One day, while hunched over on hour three of painstakingly slip-trailing the intricate skeletal structure of a snake onto a coil vessel, I looked over at my studio mate, to see him expressively coiling and pinching with glee. At that moment, it struck me that I envied the way he was able to engage his body and work intuitively. I suddenly felt trapped by my process, which required me to be in contorted, gargoyle-like positions for long hours at a time, working toward a predetermined result. That was the last project I ever slip-trailed.
Abandoning my primary technique, I began a maker’s inquiry into a new center of gravity. My studio practice has always been process focused, and I appreciate ways of making that require my full attention, subsequently generating the elusive “flow state.” Following some advice I received from other creatives, I re-entered my studio with “notice what you notice” as my guiding principle. Turning my attention to coil pots, a process I knew I enjoyed, I noticed I was intrigued by the patterns my pinch marks were making. Rather than smoothing over the marks, I began emphasizing them by rhythmically pinching over and over my initial pattern. And thus my current process was born. I found within this method of coiling and pinching the same intricacy and ornament I enjoyed in slip-trailing, but with a physical engagement that was both more satisfying and more sustainable. Though the processes seem at odds, the patterns that emerge through pinching remind me of the skeletal structures I used to slip trail, and I enjoy seeing the through lines in otherwise disparate methods of working.
Perhaps the moral of this anecdotal introduction is that if you’re not enjoying the process, change it. As makers, we often get stuck producing particular kinds of work and feel we have to continue making that work even if we don’t want to because there’s a market for it, or because we may lose part of our identity as artists. But I think artists should be fearlessly pivoting when it feels necessary. Don’t be afraid to scrap it all and return to square one. Inevitably, there will always be threads of connection in the web of your practice, and diversifying this web only makes your creative ecosystem more alive.
Translucent Porcelain
Handbuilding with porcelain? It is hard. But not that hard if you give your material the attention it demands. I love porcelain, how it feels, how it captures infinitesimal details, and how it challenges you at every turn. Porcelain is like the cat of the clay world—it knows how it wants to be touched, and if you do it wrong, it will let you know. Learning to respect its boundaries and collaborate with the material rather than exerting your own will can be incredibly rewarding.
Porcelain was an inevitable next step in my exploration of coiling and pinching. Light shining through translucent forms revealed even more depth within their patterns, and the color and texture of porcelain mimics the physicality of bone. For this process, it is best to use a porcelain that has high translucency.
Prepping Materials
To begin, start by preparing several coils with even widths. I prefer this because it allows me to stay in the flow of making and keeps the coils consistent—the resulting works are more cohesive than when I have to stop and start. It is best to have the hardware for your lampshade before you start making, so that you can reference it to determine the size of your base. The base will become the “top” of the lamp where the hardware is inserted; if the base is too large it may look out of proportion with your hardware.
Coiling
Take an appropriately sized ball of clay and smoosh it into the center of a banding wheel, pounding the ball with the base of your palm until it is flattened and securely attached to the wheel head. Using a sharp tool, trim the excess until it is a relatively perfect circle. Your base should be about ½ inch (1.3 cm) thick and evenly compressed from center to edge (1). Score the outer edge of your base with a scoring tool that can make deep score marks, then measure the circumference of your base and cut one of your prepared coils to that length (2).
Flatten the coil with the base of your palm, making one side narrower to create a wedge shape. Turn the coil on edge with the wider side on the table, and gently tap to make it flat. Flip your coil over again and score the flat wide side, this side will attach to your base and the excess clay will be used to pull into the base. Wet both the scored base and the edge of your scored coil with a brush, then score again to create a slip. Firmly push your coil onto the base, cut any excess (3), score and slip, then attach the two ends together. Ideally, slip should be spilling out from your connection points. Follow up with a small coil to reinforce the joint (4), and then push and smooth everything together (5). Take your time pulling clay up from the base into the coil and down from the coil into the base, creating a zipper-like effect.
Pinching
Once smooth, pinch rhythmically and expressively around the coil. As you pinch, notice the patterns that emerge, and emphasize them. Compression is important here, both for the strength of the final work and for creating very thin areas for maximum translucency (6). When you’re happy with your pattern, torch the inside and outside of the vessel until it is just under leather-hard, or set up enough that it will not collapse under the weight of the next coil. In my experience, this step is key to effectively coiling with porcelain.
Level off the top of your coil with a sharp knife before adding the next (7). Repeat these steps until you are finished with your vessel, focusing on scoring and slipping, and making thorough connections between your coils, smoothing completely before pinching. Attaching and preparing each coil before pinching takes the bulk of the time in this process; the pinching itself goes fairly quickly (8–10).
Shrinkage, Drying, and Firing
Now that you have your finished lampshade (11), it needs to slowly dry to leather hard before you can flip it over and cut a hole in the base for your hardware. I keep a plastic bag loosely draped over the work for 24–48 hours before removing it from the banding wheel, flipping it onto foam, and carving the opening.
To calculate the size of the opening accounting for shrinkage, first trace the circumference of your hardware on a piece of paper (12). Measure the circumference with a soft measuring tape, multiply by the shrinkage rate of your clay, then add that number to your circumference. This gives you the circumference of the hole for your lampshade (13). Most commercial clay manufacturers will know the average shrinkage rate for their clay bodies.
Using your piece of paper as a stencil, place it in the center of the base of your vessel and carve out the hole (14). This is where your pendant hardware will be inserted. Smooth and refine the cut hole to prep it for the electrical hanging hardware (15).
Handbuilt porcelain is sensitive to the drying process, and there’s a lot of variation in thickness in my pinched lampshades. To accommodate this, I wrap the works fully in plastic to equalize the moisture content throughout the piece. After about two days of being fully wrapped, I then allow them to dry completely while loosely draped in plastic. Once bone dry and room temperature to the touch, the lampshade is ready to be fired. In the case of the work in this article, I used Clay Art Center’s NZ6 porcelain, which has a lovely satin finish when vitrified, so I left the clay bare and once fired it to cone 6 in an electric kiln.
Grace Potter is an artist and educator based in Mendocino, California. She received her BFA in ceramics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has exhibited in galleries and museums both nationally and internationally, including the Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, California; Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the University of Colorado Art Museum. She has been awarded several residencies, including Township10, Marshall, North Carolina; and the Mendocino Art Center. She currently works as an instructor and ceramic technician for Mendocino College.
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One day, while hunched over on hour three of painstakingly slip-trailing the intricate skeletal structure of a snake onto a coil vessel, I looked over at my studio mate, to see him expressively coiling and pinching with glee. At that moment, it struck me that I envied the way he was able to engage his body and work intuitively. I suddenly felt trapped by my process, which required me to be in contorted, gargoyle-like positions for long hours at a time, working toward a predetermined result. That was the last project I ever slip-trailed.
Abandoning my primary technique, I began a maker’s inquiry into a new center of gravity. My studio practice has always been process focused, and I appreciate ways of making that require my full attention, subsequently generating the elusive “flow state.” Following some advice I received from other creatives, I re-entered my studio with “notice what you notice” as my guiding principle. Turning my attention to coil pots, a process I knew I enjoyed, I noticed I was intrigued by the patterns my pinch marks were making. Rather than smoothing over the marks, I began emphasizing them by rhythmically pinching over and over my initial pattern. And thus my current process was born. I found within this method of coiling and pinching the same intricacy and ornament I enjoyed in slip-trailing, but with a physical engagement that was both more satisfying and more sustainable. Though the processes seem at odds, the patterns that emerge through pinching remind me of the skeletal structures I used to slip trail, and I enjoy seeing the through lines in otherwise disparate methods of working.
Perhaps the moral of this anecdotal introduction is that if you’re not enjoying the process, change it. As makers, we often get stuck producing particular kinds of work and feel we have to continue making that work even if we don’t want to because there’s a market for it, or because we may lose part of our identity as artists. But I think artists should be fearlessly pivoting when it feels necessary. Don’t be afraid to scrap it all and return to square one. Inevitably, there will always be threads of connection in the web of your practice, and diversifying this web only makes your creative ecosystem more alive.
Translucent Porcelain
Handbuilding with porcelain? It is hard. But not that hard if you give your material the attention it demands. I love porcelain, how it feels, how it captures infinitesimal details, and how it challenges you at every turn. Porcelain is like the cat of the clay world—it knows how it wants to be touched, and if you do it wrong, it will let you know. Learning to respect its boundaries and collaborate with the material rather than exerting your own will can be incredibly rewarding.
Porcelain was an inevitable next step in my exploration of coiling and pinching. Light shining through translucent forms revealed even more depth within their patterns, and the color and texture of porcelain mimics the physicality of bone. For this process, it is best to use a porcelain that has high translucency.
Prepping Materials
To begin, start by preparing several coils with even widths. I prefer this because it allows me to stay in the flow of making and keeps the coils consistent—the resulting works are more cohesive than when I have to stop and start. It is best to have the hardware for your lampshade before you start making, so that you can reference it to determine the size of your base. The base will become the “top” of the lamp where the hardware is inserted; if the base is too large it may look out of proportion with your hardware.
Coiling
Take an appropriately sized ball of clay and smoosh it into the center of a banding wheel, pounding the ball with the base of your palm until it is flattened and securely attached to the wheel head. Using a sharp tool, trim the excess until it is a relatively perfect circle. Your base should be about ½ inch (1.3 cm) thick and evenly compressed from center to edge (1). Score the outer edge of your base with a scoring tool that can make deep score marks, then measure the circumference of your base and cut one of your prepared coils to that length (2).
Flatten the coil with the base of your palm, making one side narrower to create a wedge shape. Turn the coil on edge with the wider side on the table, and gently tap to make it flat. Flip your coil over again and score the flat wide side, this side will attach to your base and the excess clay will be used to pull into the base. Wet both the scored base and the edge of your scored coil with a brush, then score again to create a slip. Firmly push your coil onto the base, cut any excess (3), score and slip, then attach the two ends together. Ideally, slip should be spilling out from your connection points. Follow up with a small coil to reinforce the joint (4), and then push and smooth everything together (5). Take your time pulling clay up from the base into the coil and down from the coil into the base, creating a zipper-like effect.
Pinching
Once smooth, pinch rhythmically and expressively around the coil. As you pinch, notice the patterns that emerge, and emphasize them. Compression is important here, both for the strength of the final work and for creating very thin areas for maximum translucency (6). When you’re happy with your pattern, torch the inside and outside of the vessel until it is just under leather-hard, or set up enough that it will not collapse under the weight of the next coil. In my experience, this step is key to effectively coiling with porcelain.
Level off the top of your coil with a sharp knife before adding the next (7). Repeat these steps until you are finished with your vessel, focusing on scoring and slipping, and making thorough connections between your coils, smoothing completely before pinching. Attaching and preparing each coil before pinching takes the bulk of the time in this process; the pinching itself goes fairly quickly (8–10).
Shrinkage, Drying, and Firing
Now that you have your finished lampshade (11), it needs to slowly dry to leather hard before you can flip it over and cut a hole in the base for your hardware. I keep a plastic bag loosely draped over the work for 24–48 hours before removing it from the banding wheel, flipping it onto foam, and carving the opening.
To calculate the size of the opening accounting for shrinkage, first trace the circumference of your hardware on a piece of paper (12). Measure the circumference with a soft measuring tape, multiply by the shrinkage rate of your clay, then add that number to your circumference. This gives you the circumference of the hole for your lampshade (13). Most commercial clay manufacturers will know the average shrinkage rate for their clay bodies.
Using your piece of paper as a stencil, place it in the center of the base of your vessel and carve out the hole (14). This is where your pendant hardware will be inserted. Smooth and refine the cut hole to prep it for the electrical hanging hardware (15).
Handbuilt porcelain is sensitive to the drying process, and there’s a lot of variation in thickness in my pinched lampshades. To accommodate this, I wrap the works fully in plastic to equalize the moisture content throughout the piece. After about two days of being fully wrapped, I then allow them to dry completely while loosely draped in plastic. Once bone dry and room temperature to the touch, the lampshade is ready to be fired. In the case of the work in this article, I used Clay Art Center’s NZ6 porcelain, which has a lovely satin finish when vitrified, so I left the clay bare and once fired it to cone 6 in an electric kiln.
Grace Potter is an artist and educator based in Mendocino, California. She received her BFA in ceramics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has exhibited in galleries and museums both nationally and internationally, including the Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, California; Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the University of Colorado Art Museum. She has been awarded several residencies, including Township10, Marshall, North Carolina; and the Mendocino Art Center. She currently works as an instructor and ceramic technician for Mendocino College.
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