Pottery Merit Badge
Eight requirements. Safety with a potter's tools, equipment and materials; clay bodies and potter's wheels; two drawings of pottery forms; sixteen pottery terms; then the making in requirement 5: slab, coil and pinch pots, a figurine or sculpture, a form thrown on the wheel, and loading and firing a kiln, every piece decorated by you. Then the ceramic industry, ONE of three ways to explore pottery, and a career.
Elective Merit Badges Arts Hobbies Merit Badges Requirements
The plan behind this
Requirement 5: the making
Each piece is to be painted, glazed, or otherwise decorated by you.
| part | what it asks |
|---|---|
| 5(a) | a slab pot, a coil pot and a pinch pot |
| 5(b) | a human or animal figurine, or a decorative sculpture |
| 5(c) | a functional form thrown on a potter's wheel |
| 5(d) | help an experienced adult to load and fire a kiln, or describe in detail how to load and fire a kiln |
Requirement 7: do ONE
With your parent or guardian's permission and your counselor's approval.
| route | what it asks |
|---|---|
| 7(a) | visit the kiln yard at a local college or other craft school; learn how the different kinds of kilns work, including low fire electric, gas or propane high fire, wood or salt/soda, and raku |
| 7(b) | visit a museum, art exhibit, art gallery, artists' co-op or artist's studio that features pottery, then share what you learned with your counselor |
| 7(c) | learn about the historical and cultural importance of pottery from the library, magazines, the internet (with your parent or guardian's permission) and other outlets, then share what you discovered |
The rest
1 is the precautions for the safe use and operation of a potter's tools, equipment and other materials. 2 is the properties and ingredients of a good clay body for making sculpture by hand-building and for throwing on the wheel, and how three different kinds of potter's wheels work. 3 is two drawings of pottery forms, each on an 8½-by-11-inch sheet: one a historical pottery style, the other your own design. 4 is sixteen terms: bat, wedging, throwing, leather hard, bone dry, greenware, bisque, terra-cotta, grog, slip, score, earthenware, stoneware, porcelain, pyrometric cone and glaze. 6 is the scope of the ceramic industry in the United States, and some things made other than craft pottery. 8 is a career in pottery.
What this page is
The Pottery merit badge, drawn so the making in requirement 5 stands out, with the wheel and the kiln as the parts that need equipment, and the way you explore pottery in requirement 7 drawn as a question. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year. The free official pamphlet is the fuller guide.
Sources for this page
- Pottery Merit Badge Requirements, Merit Badge Hub, last modified 2025-09-19 · The requirements themselves, and the free official pamphlet linked from them.
- Guide to Advancement, 2025, Section 7.0.0.3 · The process every merit badge is earned through, which this page does not repeat.
- Guide to Advancement, 2025, Section 7.0.4.3 · Which version of a changed requirement applies to a Scout who has already started.
- Guide to Advancement, 2025, Section 4.0.0.1 · Why the requirements are not in the Guide to Advancement and are expected to change annually.
Last checked against its sources on .