Quick Tip: Sponge Brush as Palette and Cleanup Tool E. Preston Rice

Appears in the September 2018 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

I was recently working on a project that needed accented, inlaid lettering, as well as lettering brushed over top of slip using a commercial stain. Using a #1 and a #0 brush, I worked on a piece of bisqueware to practice. After trying unsuccessfully to paint neatly with a somewhat overloaded brush (1), I decided to unload some glaze from the brush by wiping it off onto a sponge, but it was too porous. I tried a sponge brush instead, and found that it worked well (2). I then removed a step by loading the sponge brush directly from the stain container and then loading my brush from that (3). This worked quite well, and with some practice, I was able to add the lettering to the pot.

The brush stroke in image 4 that is closest to the engraved numbers was made with an overloaded brush dipped into the jar of stain. The stroke to the right of that was made with a brush that has been loaded in the jar and then unloaded on the sponge brush. The next single stroke and the partial number 3 were made with the brush loaded from a sponge brush that has been dipped in the stain (4).

A sponge brush also works quite well to clean galleries of lids and pots. The hard handle that supports the sponge is firm enough to apply pressure to remove glaze from the gallery’s square corner (5).