Making Ceramic Molds

Ceramic mold making opens up endless potential for creative expression. Not only does ceramic mold making enable you to repeat a form over and over again, it also makes individual forms lose their preciousness, which frees you up to experiment more! Making your own custom ceramic molds will help you break out of your comfort zone in the studio and grow as an artist.

Here, you’ll learn how to make ceramic molds, as well as how to use them. Browse through our videos to find a variety of techniques from making plaster molds for slip casting and press molding, to making bisque clay hump or slump molds to creating molds for casting clay sculpture. Looking for a ceramic slip recipe for  slip casting, you’ll find recipes to try here!

Dive in to the world of mold making with Guy Michael Davis. He discusses and demonstrates the fundamentals of mold making and slip casting, as well as the principles for making single and multi-part molds. Are you more interested in using molds as ornamentation? Well, Kate Maury is your gal to watch! Kate uses sprigs in non-traditional ways to piece together intricate compositions. Sometimes the sprigs are the structure of her forms, other times they’re pure decoration. Not a fan of plaster in the studio? No problem! Marty Fielding uses low-tech foam molds to build his architecturally inspired forms. Still not convinced? Kari Radasch even uses a 5-gallon bucket to make a soft-curved bisque mold. Ceramic mold making is not as difficult as you might imagine. Once you have learned how to mix plaster and pour a plaster mold, you’ll see it’s really not too bad. And there are a whole slew of other ways to make molds for pottery. Browse through our videos and you’ll be surprised at what you find.!