There is a version of ceramics that does not require a wheel. It predates the wheel by thousands of years, and it is, arguably, more expressive for it.
Slab building is the technique at the center of FromFran. Every template in the catalog was designed specifically for handbuilders: potters working at home, in shared studios, in classrooms, in kitchen corners with a canvas mat and a rolling pin. The forms are architectural. The process is methodical. The results are distinct.
If you have been told, or have told yourself, that you cannot make serious pottery without a wheel, this post is the correction.
What slab building actually is
Slab building is a handbuilding method in which flat sheets of clay are cut, shaped, and joined to construct three-dimensional forms. No spinning. No centering. No motor.
What it does require: a rolling pin or slab roller, a cutting tool, basic joining materials (slip, score), and a template to guide the cut pieces into repeatable, precise forms.
That last part is where FromFran comes in.
Check my Slab Making Step-by-Step tutorial here.
What you can make with slab building templates, booklet by booklet
Booklet Nº1 — Tiny Vessels
Espresso cups, sake cups, small vessels
The starting point. Nº1 introduces the slab method at a scale that is immediately approachable: small vessels with tight proportions, clean lines, and room to experiment with surface texture and decoration. Espresso cups, sake vessels, pinch-sized forms. The kind of pieces that teach you the logic of slab construction — how a flat sheet becomes a cylinder, how a base joins a wall — without the pressure of scale.
Booklet Nº2 — Daily Vessels
Mugs, cups, everyday functional ware
Daily-use pottery made by hand. Nº2 is built around the forms you reach for every morning — mugs, medium cups, vessels sized for function and repetition. The templates are designed for consistency across multiples, which makes this booklet particularly useful for potters building a practice around making sets.
Booklet Nº3 — Madre, Fuste, Bulbo
Three vessel forms with Pre-Columbian reference
The catalog's most-loved booklet. Nº3 contains three distinct vessel templates, Madre, a wide-shouldered form; Fuste, a columnar vessel; and Bulbo, a round-bellied shape, each drawing on Pre-Columbian ceramic traditions. These are decorative vessels with presence. The kind that sit on a shelf and anchor a room.
Bulbo, in particular, has found its audience. If you have seen it around, it travels well on Instagram, this is where it lives.
Booklet Nº4 — Garza, Trompo, Talle, Espiga
Four bud vase templates
Four bud vase forms in one booklet. Each has a different silhouette — Garza is elongated and architectural; Trompo has a weighted base; Talle is narrow and tapered; Espiga references organic, botanical forms. Individually they are complete. Together they make a collection.
This booklet is built for potters who want to work in series.
Booklet Nº5 — Cacharritos
Small vessels + a marbling guide
Nº5 expands the catalog into surface decoration. The Cacharritos are small, character-driven vessels — the kind of forms that invite texture, pattern, and material experimentation. Included with the templates: a guide to clay marbling, one of the most asked-about surface techniques in handbuilding.
If you work with colored clay bodies or slips, this booklet gives you both the form and the surface methodology.
Booklet Nº6 — Cántaro: Caudal + Hilo
A big and small jug template
The newest booklet. Nº6 enters jug territory, functional vessels with a spout, a pour, and a handle. Caudal is the larger form, a full-bodied jug with a generous opening. Hilo is narrower, more linear. Both are slab-built, both are designed for functional use, and both reference jug traditions that predate the ceramics aisle of your local craft store by centuries.
Making a jug without a wheel is entirely possible. These templates show exactly how.
On templates and repetition
A template does something specific: it removes the variable of proportion from the making process. When a flat piece of clay is cut from a template, every wall, base, and lip is the same. The form is already solved. What remains is the making, the joining, the refinement, the surface, the decision about what to do with a shape that fits exactly in your hands.
For wheelless potters, this matters. Wheel-thrown pottery has its own built-in consistency mechanism, the centrifugal symmetry of the spin. Slab building does not. Templates are how slab builders achieve the same result: intentional, repeatable, precise forms.
Every FromFran booklet is a set of templates. Physical booklets include the printed templates at actual scale, ready to trace and cut. Digital PDFs are formatted for home printing at the same dimensions.
Who this is for
Potters working at home without studio wheel access. Studio members who prefer handbuilding. Ceramics students. Teachers building curriculum around slab techniques. Anyone who has wondered whether the forms they see coming off wheels are achievable by hand.
They are. The catalog exists to prove it.
Browse the full catalog
Every booklet is available as a physical copy (shipped worldwide) or as an instant-download PDF.
