Define Handbuilding In Ceramics

Incise indenting into the wet clay.

Define handbuilding in ceramics.

Handbuilding is an ancient pottery making technique that involves creating forms without a pottery wheel using the hands fingers and simple tools. Making a pinch pot is the simplest way to begin working with clay. How do you do so. The three basic techniques of hand building are pinch coil and slab construction.

Greenware any unfired clay body before it is bisque fired and is very fragile. 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. Before potters had the wheel they were creating beautiful pots and clay forms using clay their hands and fingers and basic hand tools. They can be used individually or combined together to suit your whims.

Most often ceramic tools are used to carve engrave incise the clay. Basically when you are creating an item from clay you will almost always use a mix of building methods whether the reason is for speed for aesthetics or personal choice. Well we are going to explore some techniques and some cool ideas for you to try out in terms of hand building pottery and. What makes these creations unique is the hand artistry and the type of potter s clay you use.

You can throw a teapot but you would need to hand make the handle you can of course hand make the entire item. The most common handbuilding techniques are pinch pottery coil building and slab building. Hand building pottery using slabs of clay is an exciting way to create shapes that could never be produced using a potter s wheel or that would be difficult to achieve if you are doing hand construction using coils of clay. Handbuilding is working with clay by hand using only simple tools not the pottery wheel.

Some items require both throwing and hand building e g. Below are the three most common forms of creating hand built pots. Handbuilding clay sculpting any clay body by hand. Kiln a furnace or oven for burning baking or drying especially for firing pottery.