A TINY TOUCH OF COLOR ADDS SO MUCH

STACKED PIGMENTED PORCELAIN

CERAMICS II

porcelain clay, oxides & glaze

This project is all about surface design for my second year students.

They take our oxides and wedge them into pieces of plastic porcelain clay.

Required are two different colorways.

Then they roll them out into thin strips, 

cut & stack , 

and cut and stack some more until they get a cool design.

And that only the beginning,

or shall we we say Part I.

If you need a visual, 

look thru a Polymer Clay book for various ideas.

Only one slab piece was required,

 but superstar senior Celeste Zambrano created two.

In Part II,

the kids take super thin, sharp knife blades,

and cut off several thin slices of their designs,

and lay those down on their boards.

Then a large piece of white porcelain is rolled overtop these thin slices; 

thus these sweet little designs are inlaid onto a white base foundation.

Senior Efrain Quintero took a bit of a detour.

He chose a very elegant and simple arrangement.

You must look closely to see his two different colorways.

Love how he peeled the layers back along the lip area.

In Part III,

the students are required to build a slab construction with this large foundation.

Celeste made two very pretty lidded containers,

Efrain the lovely vase,

 and  below senior Sandhya Raghvan,

a very cool slab footed bowl.

Sorry Sandhya that the pix wasn't better.

And one more beauty by senior Klyne Magahag.

Unfortunately,

Klyne experienced a bit of cracking during the firing

which sometimes happens when working with a slab this large.

How to prevent cracks?

When plastic try not to stress the clay as you are rolling it out.