Throwing off the mound, or "awff the hump" as Michael Cardew would say, is a quick way to make a lot of pieces. You put a large lump of clay on the wheel and throw many pieces from it. You don't even need to centre the whole lump of clay, just the top section that you are working on. Here is the main man in action:

It's a nice technique for working on small things as you don't have to weigh out lots of mini balls of clay. Also, the piece is higher up in relation to you which means you get a better view of the outside profile. The tricky bit is getting the pieces off cleanly. Some people use a wire, some string, some a thin piece of cotton and some floss. In this case I only had a wire to hand so was using that.

Here's a short video of me in action:

And here are some of the resulting bowls, pictured shortly after trimming. You can see they are still wet in the base, with the clay looking greyer than the rest of the cups.

The bases are always quite messy after taking them off the wheel, so do require trimming. I had intentionally left a decent wedge of clay in the bottoms to allow myself to experiment with different feet. Below are what came out.

Here are some other little pots I made at the same time, but not awff the hump, just with little balls of clay. I was playing with vase shapes in miniature to get an idea f what I would like to make on a larger scale. I am not sure any of these hit the mark, but good practice anyway!