Tennessee Tech University - Appalachian Center for Craft - Clay Studio

Vince Pitelka, 2007

Art 3520 - Advanced Clay Studio - Surface Design
Introduction to Surface Design - Exploring Surface Relief

Whenever you manipulate a piece of clay you are inevitably exploring surface design.  This semester, our objective is to investigate a broad range of surface design methods and effects in an organized fashion.  By the end of the semester your vocabulary of surface options will have expanded dramatically, giving you the ability to orchestrate single or combined surface effects to achieve specific final outcome.  Successful surface design in ceramics inevitably involves addressing surface effects layer upon layer from wet clay through glaze firing and even post-firing effects.  The simplest glazed ware involve at least four major stages of surface development affecting the outcome of the work.  In manipulating the wet clay we inevitably create specific surface effects, even if only a smooth surface.  We modify or embellish these effects when we trim or otherwise finish the piece at the leather-hard stage.  In applying glazes to the green or bisque-fired surface we aim for particular surface qualities, and in the glaze firing the kiln atmosphere, firing duration, and other variables will affect the glazed and unglazed areas in various ways.  You can begin to appreciate the range of possible variation even with the simplest forms.

As you begin to explore surface design methods, it’s important to anticipate the later stages of the ceramic process, and consider how the surface effects you are using will combine with subsequent effects.  As a general overview, at the damp state we can use modeling, impressing, texturing, and a wide variety of additive or subtractive methods.  Slip-decorating effects can be utilized in a multitude of ways from initial forming throughout the stages of drying.  The bone dry surface can be modified with a variety of abrading techniques including scraping, carving, sanding and sandblasting.  The latter two can even be used after bisque-firing, along with an unlimited range of engobe, patina, and glaze effects, which can themselves be overlaid, abraded and distressed in many ways to get special effects.  A multitude of choices is available in firing options, including multi firing and overglaze effects such as enamels, lusters, and overglaze decals.  The glazed surface can be abrading or distressed by grinding, sanding, or sand-blasting.  After glaze firing there are unlimited possibilities with post-firing finishes and mixed media.

There are many ways to consider this myriad of choices, but our objective is to approach them deliberately, with a proactive sense of surface design.  Too often, artists simply apply additional surface effects whenever they are unsure of what they have so far, as if more is always better.  A wet clay relief effect that seems marginally effective might be further activated by a slip pattern or texture, and if that doesn’t do it, the surface can be further enlivened by scraping and by multiple layers of slip.  An unsatisfactory slip pattern might be saved with engobes and glazes after the bisque firing.  A questionable polychrome slip design can be concealed beneath an opaque glaze.  This “fix-all” attitude is never the desirable approach to surface design.  Instead, we need to become familiar with the full range of possibilities at all stages, so that we may effectively plan the final outcome. 

Markmaking: Marks on the Ground 
To maximize our vocabulary of surface design, we must spend a great deal of time exploring markmaking and marks on the ground at all stages of the ceramic process.  This is a term borrowed from 2-D art media.  In drawing and painting, the process of developing imagery is simply a matter of placing marks on a chosen ground or substrate using a chosen markmaking tool and/or decorating medium.  With each choice of ground or substrate, and with each mark-making tool or medium, it is to the artist’s advantage to fully explore the range of possible marks, textures, and patterns that can be produced.  Through the semester we will address all stages of surface development, investigating the mark-making possibilities at each stage.

Our first objective is to explore mark-making and surface development in working wet, leather hard, and dry clay without the use of slips.  The primary possibilities include modeling and impressing into the wet clay, subtracting from the surface via carving, incising, fluting, faceting, scraping, or sanding, and adding to the surface via sprigging or appliqué. Read pages 98 to 102 in the text on Surface Decoration on Greenware.  In this handout, I elaborate on some of the techniques described in the text, and include several that are not covered in the text.

Modeled Decoration
“Modeling the clay” simply refers to the process of pushing clay around and shaping it with tools or with your fingers.  When you form a simple figurine from a lump of clay you are modeling the clay, but in this case we are thinking about decorative relief that is modeled onto the surface of a larger piece.  You can work into the clay that is already there, creating low-relief modeled decoration, but if higher relief is desired, it usually makes sense to add clay to the surface and then model the area to produce raised sculptural form. 

Impressed Decoration
An extraordinary range of marks can be produced by pressing into the clay with all kinds of tools and found textured or patterned materials, or by striking the clay with found materials or with textured paddles.  All sorts of branches and rough wood scraps can be effectively used as paddles to develop texture.  A wide range of effects can be achieved simply by impressing or beating the clay surface with the raised grain on the edges or ends of a piece of lumber, the rough bark of a tree limb, or the raw face of a broken rock or brick.  All sorts of found plant materials can be pressed into the clay to develop pattern and texture.

Pattern/texture paddles are wonderful tools, and can be made by affixing some sort of patterned or textured material to the surface of a paddle, by carving, cutting, or grinding the surface of a wood paddle, or by affixing a textured or patterned bisque-fired tile to a wood paddle.  Read the section on page 295 of the text and observe the photograph of textured paddles. 

You have all made bisque stamps, but unless you have made hundreds of them you are barely beginning your investigation.  Remarkable variations of pattern and texture are possible with bisque stamps and rollers (coggles, roulettes), including standard bisque stamps, wheel rollers, palm rollers, and patterned/textured spheres.  Wheel rollers can be mounted on an axle and handle for greater efficiency, especially for use on the potter’s wheel. Read the section on stamps and roulettes on page 300 of the text.

If you drag a tool across a clay surface or hold it against a rotating form on the potters wheel, you produce some variation of a groove, ridge, or pattern, displacing clay but not adding or subtracting clay.  Any existing wood, metal, or plastic rib may be modified with file, grinder, and/or saw to create a profile or template rib with a particular decorative profile that will transfer to the clay when the rib is dragged against stationary clay or held against soft clay on the wheel.  Read the section on template ribs and observe the photograph on page 296 of the text. 

Subtractive Decoration
Subtractive decoration involves any methods where you are removing clay from the surface, and generally includes incising, carving, piercing, chipping, scraping, and sanding. 

Incising involves shallow line imagery, and usually the removal of very little material.  A dull pencil, old ballpoint pen, a pointed dowel, or a sharp modeling tool are good tools for incising.  The character of the incised line will be very different depending on whether you incise the wet clay, or at soft-, medium-, or hard-leather-hard stages.

Carving simply refers to the process of removing clay from the surface with some sort of cutting tool.  The potential for carved decoration depends on the wall thickness.  If a piece is created with thick walls, then there is the possibility of very deep, dramatic carving, while in many cases subtle, low-profile surface caving can be extremely effective, as in the Chinese carved celadon-glazed porcelains of the Sung Dynasty.  Most people carve clay with trimming tools, but a fettling knife or razor knife work well for some kinds of carving on clay.  For very fine carved detail, dental tools work well.  For some carved effects, Surform tools work very well, and can leave a pleasing texture not unlike wood grain.

Faceting and fluting are variations of carving, and can be used both on thrown and handbuilt form, and involve cutting or carving flat facets or curved flutes in the surface.  Faceting is most often done when the clay is still very soft, using a cutoff wire for smooth facets, or a twisted wire for textured facets.  Faceting may also be done at the leather hard stage using Surform tools.

Fluting can be done with a curved trimming tool, using two fingers on either side of the tool to control depth of cut.  If you are serious about doing lots of fluting, you may wish to make some fluting tools as described on page 293 in the text.  Broad flutes may also be cut with a curved Surform tool.

When planning to do either faceting or fluting, be sure to build or throw your clay form with walls thick enough to allow for the depth of your facets or flutes. 

Piercing involves cutting through the walls of a form, creating openings into the interior space.  This is a technique that drastically changes the character of the entire piece, since we have particular ways of interpreting exterior versus interior space.  Piercing is obviously of limited use in utilitarian vessels, except in double-wall forms.  In figurative work, piercing creates very specific meaning having to do with surface versus interior, in essence accessing the soul of the piece.  The power of such pierced decoration is evident in clay masks, and in Japanese Haniwa tomb figures. 

Chipping is a technique not often used on clay, but it can be employed to great advantage on bone-dry clay for creating effects that look like chip-carved stone.  It is often used in conjunction with deep incising, where the clay is chipped along one edge of the incised lines.  A needle tool works well for both the incising and the chipping.

Scraping, and sanding are useful in developing layered or distressed slip surfaces, and scraping can be employed whenever a gritty or stone-like texture is desired.  A metal rib works well for scraping, and for detail work, use single-edge razor blades.  For sanding clay, drywall mesh sandpaper works best. 

Additive Decoration
Additive decoration includes methods where clay is applied to the surface.  In the most common type of additive decoration clay is attached and modeled to create variations in surface relief. 

Sprigging refers to the process of decorating with sprigs, small rolls and balls of clay.  The sprigs are attached to the surface with slip or slurry to create pattern or imagery, and generally decoration.  Occasionally, clay pieces are molded, impressed or carved separately and then affixed to the surface as appliqués. 

Appliqués can be made individually, but a more efficient method is to create plaster molds of your appliqués.  Carve, model, or impress clay to form the originals, stick them down to a flat surface like a Formica table top, build clay or wood forms around them, apply a thin layer of hand soap, and pour plaster into the form.  You can create a single plaster mold with dozens of different appliqué impressions.  Once the plaster is dry, simply press clay into any of the impressions to create an appliqué that can be adhered to the surface of a soft-leather-hard piece.

What to Do?
There are two parts to this assignment.

Part One - Roll out a supply of clay slabs 3/8 to 1/2 thick, and cut them into 4" by 4" tiles, producing at least 36 tiles.  Explore variations in surface markmaking at different stages from wet to bone dry, using all three of the categories identified above.  Do not try to develop specific narrative imagery - just create simple little abstract compositions or plain fields of relief pattern and/or texture.  Cover the whole top surface of the tile with marks, texture, or pattern.  Your results should show a broad exploration of markmaking to develop a vocabulary of pattern and texture.  The primary objective is to strive for significant enrichment and activation of surface through markmaking.  Don’t settle for any surfaces that just seem “blah.”  Strive for surfaces that attract the viewer’s attention. 

We will bisque-fire these pieces and discuss the raw surface effects in a critique, but then set them aside until after mid-semester break, at which time we will use them for experiments with engobes, patinas, and glazes.

Part Two - As you are working on your tiles, also make at least two dozen new bisque stamps and rollers, including a variety of types of rollers (wheel, palm, and sphere).  Essentially, all of the methods described above can be used to create pattern or texture on bisque stamps and rollers - modeling, impressing, carving, incising, piercing, faceting, fluting, sprigging, appliqué, etc.  In making your stamps, use as many of those methods as possible.  The tile project and the bisque stamp project will cross-feed.  You might use some of your relief tiles to impress patterns on bisque stamps and rollers, and you might use some of your bisque stamps and rollers to impress patterns on tiles.  Read about bisque stamps and rollers in your text, and make at least two dozen, including bisque stamps and a variety of types of rollers.  As with the tiles, go for variety of effect, utilizing a range of methods mentioned above from all three categories of relief decoration. 

Complete the relief tiles and bisque stamps/rollers within the next three weeks so that we can move on to slip techniques.