Definition Of Handbuilding In Ceramics

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Definition of 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. The most common handbuilding techniques are pinch pottery coil building and slab building. Incise indenting into the wet clay. Most often ceramic tools are used to carve engrave incise the clay.

Before potters had the wheel they were creating beautiful pots and clay forms using clay their hands and fingers and basic hand tools. 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. Kiln a furnace or oven for burning baking or drying especially for firing pottery. Below are the three most common forms of creating hand built pots.

Making a pinch pot is the simplest way to begin working with clay. What makes these creations unique is the hand artistry and the type of potter s clay you use. Handbuilding is working with clay by hand using only simple tools not the pottery wheel. Beth peterson is a potter artist and writer with more than 30 years of experience crafting clay and ceramics.

They can be used individually or combined together to suit your whims. Handbuilding clay sculpting any clay body by hand. Pinchpot coiling and slab techniques. Pin share email kidstock getty images.

The three basic techniques of hand building are pinch coil and slab construction. 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.