Effective Decorating Techniques for Your Pottery

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:40:14 +0000

Have you recently been into the art of pottery? If so, then it’s a must to know the decorating techniques for your pottery so they don’t look so plain like those you find in museums exhibiting historical artifacts. Heck, even those in museums were artistically beautified by their makers in ancient times, so if they can do it, so can you.

There are a number of decorating techniques for your pottery, including incising patters on the clay body’s surface, underglaze decoration, in-glaze or on-glaze decoration, and enamel.

Even before you mold your clay into your desired form, you can actually already add additives into it. You can throw in some sand and grog to give some texture to your final product. Colored clays or grogs can be used if you want a pattern on your finished ware, or you can just use colorants.

The method of banding is the application of a band of color to a ware’s edge. This can be done either by hand or machine, often on a potter’s wheel, and usually on cups and plates. Burnishing can be done by rubbing wood, stone, or steel onto the surface of wares to achieve a polished finish which can survive firing. The use of engobe, which is a clay slip used to coat pottery surfaces, can be done before firing either to decorate or cover unsightly features in the clay. Gold application can be used as one of the decoration techniques for your pottery too, especially for high quality wares. Methods of doing so are best gold, acid gold, bright gold, and mussel gold. And then of course there is glazing which you can do either by dipping your ware into the glaze, or pouring, spraying, sponging, or brushing the glaze onto the pottery. Whatever method you apply, it will ultimately depend on how you will let your artistry and imagination reflect on your work. So happy decorating!