During my practicum I was teaching ceramics for the first time without ever having experienced a ceramics lesson. The classes went well but I thought I better learn a little about the subject in case I one day had to teach it again without the guidance of a mentor teacher. So during this semester I signed up for a ceramics class run through the roundhouse community center. We studied hand building using coils, pinch techniques, and slab as well as throwing on the wheel.
Here are some of the pieces I created.
This is a platter I built using a slab technique. I rolled out the clay using a rolling pin and laid the slab on a thick piece of foam. Then I used a piece of wood to apply pressure to the center of the clay slab. This creates the upturned corners. Next I used a stamp to create the oval texture. I glazed this piece with raspberry and black glaze simply dipping the bisque fired platter in the glaze bucket. After the glaze dried, I hand painted the black glaze in the textured ovals on the raspberry side. I am quite happy with the piece.
I also used the slab technique to make this butter dish along with the coil technique. The walls are made with slabs and the small lib on the bottom piece was made with coils. I glazed this piece with butterscotch and plum. One thing I would do differently next time would be to make all the sides of the piece and let it dry flat for a few days before assembling the walls. This will prevent sagging and warping.
Here is my old man mask. I really love the way he turned out! This could work as a 8-9 class unit on mask making in a ceramics class. For this guy I used a slump mold. This means I rolled out a slab of clay and slumped it over a balled up wad of newspaper covered in a plastic bag. The plastic bag prevents the newspaper from sucking the moisture out of the clay while you work on it. I also used embossing and engraving as reductive processes for the mask. I didn’t want to make any mistakes glazing the lask so I decided to glaze it all in clear.
This is my wheel piece. It stands about 5 inches high and has thick walls. Working on the wheel was very challenging for em and caused a lot of frustration. Patients is needed and students may also become easily aggravated. One thing I found that was helpful was to close my eyes when trying to center the clay on the wheel. On this piece I used a cake icing tool to squirt little dots of slip near the top edge of the pot. This texture technique can be used to draw on texture too.
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