. This is one of the few spots where I'll say it's really a preference thing and there's no wrong answer.
Compress the rim the same way you did on the bowls, so it's rounded and not going to bite anyone's lip later.
A caution worth saying plainly
Cylinders wobble the wheel more than bowls do if you're off-center even slightly, because there's more height for a small wobble to show up in. If your mug starts really whipping around, slow the wheel speed down before you try to fix anything. Don't reach in fast at full speed. Slow the wheel, then adjust.
Don't fuss the handle yet
We're not attaching a handle today. The wall needs to firm up first — pulling a handle onto wet-soft clay just tears through it, and trust me, you'll know because I've watched it happen to more than one person in this room. Cut your mug off the wheel with the wire the same way you did your bowls, and set it somewhere flat and out of a direct air vent, because dry Utah air will crack a rim that dries faster than the rest of the piece.
At the end of the day it's just a taller bowl with better manners. You'll get three or four tries at this today and the first one's probably going to lean a little. That's expected, not a problem.
Before next time: let your mug sit until it's firm to the touch but still cool and a little damp — we'll be pulling and attaching the handle next, and that only works if the timing's right.