Pottery loads hands harder than almost any craft, and the load is concentrated into two actions: wedging clay, and centring it on the wheel. Both are sustained, forceful, and done with the wrists at the end of their range.
Wedging
Pushing down into stiff clay with the heels of the hands, wrists fully extended, using body weight. Repeated dozens of times before you even sit at the wheel. It is the most wrist-hostile action in the studio and the one most often done badly.
- Get the table height down. Low enough that you press with your body weight through relatively straight arms, rather than pushing with bent wrists at chest height. Most studio tables are too high for most potters
- Use softer clay, or wedge smaller amounts more often, or use a pugmill where one exists
- Press through the heel of the hand with the wrist as neutral as possible rather than folding it back
If your wrists hurt, the answer is usually a lower table before it is anything else.
Centring and throwing
- Centring is sustained force with braced wrists, often at full extension, against a spinning resistance. Bracing your elbows into your thighs and using body weight rather than arm strength is both better technique and less load
- Pulling walls is repeated fine pinch — the classic driver of thumb base pain in potters
- Trimming is sustained tool pinch with the wrist held still
- Handles, wedging, and lifting boards of pots add the rest
What turns up
- Back-of-wrist pain, worst wedging: an extension overload, and the commonest complaint in the studio
- Thumb-side wrist pain: De Quervain’s
- Grinding and aching at the base of the thumb: thumb base arthritis, and joint protection is what keeps people throwing
- Little-finger-side wrist pain on rotation: TFCC injury
- Night numbness: carpal tunnel syndrome
- Catching at the base of a finger: trigger finger
- Dry, cracked, split skin. Clay is drying and abrasive, and split skin means harder gripping plus a route in for infection — see paronychia if redness develops beside a nail
Studio habits
- Split wedging across the session rather than doing it all at the start
- Alternate throwing with handbuilding, glazing or trimming
- Warm the hands before starting on a cold day, and warm water helps
- Barrier cream before, emollient after. Protecting skin protects grip
- Build studio hours gradually after a break — a weekend workshop after three quiet months is the classic injury history
Get it assessed if
- Wrist pain present before you start rather than building through a session
- Numbness in any fingers
- A finger that catches or will not fully straighten
- Grinding at the base of the thumb
- Six weeks of a lower table and reduced volume with no change
If you also do other hand-heavy crafts, the loads add across the week — see knitting, crochet and sewing.
Lower the wedging table. It is the cheapest and most ignored fix in ceramics.
Every article on this site is written using the Closing Window Method: name the window your condition runs on, find where you are in it, and act while it’s still open.