Features
Everything the studio does, in the order you would use it
Shape, glaze, weigh, make the tools, then keep the record. No part of it asks you to think like a machinist.
Shape
The profile is the pot
Every thrown form is one line revolved around an axis. Clayista works the same way you do: you are always looking at that line. Start from a template — mug, tumbler, bowl, plate, vase, bottle — and pull sliders for height, rim, belly, and foot when you want to move quickly.
When the template stops being enough, drag the curve itself. Add points, move them, adjust the tangents, and watch the piece rebuild in 3D beside you. It is the same judgement you make with a rib against a wall, only you can undo it.
- Twelve starting forms, all of them throwable shapes rather than CAD primitives
- Live dimensions in millimetres and inches — rim, belly, height, foot, wall
- Form check that flags an undercut wall or a foot too narrow to sit flat
Plainly: handles and spouts are not here yet. Clayista is wheel forms first, and a handle you pull by hand is still a handle you pull by hand.
Glaze
See it fired before you dip it
Glaze is a stack, not a colour. Start with a full coat, add a band where the wall turns, put a pattern over that, then draw a region by hand if the pattern is not saying what you want. The interior gets its own liner slot, because the inside of a mug is a different decision than the outside.
The library carries starter glazes and brand catalogs, and you can build your own from scratch — cone, finish, depth, speckle, variegation. Every layer renders as it comes out of the kiln, and one tap flips the whole piece back to bucket colour so you can see what you will actually be looking at on glaze day.
- 17 patterns — bands, dots, checker, waves, chevron, scallop, drips, splatter, and more — every one of them wrapping the piece without a visible seam
- Draw regions directly on the unwrapped surface and move, scale, or delete them with the piece updating beside you
- Layer stack with reordering, per-layer glaze, and an interior liner
Plainly: previews are calibrated approximations, not chemistry. Thickness, schedule, and atmosphere all move the result — your kiln always gets the final word. Use it to decide composition, and keep firing test tiles.
Clay
The weight to wedge, not a rule of thumb
The chain runs like this. Clayista measures the volume of clay in the walls and base of your exact profile — not a cylinder standing in for it. That fired volume is scaled up for shrinkage, and because volume goes as the cube, a 12% linear shrink means 47% more clay than the finished pot appears to hold. Multiply by the density of your clay body, add the trim allowance you actually cut away at the foot, and what is left is the ball you need to wedge.
Then make it yours. Weigh one real piece before you throw it, fire it, and tell Clayista what happened. It learns your clay, your wall habits, and your trimming, and every prediction after that is calibrated to your hands rather than a textbook.
- Wet weight in grams or pounds and ounces, live as you shape
- Shrinkage and density per clay body, with your supplier’s numbers if you have them
- Wall and base thickness as real inputs, because they move the weight most
Plainly: before you calibrate, the number is arithmetic on published clay figures. It will be close. One weighed piece makes it right.
Decor and stamps
Your mark, cut the right way round
Design a maker’s mark from text, shapes, and drawn lines, set the relief depth and the plate, and see it sitting on the pot before you commit to anything. Place decals around the form, scale them, and check how they read as the piece turns.
The export is mirrored. Your stamp comes out reversed so that the impression in the clay reads the right way round — the mistake every potter makes exactly once, made impossible here.
- Text, motifs, and hand-drawn lines with adjustable relief depth
- Round, square, and custom plates with an optional handle
- Preview the impression on your own piece before printing
Plainly: very fine detail closes up in wet clay. Keep strokes above about 1 mm and the impression stays readable after a glaze coat.
Tools cut to your curve, printed and posted
A profile rib is only useful if it matches the wall you are actually making. Clayista generates one from your curve — the exact line, offset for the wall thickness you set — along with throwing gauges and stamps. Download the files if you have a printer, or let us print them.
Orders go through a single checkout page. We print in PLA or PETG, usually within 5 business days, then ship in the US with tracking. PETG is the one to choose for anything that meets warm water.
- Profile ribs, throwing gauges, and stamps generated from your design
- STL and 3MF downloads, plus DXF for laser cutting on the Studio plan
- PLA or PETG in white, black, or terracotta
There is a $20 minimum on tools before shipping. Batch a few of them — a rib, a gauge, and your stamp together — which is what the minimum is for.
Made for the wheel, not for CAD.
Open the studio, pull a mug into shape, and see the weight. It costs nothing and takes about five minutes.