Cecily's Techniques: Sprigging

This month's post on sprigging completes the series on traditional decorative techniques using carving or incising in one of their steps. Whenever I think of sprigging Josiah Wedgwood's famous Jasper Ware comes immediately to mind. Born in July of 1730, he started a pottery that is still in operation to this day in England and that still uses the designs, clays and techniques that he pioneered.

Up until May 1967 Wedgwood was still a private company in the hands of the original family. It was chaired by five successive generations of Wedgwoods. Now it is a group of companies with 20 factories and accounts for approximately one fifth of England's ceramic tableware and a quarter of its exported ceramics.  (The Story of Wedgwood compiled by Alison Kelly in association with Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd.; Faber & Faber London 1975. Another book fully describing techniques and processes for producing the ware, The Making of Wedgwood may be obtained from Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd., Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent. Or at least it could in 1975.)

He invented and produced colored, vitreous fine stoneware bodies which he then used as a ground for white, neo-classical, bas relief designs. His blue body is so famous that it is simply known as Wedgwood blue. I think you can see the incredible detail that is achieved from the cameo above which was probably built up from several sprig molds. This piece and many more like it may be seen at this link.

 My understanding of the process is that a white clay is poured or pressed into shallow molds. The sprigs thus molded are then applied to the contrasting colored clay of a pot, medallion or cameo. This, at least, was the method I used.  I reversed what Josiah Wedgwood did by using colored clay sprigs on a white background.

I carved two very simple designs directly into some cameo blanks for lack of time to make and bisque a positive image first and then take a mold of it.  I made sure to produce rather shallow designs so that they would not stick out too far. But I also made them solid so that they could be handled easily.

I used two different methods to transfer the design to the finished cameo blank. In the first I press-molded colored porcelain in the flower mold, scraped it flush, moistened it with vinegar and then pressed the leather hard cameo blank on top of it. The blank easily lifted the molded flower out of its bisque bed.

The second way that I transferred the design was with the simple expedient of tapping the sprig out of the bisque mold first and picking it up and applying it with vinegar to the blank. This is the way that the above piece was made. The second method made it easier to position disparate elements from separate bisque molds. The first method made it easier to remove narrow or delicate parts from the bisque mold.

An even easier method of obtaining sprigs was used with the grape leaf and grapes pendant at the top of this post. I plucked tiny grape leaves from my grape vine and pressed them into a thin slab of green porcelain. After cutting out around them I applied them to the pendant blank.

As usual I will be uploading the photographs of the Kiln Opening that these pendants came out of to my facebook page as soon as possible. And the individual pendants will more than likely pop up in my etsy shop, Porcelain Jazz,  in the next few weeks as well.

Hope this helps spark some of your own explorations and design ideas.  Convo me on Etsy or leave a comment on my facebook page if you would like for me to reply. Thank you for any comments left here as they act as an addition to the post itself.

Cecily's Techniques: Mishima

Since we seem to be doing decorative techniques involving scratching and carving here of late I thought I would go ahead and continue the thought so to speak and do this post over the technique called mishima.  

The mishima technique is almost a reverse of sgraffito.  The piece of pottery, or a bead in our case, is first built. Then a design is carved into the leather hard clay.  Very delicate lines can be used if so desired as can larger voids allowing for a great deal of contrast in simply the linear quality of the design.  The lines are then normally filled with slips whose colors contrast dramatically with the clay body of the pot or bead. 

When I did the sample pieces for this post I used the under-glazes that I had tested and shared with you all previously since I already knew what the colors would look like on my clay body and at the temperatures I fire to.  I made some more oval porcelain pendant blanks and added their hangers.  I used only plain white porcelain.  I made five pendants in all.  But two of them had glaze problems.

I carved and pressed designs into all of the pendants. On two I even imprinted a small lace butterfly to see if a fairly shallow imprint would work. I allowed them to harden past leather hard. And then I worked and pushed the various colors of under-glaze into the cracks, crannies and crevices of the designs.  After they dried stiff but still moist, I scraped the excess under-glaze off flush with the clay beneath. More under-glaze may be added at this time if a void is discovered while scraping.

Notice on the 'Wildflowers in the Grass' design (a pink and aqua one) how very fine the flower and grass stem lines are.  Also notice how crisp and hard edged the designs are.  Both of these attributes are characteristic of mishima. This would have been even truer of slip rather than under-glaze because many of the under-glazes fired to cone 9 turn into glazes and begin to flow blurring the lines just a bit. 

Also, even though I scraped the under-glazes flush with the clay body, they shrank when fired leaving an easily felt indentation wherever there was a leaf or petal. (This would not have occurred with slips.) Air bubbles also became apparent in the navy blue flowers in the brightly colored pendant.  So that under-glaze really needed to have been poked down in there. This, from what I have read, is also a problem with slip applications. Next time I won't make the indentations quite so deep either.

And the little lace butterfly also worked opening up another host of possibilities in imprinted designs.  Overall this is a very good jewelry technique because it allows the bead maker to work with very delicate, fine lined, miniaturized designs that can be very brightly colored.

As usual I will be uploading the photographs of the Kiln Opening that these pendants came out of to my facebook page as soon as possible. Also I will upload a how to series of photographs with commentary on the mishima technique to my facebook page in the near future. And the individual pendants will more than likely pop up in my etsy shop, Porcelain Jazz,  in the next few weeks as well.

Hope this helps spark some of your own explorations and design ideas.  Convo me from my Etsy shop or leave a comment on my facebook page if you would like for me to reply. Thank you for any comments left here as they act as an addition to the post itself.

Cecily's Clay Techniques: Sgraffito

Written by Cecily of Porcelain Jazz

This post is about two types of sgraffito techniques. 

The most common way to work with sgraffito is to coat a leather hard clay object (in our case this will be a bead of some kind) with a contrasting colored slip, engobe or under-glaze. 

When one carves back through the under-glaze into the clay beneath a contrasting line will be produced. 

 Remember those scratch board exercises we used to have to do in art classes to prepare us to work with etching and wood block carving in printmaking? This has essentially the same kind of thinking to it.

Some variations on this simple technique can produce rich and complex results. For example what about using several types of line tools to produce different thicknesses and qualities of line. This is the time to pull out all of your needle, ribbon loop and wire loop tools and experiment with the marks that they make.

On quite a few of the beads shown here the petals, leaves and stems are all carved using varying thicknesses of line to produce different flowers. I make petals or simple leaves by pulling up sharply on a stroke to make a tear drop shaped cavity. On the other hand a stem is produced by running a straight, rapid, even stroke in the direction needed. If you go too slowly the line will wobble.

Another aspect of this technique that one might play around with is the color of the clay underneath (aha another way to work with colored clay!) perhaps even marbling it before coating it with under-glaze. One might also come back in and add additional bits of contrasting colored clay to further clarify and enhance a design as the work continues. The grouping of three yellow, aqua and red pendants show some of these experiments in line and color.

Or what about blocking out the various elements of your design with different colors of under-glaze and then using your line work for the details. Another group which I call tree hugger pendants show branches and leaves as blocks of under-glaze with the details etched on top of the under-glaze. I'm not as excited about these as the others. I think I'm going to re-fire them with some additions to add more contrast and focus to the design.

I said two different types of sgraffito so here is another way to tackle this design technique.

I rolled out layers of very thin colored clay. Then I sandwich them together with vinegar. I rolled them some more with the rolling pin to adherer the layers and further thin each layer. And finally I carved my design back through the various layers exposing various colors depending on how deeply I cut. 

This look is chunkier and even more tactile than the previous one since the cuts have to go considerably deeper. I like the results a great deal. Though I am sure some of that comes from the bright colors and high contrast in the group of four pendants in aqua and golden yellow with green and white flowers.

Overall I think this is a technique I'm going to continue to play around with. 

 As usual I will be uploading both a How To do Sgraffito... album and a Kiln Unloading album to my facebook page within the next few days. 

Also some of these pendant beads will begin appearing in my Etsy shop listings almost immediately.

Cecily's Techniques: Button Making

I was sitting with my work at a show last Thursday and noticed some clay buttons on one of the other lady's hand crocheted hoods and from there we began talking. The upshot of the conversation was the beginnings of a trade: porcelain buttons for a hand crocheted hat and scarf. So later on I went into the studio and whipped up a batch of porcelain buttons. As I worked I became curious about the prevalence of button makers on Etsy. So I later typed 'porcelain buttons' into the search bar. Only three shops popped up. Joan Miller's Button Bliss and Raquel Masri's The Mosaic Shop had some lovely buttons in them. The third shop had no buttons that I could find. Rather taken aback at this paucity of buttons I typed in 'clay buttons' next. Seven shops popped up only two of which used earth fired clays (stoneware it appeared), the rest it seemed were polymer clay button makers. So now I'm wondering where the button makers are? It seems a natural fit with bead making since buttons just look like specialized beads to me. The tag 'stoneware buttons' brought up one more shop with porcelain buttons that were shanked. And finally the term 'shanked buttons' was entered bringing up a fabric and metal button maker. Either we have very few clay button makers on Etsy or I don't know what terms to enter.
From these questions it was only a short hop and a skip to thinking perhaps some button making techniques and tips might not be amiss in this blog. So here goes. Since one makes flat stamped buttons very much like pendants only with at least two evenly spaced holes in the middle of the flat sides rather than one at the top, making quick, clean holes becomes crucial to productivity. Because the button is flat and resting on a hard surface one of the easiest ways to put a quick set of holes in it is with a straw punching through to the table beneath. Once the holes are firmly established flip the button over and put the straw through from the backside to clean up the edges. This is faster than sponging the edges when the button is dry. Though you will still have to take the sharpness off of the edges of the button once it is dry with a quick sponging. Straws of various diameters can be obtained from different drink purveyors. For example milk shake straws are very wide. But my favorite diameter straws for buttons are used for stirring hot coffee or tea. They have a very small diameter that is just perfect for button holes.
All of our use of texture, stamps, press molds and colored clays and glazes come into play when making buttons just as they do with making beads. But what if the design you are working on for your button would be ruined by punching a set of holes through its middle? Well in that case the answer is to put a shank on the back of the button. I only found two Etsy stores out of 11 that made shanked, fired clay buttons: Joan Miller's Button Bliss and palominoblue. Most of the pictures in this blog are of the process of shanking a button (at least the way I do it).
To shank a set of buttons roll out a coil of clay. Cut it into enough equal portions so that each button has a similar sized ball of clay. Flatten the ball between your fingers, gently. Then flatten one end of the resulting disc. Attach with slip/vinegar the flattened end of the disc to the back of your button. Punch (with a straw) or twist (with a skewer) a hole through the middle of the disc attached to the back of the button. (Don't forget to clean up the backside of your hole.) Voila, you now have a shanked button.
Another reason for using a shanked button, besides that of aesthetics, is the need, at times, to remove the buttons on a garment to make it possible to dry clean or machine wash the garment. Fired clay buttons rarely take well to being clanged around in a washing machine. So a cloth garment will have eyelet holes worked in the front facing through which the shank will fit. A metal pin is then placed through the button's shank hole fastening the button to the material. Remove the pin and the button comes off of the garment. I've seen both cotter pins and safety pins used for this purpose. The whole idea is rather similar to cuff links.

Hope this all helps to spark an idea or two or perhaps another line of beads for you all. As usual my facebook page http://www.facebook/porcelain.jazz.com will have an album of "How to Make Buttons" pictures as soon as I can get it done. Here are the links to some of the button shops I found:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/ButtonBliss

http://www.etsy.com/shop/LisaPetersArt

Using Colored Clays

In my last blog post I said I would give you all some pointers on making and using colored clays in this post so here we go. Above can be seen two bead sets made from colored clays. In the petal set the clays were stacked in thin sheets to form a block which was then cut across the colors to give small slabs striped in colored clays. Petals were pinched from these slabs. The color, therefore, goes all the way through the petal. In the coral and shells pendant the colored clays were inlaid on a white background. I will show picture sequences of these techniques on my facebook page once I get the pictures made.
I don't know how many of you out there can actually mix your own clays and glazes from powder and how many need to know how to add colorant to moist clays so I'll give some techniques for both. Actual recipes will be shown at the bottom of this post.
I usually use a high fire (cone 9-11) porcelain body for all of my bead work. I use Mason Stains that are rated as body stains to color the clay because a formulated stain, though more expensive than a raw oxide, is more stable and reliable. Mason Stains are all numbered and named so that is how they are shown in the recipes. Should you want to order some stains refer to them also by number in your order.
The way that the colored clays I am using right now were made was I took soft, moist clay and weighed out 3 to 5 pound batches. I wedged each batch into a ball, made a cavity in the middle of the ball of clay, poured the powdered mason stain into the cavity, added enough water to make a paste of the powder, closed up the cavity and proceeded to wedge the colorant into the clay. I have found this to be a quick and easy method of producing small batches of a lot of colors quickly.
If you want to mix large batches (say 100 pounds or more) of colored clays from powder, mix your base clay first from powder and then add your colorant still in the powdered state. Then mix your clay body in your mixer as you usually would. I don't recommend smaller quantities because most clay mixers can't handle smaller quantities and if you mix the powdered clay method by hand it actually is more difficult and time consuming than the moist clay method of mixing small batches. I am not all that familiar with pugger/mixers. There might be some capable of handling the smaller batches just fine. However, if they are anything like the pugger I've used you will have to clean out the barrel between batches to keep from contaminating each clay color with the preceding color. (Please remember when using and working with powdered clay and glaze ingredients to use a respirator with a silica filter on it.) The 'moist' clay recipes are as follows:
For Pink add 1/4# MS6020 to 5 1/4# of moist porcelain.
For Vanadium Yellow add 1/4# MS6485 to 5# of moist porcelain.
For Teal add 1/4# MS6305 to 3# moist porcelain.
For Black add 1/4# MS6600 to 5# moist porcelain.

Since I originally mixed the colorants into the base clay in the moist state, I'm going to have to translate the 'moist' recipes into 'dry' ones. I thought that you all might like to see how I do this in order to check my math if nothing else. Moist, plastic clay is usually about 80% solids and 20% water. Therefore, 5 pounds of wet clay should have about 4 pounds of dry ingredients and 1 pound of water. (In order to find out what weight of water to add to a dry recipe add 25% of the dry weight of your powders in water. In other words 25% of 4 lbs equals 1 pound. And 4 pounds of powder plus 1 pound of water should give you 5 pounds of moist clay.) With the above in mind to find out how much colorant to add to powdered clay I used the following equation: .25/4.00 = N/100 Solve for N and it gives you 6.25 which can function as a percentage in a normal percentage style clay (or glaze) recipe. Here is my porcelain recipe. For each color wanted add only the percentage of dry powder for that color:
White/Grey Porcelain cone 9-11; Shrinkage 14.3%; Plasticity 7.8
Potash (Custer) Feldspar .................... 26
Kaolin ................................................ 41
Silica ................................................. 21
OM4 Ball Clay .................................. 10

Bentonite ........................................... 2
TOTAL ............................................ 100%
ADD ......
Pink MS6020 ..................................... 5.95%
Vanadium Yellow MS6485 ................. 6.25%
Teal MS6305......................................10.42%
Black MS6600 ................................... 6.25%
I keep my colored clays in plastic containers with their color sample beads wired to the lids. They keep moist for a good while and can be lightly sprayed with water every so often to help keep them so.
If you have any questions please contact me by means of Etsy or my web site contact sheet. Contact URLs follow:
http://www.porcelainjazz.com/contact-form.html
http://www.etsy.com/shop/PorcelainJazz?ref=si_shop

Cecily's Techniques: Making Bead Press Molds and Stamps

Making Bead Press Molds and Stamps



Stamps, rollettes, press molds, carved block printers, and found objects are all texturing tools that we use to add dimension, shape and tactility to our beads. Here in this blog post I’d like to concentrate on those texturing and dimensional tools that I tend to make for myself out of readily available materials.

There are several ways to produce stamps and press molds and several materials that they can be made from. Some of the materials include wood, linoleum, plaster and, of course, clay. The simplest ones to make are indented directly into soft clay. (Please take a look at the sequence of pictures to the left showing how this is done.) A fine grained clay like porcelain or whiteware is used because it captures details better and the resulting stamp or press mold is then bisqued (but not high fired). Leaving and using the tool in bisque means that the absorption of the bisque works for you by pulling water out of the clay pressed into or onto it thereby releasing it more easily.

Wood or linoleum blocks have to be carved into a design and while wood is absorptive and can be imprinted directly, linoleum is not and needs a releasing agent. I use a single ply of toilette paper tissue for this purpose. You will probably also find that after you have “pulled” several “prints” from your wood block that the wood will become saturated and will need to be allowed to dry before being used again. This can also happen with your clay stamps.

Plaster is usually poured around an original found object or original sculpted object. I’m not too keen on plaster in the clay studio in any form because I’ve had plaster get into my clay before and had to throw out a lot of clay that could have been reclaimed. Since that time I’ve found that the fine grained clays work just as well as plaster for small molds. Clay is stronger than plaster, therefore, a clay mold can be thinner and lighter than a plaster mold.

Soft clay can also be carefully pressed around an original found object or sculpted piece. The object is then carefully pried out of the clay while the clay is still pliable. The shell press molds shown in the picture below were made in this fashion. To help your object release from the molding material more easily use a releasing agent like WD-40 for plaster or a single ply of thin tissue paper (toilette paper works great!) for clay. Tissue paper as a releasing agent also works to release your duplicates from non-absorptive molds like those made from plastic, rubber or linoleum. The tissue paper burns off easily in the kiln making clean up a non-issue.

Whatever method you choose to use in making a stamp or press mold you need to make sure your design does not contain any undercuts that could cause the clay from your duplicate to get hung in the mold. The sides of your design should either go straight down or should slope outward, like the insides of a ‘U’ or a ‘V’. The back side of a ‘Z’ is a classic undercut, great for catching and tearing clay.

Contact me if you have any questions or get hung up trying to do this. If I can possibly help long distance I will. Hope this served as a refresher for those of you who are already well familiar with these techniques. Two of my Albums on my facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/porcelain.jazz) give additional information on using stamps and press molds.