Using Slab Coils to Build Sculptural Forms Lucy Baxendale

Lucy Baxendale makes beautiful, intricately detailed sculpture out of porcelain. She explains, "Once I start making a sculpture, everything else goes out of the window ... Often I am so involved in the making process I will forget to do the most basic things, like eating. It’s an obsessive process but I love completely immersing myself in it.”

If this passion and dedication sounds familiar, you'll love today's post! In this step-by-step excerpt from the February 2025 issue of Ceramics Monthly, Lucy shares her unique process for building sculptural forms using slab coils. From rolling and flattening coils to assembling and refining details, you can follow along to discover how she brings her drawings to life in clay. –Jennifer Poellot Harnetty, editor

PS. To learn more about Lucy Baxendale's artistic influence, read this article in the February 2025 issue of Ceramics Monthly. Not a subscriber? Subscribe today!

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Building Sculptural Forms

My sculptures are directly inspired by the shapes that present themselves in my drawings. The process begins with a form created in porcelain using free-standing flat coils or by slab building around newspaper. All details are sculpted using predominately my hands and joined using just water. I carve drawn elements directly into the clay using a needle tool. 

Begin by taking a block of clay, then squeezing and rolling it into a coil. Tap the coil flat with your hands or a rolling pin (1). Pick this flat coil up and slam it against the table on each side a couple of times, flattening the edge to make it easier to join pieces together. This step also helps to spread the clay further in each slab. Compress the clay lightly with a rubber kidney rib. Turn the coil on its side and place it upright in the desired shape (2) on a wareboard. Use your fingers to compress the first coils to your board, making them a sturdy base for the slabs that will later be placed on top of them. 

Join the slabs by resting one on top of the other, and pulling one side of the clay upward while simultaneously pushing the other side downward. I recommend applying pressure across this join with a rubber kidney rib (3) to make sure they are well connected. It’s important to create interior slabs that will support your form (4), especially if you decide to use porcelain as it tends to slump during the firing process. Allow time for each layer to become leather hard so that it can support weight on top of it. 

Once the base form is established, add details to the lower sections of the sculpture and add as you work upward. I make leaf-shaped details and adornments and use a needle tool to refine and texturize them (5–7) before attaching them to the form with water (8). Other details like facial features, arms, hands, and florals can be added in the same way (9).