Beyond the basic form of pottery, we potters also have the wonderful ability to change the clay's surface. Basic decorative techniques fall into three basic areas: changing the texture of the clay itself, changing the color of the surface of the clay, and glazing the pottery.
Surface techniques include:
- impressing your clay with found objects, stamps, cloth, and so forth;
- cutting your clay, such as doing fluting, faceting, incising, or carving;
- burnishing your clay to a soft, buttery surface.
Coloring the clay can be accomplished with stains, underglazes, and slips (in which group I also include engobes, for those more advanced potters reading this). You can apply these coloring agents when the clay is still green (unfired) on after it has been bisqued.
- Stains are coloring oxides suspended in water. They can be used either on their own as a wash, almost like watercolor, or they can be added to clay slurry to make a colored slip.
- Most commercially made underglazes can be used the same way as slips (most of them are technically engobes, anyway).
- Slips have thickness as well as color, which can be used (if desired) to add surface texture as well as color. There are a number of ways to decorate pottery with slip, which you can find in Slip Decorating 1 and Slip Decorating 2.
Pottery glaze is a type of glass that is especially formulated to fit the ceramic body it is attached to, without sliding off vertical surfaces. To understand the basics of glazes will help you as you decide what glaze to use on your pottery. The single most important part of this decision is to match the glaze and the clay body, so both mature at the same temperature. Take time to discover how to chose the right glaze for your clay and your particular style. Some of this will require experimentation, even working within the guidelines given. But the results can be well worth the patience and effort of trying different glazes and glazing methods.
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