Experimentation in Clay

NAILS IN CLAY

CERAMICS I

clay, nails, oxides and glaze

Beginning clay student Priya Shah loves pushing the boundaries. 

And one of hr favorite things to do with her projects is insert various metals (findings from the hardware store) into her pieces.  

In this trail work she was experimenting with steel nails and what would happen to the clay when it was fired. 

What she found was that the clay shrinks as it dries, it shrinks more when it goes thru the first bisque firing, and then it shrinks even more as it is glaze fired.

The result was an interesting cracking of the clay reveling the metal inside.