Definition Of Handbuilding In Ceramics

Below are the three most common forms of creating hand built pots.

Definition of handbuilding in ceramics.

The most common handbuilding techniques are pinch pottery coil building and slab building. Most often ceramic tools are used to carve engrave incise the clay. Handbuilding is an ancient pottery making technique that involves creating forms without a pottery wheel using the hands fingers and simple tools. Pin share email kidstock getty images.

Kiln a furnace or oven for burning baking or drying especially for firing pottery. Beth peterson is a potter artist and writer with more than 30 years of experience crafting clay and ceramics. Greenware any unfired clay body before it is bisque fired and is very fragile. Handbuilding clay sculpting any clay body by hand.

What makes these creations unique is the hand artistry and the type of potter s clay you use. Incise indenting into the wet clay. Basic pottery hand building techniques. Pinchpot coiling and slab techniques.

They can be used individually or combined together to suit your whims. The three basic techniques of hand building are pinch coil and slab construction. Handbuilding is working with clay by hand using only simple tools not the pottery wheel. 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.

You start by kneading the clay into a small lump about the size of your fist. 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.