How to Make a Freeform Handbuilt Serving Tray with a Faux Foot Unconventional methods to make trays and platters with faux feet! Gail Kendall

Gail Kendall has a fantastic ability to manipulate clay that seems too soft to form with. Time and time again during the filming of her video  From Plate to Tureen: Slab and Coil Building, I thought to myself "there's no way that is going to work!" But time and time again, Gail pulled off what I thought was impossible!

In this video, Gail demonstrates the unconventional method she uses to make handbuilt serving trays and platters with what she calls faux feet using soft slabs. I love the low-tech simplicity of this method—all you need is a slab, a coil, and your hands (plus lots of practice to make it work with such soft clay). - Jennifer Poellot Harnetty, editor

This clip was excerpted from From Plate to Tureen: Slab and Coil Building, which is in the Ceramic Arts Network Shop!

Also available as a download! Click here to learn more!

More on Soft Slab Pottery

If you have caught the slab pottery bug, you’ve come to the right place for inspiration! To get you started, check out this article by Daryl Baird on using slump molds with soft slabs! Liz Zlot Summerfield is also an excellent resource for slab building techniques. Birdie Boone works with super thin slabs to make her ultra light slab pottery. Check out this video on how to use a slump mold to make a platter as an example. If you have trouble controlling your soft slabs when hand building, you could try Lisa Pedolsky’s technique of using tar paper as a support. This technique enables Lisa to work on her forms at various stages of dryness and get great results. There’s more than one way to work with slabs. Try various techniques for your slab pottery and find the one that works for you!

**First published in 2014.