Ceramic Slab Technique

Slabbing clay is a handbuilding pottery technique that has been around for centuries.

Ceramic slab technique.

This technique offers less warpage than soft slab construction. Today slab pots and slab building techniques are experiencing a renewed popularity. Once the clay is leather hard cut out your pieces and join them by scoring and slipping. Birdie boone works with super thin slabs to make.

The most common handbuilding techniques are pinch pottery coil building and slab building. Handbuilding is an ancient pottery making technique that involves creating forms without a pottery wheel using the hands fingers and simple tools. More on soft slab pottery. Modern potters and ceramic sculptors have embraced the slab creating works using both soft slabs and stiff leather hard slabs.

Liz zlot summerfield is also an excellent resource for slab building techniques. If you have caught the slab pottery bug you ve come to the right place for inspiration. 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. Slab pots tend to be a bit tougher to produce technically speaking than those created using other techniques.

To get you started check out this article by daryl baird on using slump molds with soft slabs. Jomon vessel 3000 2000 b c e on view at tokyo national museum tokyo japan. Slabbing clay is a technique the includes rolling out slabs of clay and then cutting out pieces and attaching them together to create pots cups and urns. Before potters began using pottery wheels simple tools were used to create clay pottery.

Pinchpot coiling and slab techniques. The slabs of clay need to still be wet enough to produce strong seams yet also firm enough to be able to hold up their own weight when placed vertically. Use only dried and firm slabs of clay for this technique. Handbuilding is working with clay by hand using only simple tools not the pottery wheel.