Ceramics Vocab Flashcards
This term refers to the one of several techniques of building pots using the only the hands and simple tools rather than the potters wheel.
Handbuilding
in ceramics is a method of shaping clay by inserting the thumb of one hand into the clay and lightly pinching with the thumb and fingers while slowly rotating the ball in the palm of the other hand “.
Pinch
This is the technique of building ceramic forms by rolling out coils, or ropes, of clay and joining them together with the fingers or a tool
Coil
is liquid clay. The easiest way to make slip is to gradually sift or spoon dry, powder clay into a small cup of water.
Slip
refers to a method of joining two pieces of clay together. First,scorethe clay; this means that you make scratches in the surfaces that will be sticking together. Then youslipit; that is you wet the surface with some slip, using it like glue. Next, you press the two pieces together. It is very important to alwaysscore and slipclay that is leather hard. If you do not, the pieces will likely pop apart when they are fired.
Score and slip
In this technique, flat slabs of clay are pressed into molds in order to create various shapes or forms.
Molding
When speaking of clay, we refer to three basic stages of dryness: wet or plastic, leather hard and bone dry. They are self-explanatory.Fourth stage-slip
Stages of Dryness
is a decorating technique developed centuries ago. In its simplest embodiment, leather-hard clay is coated with an engobe or slip of contrasting color and then a pattern or picture is added by carving through or scraping off the slip to reveal the clay underneath
Sgraffito
In this decorative technique, patterns or designs are created by brushing a wax medium over an area of clay, slip, or glaze to resist the final glaze application when the wax is dry.
Wax resist
Slip (a liquid clay) is applied to the greenware through a tube or nozzle, much like icing a cake.
Slip trailing is another decoration method.
This is the technique of pressing forms into the clay to get decorative effects.
stamping
type offaienceusually associated with wares produced in Spain, Italy, and Mexico. The process of making majolica consists of first firing a piece of earthenware, then applying a tin enamel that upon drying forms a white opaque porous surface. A design is then painted on and a transparent glaze applied. Finally the piece is fired again. This type of ware was produced in the ancient Middle East by the Babylonians, and the method remained continuously in use. It was extensively employed by the Hispano-Moresque potters of the 14th cent. By the mid-15th cent. majolica was popular in Italy, where it became justly famous through the decorations of theDella Robbiafamily. The method is still widely used in folk art.
majolica
This refers to a method of creating designs by folding different colored clays together into “rods” or bars, then slicing them as if you were slicing rolled cookies. This duplicates a design over and over for each slice.
Mille Fiore
This is the process of heating the pottery to a specific temperature in order to bring about a particular change in the clay or the surface.
Firing
The term bisquerefers to ceramic ware that has been fired once without glaze.
Bisque
