pottery surface treatment

zombat

If there are no pottery studios nearby I'm afraid you'll be a little bit restricted with what you'll be able to do. As a bonsai pot's clay body needs to be vitrified (that is, fired to the point where the clay melts together, thus making it nonporous/impervious to water) before it can be used outside, you'll need access to at least an electric kiln that you can use to fire your pots. Additionally, most potters wheels are quite expensive, so depending on how much money you've got, you'll probably be better off finding a potters guild, or a potter's studio that you can get a membership or permission to use the wheels. Really, the best way to learn is from another who knows what they're doing. There is, of course, much to be learned from books, but in my experience there is much that is left out.

If your content to be restricted to slab or coil built pots, however, all you'll need aside from standard ceramics tools are a rolling pin, some canvas, and a couple boards of sheetrock. The one real thing you're gonna want to remember there is to SCORE AND SLIP when joining two separate pieces of clay. Otherwise, I'd say just dive right into it and learn by doing.

As for online rescources, I'd say just search for generalized things in google - "How to make an oval pot" or something similar. Here are some useful links:

http://www.langbonsai.com/ -- has a couple good slideshows under the "technical information" tab, though Ron specializes in very LARGE bonsai pots. The same rules and procedures are generally applied to smaller vessels too.

http://www.jhpottery.com/tutorial/slab.html -- Pretty good tutorial.