Decorating Pottery

• Brushwork is dipping a brush into slip – a liquid mixture of clay and water – containing a pigment, such as the rust-red of iron oxide, color can be applied to the surface of the pot to contrast with the raw clay or an underglaze.
• Combing is a technique that involves making parallel lines on the surface of a pot, either by dragging a tool through the clay itself or by wiping wet slip clear to reveal the clay surface beneath.
• Finger swiping is similar to combing but far looser in appearance, potters often use their own hands to drag through wet slip as a form of decoration.
• Faceting is the process of cutting away strips of a pot’s surface with knives, razors or coiled wire tools and can be carried out either when the clay has dried leather-hard or when it is still wet on the wheel.
• Hakeme is practiced in Japanese ceramics, white slip is carefully applied to the surface of a pot with a dry straw brush, the potter often taking care to keep the gestures of his brushstrokes visible in the slip surface by allowing the clay beneath to peek through gaps between the marks made by the straw bristles.
• Impressing also termed ‘stamping’ or ‘embossing’, it is simply the use of an object or tool pushed into the surface of a pot to leave a relief design in the clay. Usually performed when the clay has dried to leather-hard.
• Paddling is a form of ‘impressing’, it involves the use of wooden boards or paddles with inscribed patterns to decorate a raw clay surface.
• Slip trailing is the application of slip to a pot surface to make a pattern or image. Unlike brushwork where the slip is painted on, this incorporates dispensers to ‘dribble’ slip onto the clay
• Wax Resist refers to the process of using wax emulsion or melted wax to create patterns on ceramics.
• Wax resist can also be used to slow the drying of leather-hard ware.
• In Wax Resist, the wax is painted onto an unfired piece to keep those pattern areas from being covered in slip or glaze. The piece is then painted with slip or glaze and fired. The firing melts the wax and reveals the pattern beneath.