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Decorating Techniques ceramic artsdaily.org three great pottery decorating techniques a guide to sgraffito, how to make and use terra sigillata, and creating and coloring highly textured surfaces www.ceramicartsdaily.org | Copyright © 2010, Ceramic Publications Company | Three Great Pottery Decorating Techniques | i Three Great Pottery Decorating Techniques A guide to sgraffito, how to make and use terra sigillata, and creating and coloring highly textured surfaces Decorating your work before it’s fired provides you with a lot of creative opportunities. At the soft clay stage, you can stamp and texture your clay using many types and kinds of objects. When the clay is leather hard, you can coat your work with colored slips and carve away to create patterns. And when your clay is bone dry, you can apply terra sigillata and burnish the surface to a high sheen. Scratching the Surface: A Step-by-Step Guide to Sgraffito by Wayne Bates Sgraffito comes from the Italian word graffito meaning “to scratch,” and Wayne Bates does more than scratch the surface with this informative tutorial on the tips and techniques of getting the best results. Using both cutting and scratching techniques, he demonstrates the finer points of line work, scraping large areas and cross-hatching. If you’re into making your own glazes, he’s provided 19 colorful engobes along with 5 recipes for various clear glazes you can try out. Burnishing with Terra Sigillata by Sumi von Dassow Terra sigillata means ‘sealed earth’ and comes from the name of a type of Roman pottery mass-produced around the first century AD. But the Romans copied the Greek technique used in their famous black and red pottery for hundreds of years before that. Here is a complete guide to making and applying terra sigillata, recipes, and troubleshooting. How to Make a Textured Platter by Annie Chrietzberg Lana Wilson is the maven of textures and reveals her signature technique for creating a textured platter. In her step-by-step procedure you’ll see how she adds so much character to her pieces and how she brings the clay to life. She also includes her simple glazing technique along with her recipes. www.ceramicartsdaily.org | Copyright © 2010, Ceramic Publications Company | Three Great Pottery Decorating Techniques | 1 Scratching the Surface A Guide to Sgraffito by Wayne Bates he word sgraffito is de- rived from the Italian word graffito, a drawing Tor inscription made on a wall or other surface (graffito also gave us the word graffiti). Graffito is past participle of sgraffire, which means “to scratch.” So the word sgraffito basically means to scratch and create a graphic or an image. In ceramics, sgraffito is a technique of ornamentation in which a surface layer is incised to reveal a ground of contrasting color. I use sgraffito to get a clean line without masking or rulers, and I Plates, 10 in. (25 do more cutting than scraping. I still moist enough to stick if you cm) square, sgraf- use a handmade tool that is thin touch them to the surface, so they fito decoration and cuts smoothly. I cut when the should be removed frequently. with clear glaze piece is stiff leather hard, which You can use a thin coat of wax fired to cone 5. makes straight lines possible. If resist to protect light-colored areas the piece is bone dry, the cut will from dark cuttings. The wax resist be jagged and brittle. If the piece will burn off in the bisque. is too soft, the tool raises the edge Ball clays are used for engobes of the cut and makes a higher because they are the most plastic ragged edge. clays and shrink the most allow- If your clay has grog in it, or ing more room in the recipe for anything coarser than fine sand, non-plastic color, frit, modifiers you won’t get a smooth cut. I use and fillers. Frit is used to bind a rubber-tipped air tool and a soft the coating to the surface and to cosmetic brush to blow or brush increase the interface with the pot off the cuttings. The cut pieces are and the glaze. Wollastonite is used www.ceramicartsdaily.org | Copyright © 2010, Ceramic Publications Company | Three Great Pottery Decorating Techniques | 2 1 2 3 I use an automotive-detail-type spray gun to apply engobes and glazes. It has a smaller fan size than the full-size gun, has good volume, and is much faster than an airbrush. It’s a high volume/low pressure (HVLP) gun and it produces less overspray. I use a large HLVP spray gun for the cover glazes because of its high volume. to add calcium so the chrome-tin colors, i.e., the reds, pinks, and colors will work, and flint is used purples. The molecular recipe has CAUTION as a filler and stabilizer for colors to have three times more calcium Overspray is haz- that flux the mix. I mix the en- than boron for these to work. ardous. The engobe gobes thoroughly and screen them They have that ratio and will spray contains silica, through an 80-mesh sieve. Most produce the right color with all which can be harm- of my colors come from commer- my engobes. I do use barium for ful if inhaled. Wear a cial glaze stains although not all what it does for the colors and for mask, and make sure commercial stains will work, but the matt. The potential problem your booth has an if you think of engobes as being with it has to do with the heavy exhaust system. closer to glazes than slips, addi- metals and the possibility of leach- tives can help produce the right ing. From what I can find out, if a colors. Changes in the frit affects glaze has less than 15% barium in how fluid an engobe is and how the percentage composition, it will it works with the glaze. It can not promote leaching. From the also produce a vitreous, glaze like tests I have done, the glazes that I surface. Changes in the amount now use do not promote leaching of ball clay will make the engobe when used over the engobes. I do more or less plastic and change use a liner glaze for liquid contain- whether it goes on very wet pieces ers and I don’t use the solid color or bone-dry pieces. glazes on eating surfaces. I use a matt and a shiny glaze to I spray very wet, as if I’m cover the engobes on the face of pouring on a small stream of the the pieces and these two glazes are glaze or engobe on the piece. The what I call “color friendly.” To get engobe sets quickly because the as many colors as possible, they leather-hard piece can absorb have to work with the chrome-tin some water, but too much engobe www.ceramicartsdaily.org | Copyright © 2010, Ceramic Publications Company | Three Great Pottery Decorating Techniques | 3 4 5 Place the platter on the wheel over a piece of foam Move the platter to a banding wheel and create and create the center spiral as the wheel turns. freehand marks. 6 7 Scrape off large areas last using the flat side of a rib. Cross-hatching is done with a serrated tool. and the piece can collapse. If the dry enough, store the pieces on engobe is too thick, it makes the cloth on top of plastic, and place color and the glaze crawl. Set the cloth over them to prevent con- fan for a tall oval and overlap the densation from the plastic marring spray by 50% with the piece on a the color (figure 3). banding wheel turning smoothly First I create the center spiral through the spray. Practice spray- and circle using a foam rubber ing with paper plates so you can chuck on the wheel (figure 4). All cover the plate smoothly with no the other lines are done freehand bare spots or dusty areas. on a banding wheel (figure 5). The four colors of this color set The scraping of the larger white are black, french green, chartreuse, spaces is done last, when the piece and crimson and are applied from is even harder. I try to take off dark to light (figures 1–2). The only the layer of color (figure 6). spray adds water to the piece and I use the tool tip to make a sort it must dry to the leather hard of ditch that you can scrape to state before it can be carved. When or from to make the larger white www.ceramicartsdaily.org | Copyright © 2010, Ceramic Publications Company | Three Great Pottery Decorating Techniques | 4 areas. I use the flat side of a rib to smooth some of the cuts and to make the larger cuts. remove small bits of color. There will be some edges that Cross-hatching is another way of can be felt, and glazes will break exposing the white of the porcelain away from these edges, but the and is done with a serrated-edge glaze will fill in to make it smooth- tool (figure 7). I add black dots er than when cut. Small nicks and of engobe using a squeeze bottle. cuts can be patched, but the spray When all the carving is done, the overlaps are very hard to color piece is air-dried then bisque fired, match, so it is best to avoid mis- then a clear satin matt or a shiny takes! When almost bone dry, use glaze is sprayed on the front and 0000-grade steel wool to lightly solid color glazes on the back.
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