Ceramic Slab Building Techniques

Modern potters and ceramic sculptors have embraced the slab creating works using both soft slabs and stiff leather hard slabs.

Ceramic slab building techniques.

Slab pots tend to be a bit tougher to produce technically speaking than those created using other. Before potters began using pottery wheels simple tools were used to create clay pottery. Next you turn a giant wheel and the slab roller rolls over the clay like a steam roller. The figure s elaborate garb jewelry and headdress represent the.

To get you started check out this article by daryl baird on using slump molds with soft slabs. Birdie boone works with super thin slabs to make. Beth peterson is a potter artist and writer with more than 30 years of experience crafting clay and ceramics. Before potters had the wheel they were creating beautiful pots and clay forms using clay their hands and fingers and basic hand tools.

Handbuilding is an ancient pottery making technique that involves creating forms without a pottery wheel using the hands fingers and simple tools. More on soft slab pottery. Most ancient cultures gravitated to the pottery wheel for the creation of vessels. It flattens out the clay and makes it ready to use.

Today slab pots and slab building techniques are experiencing a renewed popularity. To make a pinch pot one inserts a thumb into a ball of clay and continually pinches the the clay between the thumb and fingers while rotating to thin. Pinchpot coiling and slab techniques. Effigy urn in the form of the sun god from 12th 14th century mesoamerica is formed from a slab of unglazed clay also called earthenware.

Slabbing clay is a technique the includes. If you have caught the slab pottery bug you ve come to the right place for inspiration. Most do not realize the infinite world of hand building and the artistic possibilities it opens. The most common handbuilding techniques are pinch pottery coil building and slab building.

How to slab clay. In order to work a slab roller you lay your clay on a long strip of cloth. This broad approach to slab work shows a wide variety of building methods and shows the work of many high profile makers in this area. Basic pottery hand building techniques.

Liz zlot summerfield is also an excellent resource for slab building techniques. Found in indian and mesopotamian architecture ceramic tiles are believed to have been constructed from slabs of clay since 14 000 b c. Which is formed by joining flat slabs of clay together. The machine then has a piece of cloth connected to it which you lay on top of the clay.