Ceramics Slip Decoration

Beth peterson is a potter artist and writer with more than 30 years of experience crafting clay and ceramics.

Ceramics slip decoration.

Slip decoration techniques in pottery. Today i am presenting another super fun slip decorating technique that reminds me of putting icing on a cake. Slip decoration is an ancient technique in chinese pottery also used to cover whole vessels over 4 000 years ago. This allows me to constantly keep things changing the images the texture the colors so each piece becomes its own little world.

Principal techniques include slip painting where the slip is treated like paint and used to create a design with brushes or other implements and slip trailing where the slip usually rather thick is dripped onto the body. Slip decorating for ceramic pieces. Chris lively applies thick slips to his leather hard pots and then uses various tools to sculpt and shape it much like a pastry chef would work with icing. Three cups with cut feet wheel thrown and altered red clay slip glaze soda fired to cone 1 in a gas kiln.

There are so many methods for decorating pottery with slip from slip trailing to mishima. A thicker slip can be trailed onto the object using a condiment bottle or other trailing applicator. Learn about the spruce crafts editorial process.