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There’s a reason I only make ring jugs at Halloween time.  Creating this giant ring jug is probably the scariest thing (to me) that I make in clay. Halloween season seems the appropriate time to make this beast.

I start out with great plans. When I planned this ring jug, I knew I needed to make the three pieces thrown – foot, ring, and spout, with the handles added last. Planning is easy and fun.

“I’ve done this several times before, so why haven’t I made more?” I thought.  Ha! Ha! Ha! I remember now.

The Clay Plot Begins

Next, I make sure I have the materials lined up that are needed.  Some of the things in my life are running a bit tight/low. For instance, time. Time is a precious commodity. Another thing that is a precious commodity to me is Highwater Clay’s Phoenix ^10 clay. It can’t be bought today since Highwater Clay, the best and nearest-to-me clay maker, was washed away in Hurricane Helene two years ago.  So I have been hoarding the remainder of my Phoenix and religiously working the few pounds of reclaim l have left. This large piece is made of nearly the last of the clay. I can make some small pieces with what I have left, but this is my last large piece. I feel sorrow and nostalgia.

Cobbling Together the Pieces

Thirdly, I make the pieces. In the best case scenario, I would have thrown all three pieces at one time. I did not have the time to do that. So I threw the ring first, waited a few days with it under plastic wrap, and threw the foot base, and the spout. On the day to trim and assemble I was lucky enough to get some lovely sunny, warmish weather. That meant I could stick the pieces out in the sun to stiffen up a bit. After which I trimmed them.

Like much of my life, this is where the reality didn’t exactly meet my dreams. When making a ring jug it is critical to have the pieces at exactly the right consistency so that they would be firm enough to hold, but damp enough to accept joining to each other. Basically leather hard with some give. This is nothing unfamiliar to other potters. But with large pieces, it gets even more critical.

Where Reality Meets the Nightmare

It turned out that even with the sun, the pieces weren’t drying as well as I’d like. So the ring had to sit out double time. While I waited, I trimmed the base and formed it to the shape I needed to hold the ring. Eventually the ring seemed solid enough to trim. Nope, it bent when it was handled. Terror! I didn’t want to ruin this piece!

So I carefully flipped it onto a piece of drywall board. Let me tell you, flipping a huge ring on 4’ x 4’ dry wall pieces is scarily awkward for me. It turns out that I could do that flip successfully about 5 times.   

While waiting I carefully babied the foot piece. That is a tricky piece of work. It has to be dry enough to support the weight of the ring, but damp enough to do a major bend around the ring. So I kept the top of the foot spritzed with water, while keeping the bottom leatherhard dry.

Eventually, the ring was dry enough that I could trim it. So that was a relief. Then I set it onto the foot. The foot bent! Scary!

The Horror Continues

I removed the ring, laid it aside, and using a heat gun, stiffened up the base a bit more. I was hoping that the clay of the foot would not get overly dry. If it did, it would crack and be useless. Eventually, I deemed it dry enough, and put the ring into the cradle of the foot.
As I gently bent the clay around the ring, it seemed to hold. Yay!

So next I created the appliqués. I put the first appliqué on the foot, and the whole ring jug leaned to the left. I was able to catch it before it totally collapsed. Terror! Terror!

“What to do, what to do?” I panicked.  I had already connected the foot to the ring, so I could not just lay down the ring. (The foot was wider than the ring.) Carefully holding the stiff giant ring in one hand, I made my way to the shelf where I had large foam pieces and pulled a couple of the pieces down. Then I made my way to the slab roller and stacked the foam pieces onto the roller table.

After that, I gently laid the ring part of the jug onto the foam while leaving the foot hanging off of the side. I then quickly got a stool, a couple of turntables, a box and a giant sponge. That was my support for the edge of the foot so gravity wouldn’t take the foot from the ring.

Saving this jug

I then did my best to straighten out the walls of the foot and used a heat gun on it. The top of the foot on the bottom side was pulling away from the ring, so I carefully flipped the whole thing over and repaired that. Eventually, the ring was finally stiff enough to stand again.

I watched this thing like a hawk as I applied more appliqués, and eventually the spout and the handles. I took a few photos and wrapped this up in plastic. The pieces really need to get the moisture levels homogenized to prevent cracks. I’m hoping this piece is still standing when I get back to the studio.

Will let you know!

By Cindy Douglass

Disclosure: I am left-handed. I throw left-handed on a Brent C pottery wheel.

I feel left-handed people should be given ADA protection. We are probably one of the last unorganized minorities in our society because we are not given a sense of common identity. We seem to function well enough, and no real American wants to be called disabled. But I think we should have ADA protection in order to have access to tools and equipment made for left-handers, without exorbitantly higher costs.

Left-handers are often discriminated against. There’s the social discrimination (‘He’s just clumsy’), the educational discrimination (desks attached to chairs, pencil sharpeners, standardized tests, etc. are made for right handed people), and discrimination from religious institutions.

Even our language set the left-hander apart as “different” and even “bad”. (The Latin word for left is sinister. That has morphed into the English word, sinister, which has some scary evil implications.)

Most right handed people and many left-handers believe that being left-handed today doesn’t matter. That being left-handed it is somehow just cute, or is similar to eye color differences: interesting but not very relevant.

Some people feel that to prevent problems of being left handed, one should just start using their right hand. Studies have shown that this forcing right-handedness tends to cause, or further promotes, troubles such as learning disorders, dyslexia, stuttering, and other speech disorders in children.

Being left handed is a biological brain processing issue between the two hemispheres. It’s called “atypical brain asymmetry”. Being left handed is still there even if you think you were “trained out of it” years ago.

So why do I think it is important that left-handed people have rights under ADA?

We have more accidents than the average right-handed person, maybe because we are facing a hostile right-handed world. Whether or not we left-handed people acknowledge it, we are merely coping with physical limitations in the world.

Studies have shown that left-handed people tend to be more fearful than right-handed people. That doesn’t surprise me. We are facing a hostile right-handed world where tools tend to hurt us, badly! Add that to an active imagination due to the atypical brain asymmetry and we have some great big fears.

I handle serrated steak knives, electric saws, chain saws, angle grinders, weed whackers and all sorts of machinery that all turn in the direction to hurt me first! Right-handers using the same tools don’t need to have that highly honed fear because the turning action generally first moves away from their hands, feet and other extremities.

Don’t believe me? Pick up a weed whacker and use it with your left hand, on your left side. On the right hand side, the weed whacker flings weeds out away from you. Use a weed whacker on the left side and you’ll find the weeds and rocks are being flung directly at your legs and feet. That gets painful and scary at times. A pottery wheel can be set to spin for left handed people, why can’t a weed whacker?

The same experiment with a serrated-on-one-side steak knife will show you the danger of a simple eating utensil. The serration of the knife actually causes the knife to slip directly toward your body with left-handed pressure. People with left handers in the house really should consider buying steak knives that have serrated edges on both sides, not just one. Let’s support the manufacturers who care about the safety of left handed people!

Studies have also shown that left-handed people tend to be angrier than right-handed people. That doesn’t surprise me, either. When we aren’t dealing with outright dangerous tools, we are dealing with tools, and attitudes, that frustrate us at the below consciousness level.

Try picking up a manual can opener and turning the knob with your left hand. Don’t give up until you’ve opened a can and see how fast you lose your cool. Now do it with someone standing by, snickering at your “incompetence”. The jokester may think they are just being funny. A left-handed person may be conditioned to “take it” and laugh it off. But imagine you face those types of annoyances and jokes on a daily basis, several times a day, and you won’t have to wonder why there’s some fast anger in left handed people. I’m not condoning violence here, but I sure understand the cause of anger.

Here’s a simple example. When I was younger, I bought a coffee mug for a cute saying. The only time I got to see that saying was when I washed the mug by hand. I never got to see the cuteness while using the mug because the saying was directed away from my eyes when I held it. Every time I used that mug, I felt cheated. Now that I’m older,  I ask, “Why wasn’t there a left handed mug made for me?” It really doesn’t cost anything to turn 10% of the cups* in the opposite direction during printing.   

That’s why I custom make my mugs and yarn bowls to accommodate left handed people when I know the handedness of the person.  And I don’t charge extra for the service. To me, it is insulting to be charged extra for the same item as a right-handed person’s item – just because I am made differently than a right-handed person. In my eyes, it is the same as charging extra because a person has different skin color. And that is morally abhorrent to me.

That’s why I wish left-handedness were covered under the ADA and the ADA design standards. The years we live are filled with constant small insults and highly probable injuries just because we are made a bit differently from the rest of the human race. 

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* It has been estimated that around 10% of the population is left handed.