How to make a Pot by Concreta

In this tutorial i will show you how to make a pot with the SLAB METHOD.
What you need is: a rolling pin to stretch out the clay, two small panelist to give the slab a uniform thickness, a knife to cut it out, a pot to be used as a mould, the barbottina (you can find a tutorial in italian on how to make the barbottina following this link http://con-creta.blogspot.com/2010/02/come-preparare-la-barbottina.html ), and obviously a piece of clay.

The pot i've used is one of my creations made with the pottery wheel and not glazed yet, if you have a similar pot it's the perfect choice, or if you use glazed terracotta pots or plastic pots i suggest you to wrap them with cellophane, or the clay will stick too much to the surface and it will be impossible to remove it. The unglazed pot is the best solution cause its porous surface absorbs the humidity of the clay making our job easier.

Let's start stretching out the clay with the help of the rolling pin using the panelists to get a slab of uniform thickness. Then we can cut it out in the desired shape, for this slab i've cut a square.
After that, you must put the slab inside the mould pot and make it adhere to the mould with the help of a wet sponge.

This is just an idea, you can make variations, for example if you want a more "open" pot you can shape the clay using the outside of the flipped pot.
Now it's time to forget about it for a while.
When the clay is a bit dried you can take it off the mould, it's hard to predict how long it takes, the drying process depends first on weather conditions and on the environment we work as well.

I wanted to make this pot with small feet too, and to do this i flipped it and put it on a support. You just need to scratch the clay where you want to place the feet and the feet as well (that are just small balls of clay) so that the barbottina can stick better.

You must let it dry again a bit, then with a brush you can take away the exceeded barbottina.
When the barbottina is dried you can take the pot away from the support, if the edges are too much irregular you can smooth them with a wet sponge… now you can be as creative as you want.
You can draw some decoration scratching it with a twig, you can use some button as small moulds pushing them onto the clay, and if you are brave enough you can make some hole design with a xacto knife.

I chose a simple decoration made with small moulds made by myself.
Once the pot is completely dried before the firing you can still sand it with fine sandpaper to eliminate imperfections, but be careful not to break the clay, at this stage i ruined several pot.
Wish you good creativity!

Tutorial created by Concreta
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Puoi trovare il tutorial in Italiano qui
Post by Sumikoshop