Tag Archives: bisqueware

Art I: Intro to Ceramics

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Printable Vocabulary Sheet

Classroom Rules

Clay Vocabulary

Ceramics: pottery or clay sculpture fired at high temperatures in a kiln to make them harder and stronger.

Kiln: A specially designed oven capable of reaching temperatures over 2000 degrees F (can be gas, electric, or wood-fired)

Clay: moist, sticky dirt (mug) composed of fine-grained minerals, which can be shaped when wet and hardened when dried or heated (rock material)

Tools: mainly used to shape clay

Types of Clay

Earthenware (1800-2100 degrees F): clay fired at low temps, often contains iron and has a porous surface when fired.
Stoneware (2200-2400 degrees F): a buff, gray or brown clay which is heavy, opaque, and highly plastic in nature with a high firing temperature.
Porcelain (2200-2550 degrees F): a very fine white clay with a high firing temperature, non-porous, strong, and translucent when fired.

Tools

Hands, Loop Tools, Modeling Tools, Ribs, Sponge, Wire Clay Cutter

Wheel Throwing

forming pottery using a wheel powered by a foot, a stick, or an electronic motor

Slip Casting

a method of creating pottery using molds to reproduce forms

Hand-building Techniques

Pinch Method: fundamental to manipulating clay, pressing the thumb into a ball of clay and drawing the clay out into a pot by repeatedly squeezing the clay between the thumb and fingers
Coil Method: long, snake-like ropes of clay that are used in making pottery; involves building the walls of a form with a series of coils into the required shape; surface can remain coil-textured or they can be smoothed
Slab Method: a form is built up by joining shapes cut from thick sheets of damp clay

Decorating Methods

Glaze: a glass coating that is especially made to stick onto ceramic surfaces
Underglaze: colored slips applied beneath a glaze layer
Stain: raw pigments, can be water or acrylic based
Burnishing: rearranging and compressing clay particles by rubbing the surface of a clay object until it becomes glossy

Stages of Clay:

Greenware: clay that has not been fired and still able to be made back into mud and recycled to use again.

Stages of Greenware

Slip – wet and soupy
Plastic – moldable without cracks
Leatherhard – clay is dry enough to maintain form and wet enough to be smoothed, carved, and added to.
Bone dry – clay has dried as much as possible before first firing and is extremely brittle. Clay is most fragile at this point!

Bisqueware: first firing where all remaining water molecules are released from the clay transforming it into ceramic (Why are air bubbles dangerous during a bisque fire?)

Glazeware: second firing where glaze has melted into the ceramic surface making it non-porous

Score, Slip, and Seal

When joining two pieces of clay, you must always remember the 3 S’s.
Score: roughening up the surface of the clay to act like Velcro
Slip: liquid clay or water used as “glue” for attaching
Seal: to press the pieces of clay firmly together where they are joined

Clean-up

Hazards of clay dust: silica particles = EXTREMELY tiny pieces of glass, which become airborne easily and inhaled – extremely hazardous to lungs!
Solution: WET clean-up prevents dust from building up and becoming airborne. Use wet sponges, spray bottles, wet rags

Ceramic Stamps

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Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery

We will be creating stamps to add texture and decoration to our pottery, like the pot pictured above by Gary Jackson over at http://firewhenreadypottery.com, and it will also give you practice working with the clay since most of you haven’t touched it since last school year. Feel free to peruse Gary Jackon’s blog to find some stamping ideas or check out my Pinterest page for more ideas.

clay coils

Begin by creating multiple clay coils. They can vary in size, but keep it close to an inch thick and no more. You can also roll spheres or wheel forms. We will make these stamps double-sided to get more bang for our buck, but they can also have carvings or coils added to the sides for rolling. There are also other ways to create stamps pictured on my Pinterest board for ceramic stamps.

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Here are some completed stamps. Try to make the stamps long enough to hold. If they are too short, the hand can cramp while trying to hold and stamp clay with them. There are also different kinds of stamps you could make. The ones below are single stamps with a handle, but will only provide you with one design. Then there are rolling stamps, and when using rolling stamps, you could also create a stamped pattern on the flat side of the roller. Rolling stamps are used for continuous rolling along the clay to create a never-ending pattern.

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Any of the clay tools can be used to create a stamp. Above, I used pencil erasers, paperclips, nails, screws, tires from toy cars, caps to markers, anything that will leave a mark. What are some other things you can think of to use to create a stamp?

Here are some stamps I made along with the mugs I stamped with them:

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Be creative!

Requirements:

  • Sketch out 12 designs in your sketchbook. Stamps can be concave or convex (see sketch below).
  • Create 6 stamps with at least 2 designs on each for a total of 12 stamps. If you only put one design on a stamp, you will need to create more stamps for a total of 12 designs to stamp.
  • Stamps cannot be more than 1″ wide and should be at least 2-3″ in length in order to hold properly while stamping.
  • Smooth any sharp edges with a damp paintbrush.
  • Carve NAME or INITIALS and PERIOD onto each stamp.
  • Create a blog post for your stamps, post sketches.
  • Photograph stamps in greenware stage and post to your blog. You may also photograph the steps you took to get there (rolling out the clay, pressing in the texture, etc).
  • Post final picture of finished stamps after they are fired into bisque ware. Stamp some clay and take a picture of the designs you can make with your stamps. Test them out! Photograph the results and post it on your blog.
Example of sketches:20140729-214043.jpg
Demo Videos of How to Make a Stamp:

Ceramic Arts Daily - Custom Stamps
Making a Bisque Stamp
How to make roller stamps
Handmade Texture Stamps