How to Use Slips of Varying Thickness to Create Texture How to Use Slips of Varying Thickness to Create Texture Lisa Naples

There are lots of ways to create texture on pottery, the most obvious being stamping the malleable surface. However, you can make beautiful and random textures with decorating slips and various slip techniques. If you build up enough layers of slip with varying thicknesses, you can create interesting textures. 

 Lisa Naples creates beautiful random texture on her work with slips of varying consistencies. In today's post, an excerpt from our compilation DVD Handbuilding: Texture and Surface, she demonstrates how her thin, thick, and thicker slips can build up different textures creating lovely surfaces.- Jennifer Poellot Harnetty, editor

This clip was excerpted from Handbuilding: Texture and Surface, which is available in the Ceramic Arts Network Shop!

View a clip from Lisa's full-length video Flat to Functional: Handbuilding and Slip Decorating here!

To learn more about Lisa Naples or to see more images of her work, please visit www.lisanaples.com.

More Slip Techniques

Slip Trailing

Slip trailing is a great way to use clay slip as a decorative tool. Like its cousin glaze trailing, slip trailing applies material in lines using a slip trailer or other applicator. The big difference is that this ceramic decorating technique not only adds lines and patterns, but it also creates a raised surface texture that adds tactility to the decoration.

Decorating with Slips and Engobes

Slips, engobes, and underglazes are a lot of fun to use for ceramic decoration and there are endless ways to use them. In this post, the late Robin Hopper explains how to decorate with slips and engobes. With these techniques, you can achieve many different types of surface decorations and patterns in a short period of time.

Pottery Slip Decoration That Creates Texture

Chris Lively applies thick slips to his leather-hard pots and then uses various tools to sculpt and shape it—much like a pastry chef would work with icing. In this post, Chris explains one of his favorite ways to create this slip decoration.

**First published in 2014.