The Potter's Craft: A Practical Guide for the Studio and Workshop

by Charles Fergus Binns

This cylindrical form may be made more interesting by the addition of little feet or handles; by a simple line border incised along the upper edge; or by dividing the surface into well-spaced panels. The planning of the cylinder itself is a good exercise in rectangle proportion.

In order to enable the pupils to turn their work from side to side each one should be provided with a piece of paper or cardboard the size of the base of the pottery. The building is started upon this and, managed in such a way, the clay does not stick to the table.

When the idea of pottery building, either by coils or by pieces welded together, has been grasped, the children should be taught to think in the solid. There is almost always a difficulty in making children see that an outline drawing and a solid form may be alike in meaning. The teacher should draw upon the blackboard a simple jar in elevation, the plan, of course, will be a circle. The same thing is then made in clay by both teacher and children and the results are compared with the drawing. This will lead to the designing of the forms in outline by the children themselves. These designs should be made the exact size of the proposed pottery and if the outline be carefully cut out the line of the paper may be applied to the work as a template. By such means the children are led to produce accurate lines in the clay and control over the material is secured.

There is always a temptation, when the clay sags or loses shape, to diverge from the original idea and to allow the material to shape itself. This inevitably leads to slovenly work and should be resisted from the first. The paper template helps to correct such an impulse and the pupil presently finds that the clay can be successfully controlled if enough trouble be taken. There is much interest too in the cutting of pottery forms from folded paper. A number of these forms may be pinned on a screen and the children led to select the best in line and proportion. Too much emphasis cannot be laid on the necessity for showing the children fine examples of pottery, both ancient and modern. The more primitive types, where the form and the decoration are so perfectly adapted to each other and to the material, are full of inspiration for the child potter as well as for the adult. When one is fortunate enough to be near a museum, many illustrations will be found, but good photographs or drawings are available for almost everyone. Constant comparison and the exercise of choice will lead to a development of taste, which must affect the child whether he later becomes a producer or a consumer.

A flower holder is a good problem. It is a solid piece of clay two or three inches in diameter and an inch thick. This may be round or square in form and may have simple modeled decoration added to it. Quarter inch holes are pierced at regular intervals, in fact, they themselves should form part of the design. For the older children a shallow bowl of good line with a flower holder to fit is an interesting problem. Other good problems, which may be made more or less difficult according to the grade in which they are given, are rose jars, bread and milk bowls, incense burners, cylindrical jars, square fern dishes, candlesticks and small lamp bases.

When working out decoration for pottery forms, it is well to have the children make their designs with the modeling tool upon the clay itself. If a piece of soft clay be rolled out flat upon the table it affords the best possible medium for making clay designs. The pupil is at once put in touch with the possibilities and limitations of the material. A drawing made upon paper may have to be entirely changed before it is suitable for use on clay. The soft surface can be smoothed over as often as necessary and a new sketch made until a design is approved for application to the pottery itself. In the chapter on decoration will be found suggestions for clay treatment.

The making of tiles affords an interesting application of the principles of design, but the instructions in the chapter on tile should be followed in order to insure a workman-like product. If it is possible to use plaster, the making of a decorated tile from which a mold can be made and other tiles pressed is a good problem. Animal forms lend themselves to the decoration of such tiles and are always interesting to children.

While these chapters are especially devoted to ceramics in the sense of burned and glazed pottery a few words upon modeling as related to school work may be added here. Imitative modeling from cast or copy with its development of animal and figure modeling, both from life and from memory, is valuable in the acquirement of the power of manipulation and control as well as in the cultivation of observation, imagination and memory. In the best regulated schools the work of the grades is often correlated in the study of some phase of human life. Facts are grouped around some epoch or event in history or some country or clime in geography. The children take up the clay while their minds are full of the current subject and nothing more natural than that they should illustrate the story by models.

Such work is to be thoroughly commended as truly educational, though it does not fall strictly within the field of pottery and a few suggestions may therefore be in order.