Clay Bottles, Milk bottles, wine bottles, shampoo bottles. A bottle is not just a bottle.
In our next class, you’ll learn how to coil and make clay bottles. You can coil the entire bottle or (if you like) you could use the different techniques you’ve learned in previous classes.
You’ll have better success with your clay bottle if you sketch it in advance.
Sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin. Have a look around your house for ideas or look at my Pinterest page. Be creative and have fun with it.
Maximum bottle height is 20cm
Decorating your clay bottles
In the last week, you’ll decorate your bottle with wax resist and coloured slips and underglazes. Here are some examples of finishes that are similar to the finish you could achieve with this technique. Come with an idea and we can discuss how to do it.
Everybody loves those tiny houses. I’ve often thought I’d like to live in one. Dusting would be a snap.
For our main project in the next course, we’ll be building tiny houses. They are a joy to make and can be used as tea light holders or as planters for succulents.
Use a variety of Hand-building techniques
In this project you’ll create a template for your tiny house. Then it will be slab built with texturing to replicate the look of different building materials. Windows, doors, and stairs can be created with stamps and sculptural details can also be added.
Texturing makes the architecture look realistic
Use Rollers to make your clay slab look like a brick or stone wall.
Imitate stucco with a bit of burlap.
Create the texture of a Sussex tile-hung cottage with a grouting tool
With the right texturing, you can make a stone castle, a Victorian church, a Bauhaus block, or even a copy of your own house. Then, add some tiny sculptural details like a tiny cat or some tiny window boxes. OMG!
Ball point pens may be practical but they’ve made the written word less lovely. Before their invention, people wrote with fountain pens (or dip nibs, feathers, reeds, brushes or chisels). The fountain pen’s nib releases more or less ink depending on how much pressure is used. The resulting thick and thin lines give variety and expression to the writing. This is the calligraphic line.Ball point pens don’t do this. They make only one unvarying thickness of line, like a noodle on paper.
Calligraphic line can also be used in the images on your work.
Eric Gill understood this. He brought his training in calligraphy to his drawings. The subtle variation of thick and thin lines give vitality to his images.
Frames with Sketches Project
The brief for this project is to decorate clay frames with LINE, giving it a sketch-like quality. Consider bringing some calligraphic line to your work.
Design Options
Make your frame look like a sketched frame Make it personal to you
You can find design inspiration in old clocks, wardrobes, or ornate frames. Look HERE for ideas. Alternatively, decorate it however you want. It doesn’t have to be a sketch of a physical frame. Rocky is making her’s for her daughter who loves giraffes.
It’s not necessary to make a detailed drawing. You’ll be able to sketch out your design on the frame with a pencil. However, if you prefer working it all out in advance, make your design on tracing paper and then use carbon paper in class time to transfer it to the clay.
Based on the techniques used in 19th Century money banks, this inspired work was made by students in the January 2023 Pottery Course.
English slipware money banks were generally decorated with chickens or other birds. Often a child’s name and birthdate were inscribed with sgraffito.
Personal creativity took students from money banks to vases to what-nots to why-nots!
Using earthenware terracotta clay, the forms were made by joining pinch pot elements. The brief was to decorate them with swags, sprigs or other sculptural elements. When leather hard, the pieces were covered with white slip and then further decorated with sgraffito. After the bisque firing, they were glazed with a honey glaze which softened the colour of the white slip and deepened the red of the terracotta.
If you’re like me, the last weeks of winter last a bit too long. Although the snowdrops are blooming, it can still be pretty dreary. I cheer myself up by taking more walks and making more pottery.
Photo taken from Messum’s Gallery, London
Spring is on the way
I’ve got a cheering schedule of projects for the March-April course. To celebrate the return of dawn chorus, our mini sculpture is inspired by the work of Guy Taplin. He’s an Essex artist who uses raw materials from the coastline such as weathered timber and driftwood to create hand carved bird sculptures. This man knows his birds. Although his forms, colourings and markings are greatly simplified, there is no mistaking that his plover is a plover or sanderling is a sanderling. (not that I’m an Ornithologist!) We’ll be making birds from pinch pots and as always, every bird will be different. Whether by intent or accident, you’ll make a robin, a tit or other bird and then paint it in the Guy Taplin way.
Come with a few friends
Pottery is a great friend activity because you can chat and catch up while you’re working. Plus, friends are basically a mutual admiration society – and pottery gives you reasons to compliment each other!
Courses begin w/c 27 February
Register HERE and start Spring 2023 with some new pottery.
January 2023 students have a Maiolica taster as one of their pottery projects
If you’ve traveled in southern Europe, you’ll have seen maiolica in tiles on the houses and dishes in souvenir shops. Dutch “blue Delft” is also maiolica. However, the technique was first developed by Islamic potters as a way to imitate Chinese porcelain. They loved it for the bright colours that they weren’t able to produce in their earthenware.
I love it for the pillowy softness of the glaze and potential for spontaneous brushwork.
The essence of maiolica involves the use of a white opaque glaze on an earthenware body. What is special about the process is that the pigments – colouring stains and oxides – are applied to the unfired surface of the glaze. They become fused with the glaze in the final glaze firing. The whiteness of the glaze is like a canvas that provides a great ground for colour.
Maiolica Painting techniques
Bold outline with warm and cool coloursCool colours with monochrome washesWarm and cool colours with multicolour wash and sgraffitoAvailable colours
Maiolica class overview
Create a small slump mold tray from terracotta earthenware.
After bisque firing, dip it in the thick, creamy white glaze. This is tricky because the glaze is not at all forgiving. Fingerprints stay fingerprints and if the glaze is too thick, it may crawl.
AT HOME: Create design. Look in pattern books, online and read this post, for ideas. Consider the painting techniques and colours below. Have a plan – but don’t over plan! Leave some room for spontaneity when the brush is in your hand.
Paint. Maiolica stains can be painted like watercolour or single colours can be used to create vibrant borders and patterns. The design can first be drawn with a pencil onto the form. The pencil will burn out in the kiln.
Even if you have good penmanship, Sgraffito lettering can be quite difficult to get right.
For one thing, you’re working on a spherical surface. That’s more difficult than writing on paper. Also, instead of a pen or pencil, you’re using a pointed tool to write your sgraffito lettering. It has a different resistance on the writing surface and can feel clumsy. Also, you have to fit your text into a restricted and generally small space. Worst of all, you only get one chance to get it right! Mistakes can be repaired, they’re a pain.
If you have some time, this will help you get it right:
On Paper
Figure out where to place your lettering on your pot. Sketch it out. Work around any sprigs or sculptural features.
Sketch your text on paper so you’ll be sure it will fit into the space on your pottery. How large can the letters be? Where do you need to break the lines?
On your Pot
Draw rule lines for your letters on your pot. If the slip isn’t too soft, you can use a pencil. Otherwise, a brush dipped in food colouring will work. They’ll burn away in the kiln.
Lightly sketch on your text to get the spacing right
Work slowly and calmly
Types of Letters
Roman Capitals
How to do Roman Capitals
This technique works well for capital letters but can be also used for lower case letters. It’s useful because the letters are not slanted and the “filling in” can hide poor spacing or letter forms.
1.) Bare bones letters2.) Draw thicks3.) Fill in thicks and add Serifs
Print, Italic or Cursive letters
You can rely on your own penmanship – and quirky features can be charming. This works best if the slip is still quite soft. Your pointed tool will glide like through butter! However, if the slip is very dry, it’s a scratchy old business.
Historically, pottery in the UK was made by small, rural potteries that were scattered throughout the country. They dug the clay from their own ground and formed it into the rustic wares needed by their local communities.
By the 17th century, potters learned how to use slip as an inexpensive way to decorate their products. Slipware is made using a variety of techniques. Generally, a contrasting colour of slip (watery clay) is applied to a form and then manipulated to create a decorative effect. This decoration can range from a simple band of coloured slip brushed onto a jug to the intricate lines of slip feathering on a plate.
Slip Trailing entails squirting slip through a fine nozzleIn feathering, the decoration is achieved by drawing a feather through lines of wet slipIn Sgraffito, the slip is scratched through to reveal the contrasting colour of clay beneath
By around 1900, most of the rural potteries had closed down. The development of the Staffordshire potteries resulted in their dominance over much of England. Also, people’s taste changed. They preferred porcelain and creamware over their local earthenware products. Slipware went out of fashion and only a few potteries in Cornwall and Devon carried on the tradition. In the 20’s, Bernard Leach and Shōji Hamada were interested in slipware for a time and brought the technique into studio pottery. It was taken up by one of their students, Michael Cardew, who made some very beautiful work. Today there are quite a few successful potters making slipware.
Slipware revival at the Corner Pottery Workshop!
I love slipware and always teach at least one of its techniques in each of my courses.
January 2023 Course Slipware Project
Our next project is inspired by a quirky item that was popular in the 1800s, commemorative money banks. They were generally decorated with chickens or other birds (nobody knows why) and often a child’s name and birthdate was written on the side with sgraffito. There aren’t many of these old banks around anymore because they had to be broken open to get at the savings.
The money bank is inspiration for this project but you can choose a different form if you prefer. We’ll use red terracotta clay covered by white slip and glazed with a honey glaze. You will need to decorate it with sgraffito plus some sort of sculptural object or one of the techniques below.
Swags, sprigs, ribs & pellets
These are techniques that add a sculptural dimension to the form. Decorative pieces of clay are attached to the form and then the slip is poured over them.
Sprigs
Sprigs are made by pressing a stamp into a ball of clay or pressing clay into a mould.
Swags & Ribs
Swags and Ribs are made with thin coils of clay. Notice that they can also be impressed with a tool to resemble a rope.
The work of other potters (alive or dead!) inspires many of the pieces we make in my classes.
Over the course of the year, I accumulate quite a collection of pottery photos. These are photos of whatever catches my eye – in a museum or shop window or on somebody’s kitchen shelf. They give me ideas for interesting forms, techniques and decoration to use in my courses.
Friends and students also send me pictures of pots or bowls they’ve seen on their travels. These are so helpful!
If you have some photos, please email them to me. I’d love to see them.
Pottery that may inspire some of our projects in 2023.
Stacy went off message but her brain bowl was needed for her Halloween party!
It’s hard to make an excellent coil pot but students in the September course made some of the best coil pots I’ve ever seen.
The secret was to create a coil pattern that repeated in the body, foot and handles. They were painted with coloured slips and then finished with an oxide wash. Excellent work….there were no dog dinners here!
