Sculpting and Handbuilding
Sculpting and Handbuilding
Sculpting and Handbuilding
Claire Loder
Dedication For John and Wren and all the miles walked to give me a quiet house.
Contents
Acknowledgements 6 About the author 7 Introduction................................................................................................................. 9 1 Handbuilding techniques. ............................................................................... 13 2 Research and inspiration................................................................................ 47 3 The vessel...........................................................................................................63 4 Surface treatments.......................................................................................... 77 5 Sculptural approaches. .................................................................................... 87 6 Combining techniques and materials.......................................................... 99 7 Contemporary approaches........................................................................... 113 Conclusion 123 Featured Artists 124 Bibliography 125 Suppliers 126 Index 127
frontispiece: Katherine Morling, Large Tree. Crank clay and porcelain, porcelain slip and black stain, 2 x 1m (6 x 3ft). Hand built and slab built. Photo: courtesy of the artist. right:
First published in Great Britain in 2013 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP www.acblack.com ISBN 978-1-4081-5668-1 Published simultaneously in the USA by The American Ceramic Society 600 N. Cleveland Ave., Suite 210 Westerville, Ohio, 43082, USA http://ceramicartsdaily.org ISBN: 978-1-57498-334-0 Copyright Claire Loder 2013 CIP Catalogue records for this book are available from the British Library. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems without the prior permission in writing of the publishers. Claire Loder has asserted her right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. Typeset in 10 on 13pt Rotis Semi Sans Book design by Susan McIntyre Cover design by Sutchinda Thompson Printed and bound in China. This book is produced using paper that is made from wood grown in managed, sustainable forests. It is natural, renewable and recyclable. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
Merete Rasmussen, Blue Twisted Form (detail), 2011. Stoneware, coiled, 40 x 60 x 60 cm (16 x 24 in). Photo: courtesy of the artist. cover images: Fenella Elms, Green Flow (detail), 2011. Stained porcelain, wall mounted, 60 x 55 cm (24 x 22 in). Photo: courtesy of the artist.
cover images:
Handbuilding techniques
Clay is egalitarian and playful it can be formed, pinched, pulled and sculpted. 1
Antony Quinn
Handbuilding is one of the most basic and versatile ways of making clay objects, the other two commonly used techniques being throwing and mould-making. Handbuilding offers artists great capacity for free expression and all the advantages of an intuitive approach. The experience and knowledge to be gained by experimenting with the basic processes is significant. Understanding these processes will help you learn how the clay responds in your hands. For example, making a pinch pot helps you to understand the relationship between the initial ball size and the resulting object, while coiling and slab-building teach you how to scale up and enable you to work quickly. Carving and sculpting will hone your three-dimensional skills and give you a feel for the consistency of clay and its drying times. All handbuilding techniques derive from a few simple processes: coiling, pinching, slab-building, carving and sculpting. Their definitions are amorphous and each process does not exist in isolation. Ceramicists, artists and potters combine, subvert and circumvent these processes to obtain the results they require. This chapter explores each of the techniques and offers tips on working with clay.
Phoebe Cummings making porcelain sprigmoulded leaves in the residency studio at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2010. Leaf designs were drawn from patterns printed and painted on tableware in the museum collection. These designs were then modelled by hand in clay, from which plaster sprig-moulds were created. Individual leaves were pressed from the moulds to build together into threedimensional forms.
To minimise the risk of air bubbles, to ensure an even consistency and a decent, workable condition, it is good practice to prepare the clay before you begin working with it. Many ceramicists (including myself) use the manufacturers clay straight from the bag without any trouble. Others always wedge their clay before they use it. It is important to understand how to eliminate pockets of air and produce workable clay whether you are using clay from the bag or not, especially as reclaiming or recycling clay should be a part of sustainable practice (see p. 16). It is also useful to understand what can happen if you dont fully prepare the clay, not only so you can diagnose problems that may occur in the firing, but also because you may want to capitalise on the cracks, splits and irregularities that arise as possible routes of investigation in your work, and to encourage these as features rather than flaws.
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Handbuilding techniques
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Handbuilding techniques
left:
Fenella Elms building one of her intricate structures. Photo: David Parmiter.
above:
Reclaiming clay: breaking the clay into small pieces to dry. Covering clay with water.
right:
right, below:
Reclaiming clay
It is very hard to avoid waste when you work with clay, but the good news is that until it is fired, all clay can be reclaimed and used again. Keep a lidded bucket, one for each type of clay (one for stoneware, one for terracotta, etc.) close at hand so you can collect all your scraps, trimmings, off-cuts and dried-out bits of clay as you go along.
Tools
The type of tools and equipment required depend on the kind of work you are making. Handbuilding, by its nature, relies on only a few essential tools, though there are some additional pieces of equipment that make working easier. Many potters and makers craft or adapt their own tools, especially tools for cutting or modelling, but you can easily buy the basics to get started. A basic toolkit consists of a potters knife for cutting the clay; a cheese wire to slice through the clay block; metal and rubber kidneys for scraping and smoothing; a rolling pin; modelling tools and a potters needle. Materials for wrapping (such as newspaper and plastic sheeting or plastic bags), a water mister or spray and a sponge for cleaning your work-station are also essential.
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There are a few other useful tools and pieces of equipment. A banding wheel enables you to access the form easily and maintain a comfortable working height. Wooden boards make transporting and storing work easier and are useful for laying drying slabs or reclaimed clay on. A plaster bat is really useful for clay preparation and reclamation; a piece of canvas stretched across your table or fastened to a board works just as well. A selection of containers of various sizes, including bowls and buckets, is always handy, as is a small lidded pot for storing slip used for joining. A selection of brushes, spatulas and modelling tools can be bought, adapted or made.
left:
Tools and equipment banding wheel, potters knife, potters needle, metal kidney, cheese wire, rolling pin, wooden modelling tools (in pot), rubber kidney (being used). At the back: water mister, selection of brushes, wooden spatulas and spoons. Christy Keeny, The Bull, 2010. Flax clay, painted with red earthenware slip and finished with oxides manganese dioxide and copper oxide, 34 x 26 cm x 12 cm (13 x 10 x 4 in). Photo: courtesy ofthe artist.
below: Various-sized loop tools used for carving. below left: Examples of Frankie Lockes handmade or appropriated carving tools, and metal kidneys. Photos: John Taylor.
The techniques
Pinching
Pinching a pot from a ball of clay is often our first experience of handling the material. This rudimentary method works with all types of clay and is remarkably versatile. Pinching is the technique that carries the mark of the maker most visibly. Ceramicists such as Ingrid Bathe and Lilly Zuckerman exploit this characteristic, and their forms retain the traces of their making. The repetitive motion of their fingertips pinching the clay is evident in the surface of their work to varying degrees. This elementary technique can result in sophisticated and sensitive forms. Pinching usually starts with a ball of clay sitting in the palm of your hand. Because the clay dries quickly from the warmth of your hands, pinching works best with soft clay. The drier the clay, the more risk of cracking and crumbling. This technique is a great way to learn about how clay responds to your touch. A pinched pot can be manipulated or adapted into many shapes. Pinching is also a way of building up a form in combination with other processes. For example, you may have a slab-built base to which you add a pinch pot or you can add bands of clay that you then pinch out.
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Handbuilding techniques
right:
How to make a pinch pot and a hollow form. Photos: John Taylor.
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Handbuilding techniques
Coiling
Coiling involves creating and using lengths or ropes of clay to build up a form. Endlessly versatile, coils can be used to build quickly and expressively. It is an ideal method for making large-scale work, but it can also be used to build fine, delicate objects. As Betty Blandino beautifully describes, coils may be as regular as bricks layered to build a wall, as random as dry stonewalling, or as rhythmical as knitting. They may give the pot the quality of the geological stratification of a cliff face, the wispy structure of a birds nest, or the organic crumble of the earths crust or they may be smoothed to make the surface indistinguishable from that of pots made by other methods.2 Coils are formed from lumps of clay rolled on an absorbent surface using the palms of the hands. A heavily-grogged clay can be squeezed in the hand to make a rough rope-like shape, then refined by rolling it on the work surface. Coils can be as small or as large as your hands will allow. Smaller coils are suited to fine small-scale pieces, while larger coils are good for building larger pieces and quicker building. A fine clay, like porcelain, is good for delicate coils that make thin-walled vessels. But there is nothing to stop a counterintuitive approach: try rough, quickly-formed coils and see how the porcelain responds. As for the shape of the coils themselves, they can be long ropes or short pellets depending on the nature of the form you are constructing. Depending on the type of clay and the size of the coils used, coiling can be a fast process, ideal for building intuitively or with precision, which skilfully mimics other processes, such as casting or throwing. Grogged clay, such as crank or raku clay, formed into fat coils, is ideal for building fast and expressively. At the other end of the scale, porcelain is finer and results in a more subtle, refined structure. Like all handbuilding processes, coiling is easily combined with other techniques. For example, composite objects can be constructed by joining a coiled organic shape to an angular, rigid slab form. Or fine coils can be added piece by piece to a rough-hewn lump of clay. Throwers often complete their forms with coiled sections. A coil can even become slab-like by flattening a rolled coil to make a ribbon of clay.
above, left:
Lilly Zuckerman, initial stages of forming a vessel with her fingertips from a thick clay slab. Lilly Zuckerman, pinching out the two chambers
above, right:
of the tray.
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Lilly Zuckerman, coaxing the clay upwards, refining the walls. Photos: Lilly Zuckerman.
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Lilly Zuckerman, Earthenware Tray, 2011. Dimensions: 38 x 30 x 10 cm (15 x 12 x 4 in). Photo: Lilly Zuckerman.
Coiling tips
Allow for drying time as you build, especially with large structures. Coils already in place will need to be stiff enough to support subsequent coils built up on top and avoid collapse. Air-dry your form; the most recent coils can be wrapped in plastic to preserve moisture while allowing the lower coils to stiffen. If you are varying the thickness of the coils, or combining processes, then drying times become even more important. In these cases it is essential to dry the work slowly to prevent cracks appearing at the stress points between thick and thin sections of clay. Fresh clay will be soft enough for each coil to adhere to the next without adding slip. If the top coil becomes too dry, then score the surface and brush it with slip before adding the next coil. The coils need to be firmly joined on the inside of the form to prevent horizontal cracks.
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Handbuilding techniques
Coiling is a particularly adaptable way to build. To adjust the form you can manipulate the coils with your fingers by squeezing or pulling them, or paddle the clay into shape with the appropriate tool, as illustrated in the pinch-pot section. For a small pot you can build with one continuous coil in an upwards spiral. For larger pieces, you can prepare the coils and store them in plastic. For fast building you can use an extruder tool, which has a shaped die plate at one end. This allows you to create different coil profiles depending on the aperture of the die plate.
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