Transcription
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In this video, I'm going to show you how to make a butter dish using the slab method. I'm going to be, uh, doing a textured slab. Uh, I'm doing this video primarily for my Ceramics 2 students who are doing the textured slab set with focal point project. So, uh, the purpose of this, um, texturing is we're going to texture the clay prior to constructing it, which is kind of a cool way to do it. We're working with the soft slab method.
Now you can see I am rolling my clay out using what are called slab sticks. I'm using red slab sticks because I want my clay to be a quarter of an inch in thickness when I'm done. When I'm down to the level of the thickness strips, I should be able to hear the rolling pin making contact with the sticks. Then I know I'm done. Always release your clay from the table because it does get stuck.
Then I'm going to rib. When you are ribbing, you're doing two things. You're getting rid of the canvas texture, but more importantly, you're compressing the surface particles, making the clay a little bit stronger. And when we're dealing with slabs, that is really important. You want your clay to be strong.
Okay, now for my students, I have some, uh, precut patterns that I've made already that are in my Ceramics room. And for anyone who's not one of my students, I will put the measurements of these patterns in the video description. And, uh, if I think about it, I'll even, uh, include a little drawing at the end. This is my butter dish base. This is my butter dish top. So I'm going to start out with the base on this piece and I want to texture it first. And if you remember, uh, students were doing the focal accent texture. So I want to first, I think I'll position it kind of in the middle. I'm going to put my focal accent. I'm using a, a, a feather that I cut out of craft foam. Of course, you could use, you know, any sort of texture that you want as your focal point. And you don't have to overlap your texture. You could have the texture be over part of it, not all of it.
I am going to just roll my textured roller on top of the craft foam, and it will produce a texture kind of behind it up to the edges, which I really enjoy quite a bit. I'm not going to worry about the outside edges. I will leave those plain. And then to get that out if it's stuck in, just use needle tool and lift up the foam, and that should come out nicely.
Now this is the top of my butter dish base. I can then set my pattern on top of it. And because this is an acetate sheet, it's pretty durable. I can slide my needle tool along the edge. I recommend a needle tool as opposed to a knife because if you're using a knife, it sometimes will gouge or cut at a funny angle, and the needle tool just gives you a straighter cut.
Now you can see that I have these, uh, corners that are angled here. You could make 90-degree corners if you wanted to, but I have mine a little bit less, and that means that the edges, the sides, are going to flare outward a little bit instead of going straight up. If it was a 90-degree angle, it would go straight up.
I am going to prep the corners by scoring and slipping. I wanted to go ahead and grab a wear board so when I start to fold the edges up, I don't have to move it again. So I've got my corners scored and slipped. I'm just going to gently push them together. Now I'm looking for consistency with the angle of my edge, and I will allow that to get leather hard, and I'll come back and of course, I'll really tidy up the edge, uh, tidy up the end angle, make everything uniform. Now I'm not going to actually blend the interior of this because I don't want to mess up my design, but when I clean it up, I'll get some of the debris out of the, the little crevices there.
Okay, now I'm ready for the top. Okay, I finished rolling out my slab for the top. It is even with the red sticks. And again, I'm going to rib both sides. Notice that when I'm ribbing it, it is dry. Um, if you add water to it, you just have to make sure that you have no water on it when you go to texture because water will really quite often make your object stick to it. Um, you can use things like corn starch to, uh, dust on your clay as you're texturing if you would like to. It can help make your, uh, your object come right back out without sticking.
So I am now going to put my feather on there and I'm going to go ahead and texture this as well, rolling right across the feather. Again, you certainly wouldn't have to roll across the feather. You could do it in a totally different spot. You could leave a big blank area if you want. Okay, release that.
Okay, now I'm ready to cut this out. Now all of this loose scrap from the slabs, that's what I'm going to squirt down generously and return to the clay bin. I'll do the same with this in a minute.
Okay, now this one, the edges will fold in the other direction because this is the top side. So I'm going to gently turn that over. And again, another small wear board. So as I score this, I'm going to put a little bit of a bevel that angles toward the interior. It'll help the corners just kind of mesh together nicely. Then I'm going to slip and then fold up. And because I have already kind of put a slight bevel on those corners, it does help them to fit together. And once we get this last edge up, this should hold it together pretty nicely.
Okay, now this is temporarily held. And next, I'm going to add coils to the inside. I do like to make sure that my fold looks even where it has folded up. I'm going to on the interior of each of these corners, I'm going to score, um, and add a coil, score and slip and add a coil and blend. And now I have both halves of the butter dish formed. And I'm going to allow them to get leather hard so I can clean them and attach handles.
Okay, now I am ready to, uh, start looking at and cleaning my butter dish. I have already made two little strap handles. And, um, I just wanted to remake this one so I could show you how that could be done. So for making a little textured handle like this, it's really quite easy. I'm just going to roll out my coil. And I'm thinking that I might, uh, also have to see how it looks, but I was thinking of making a kind of a long strap wrap handle up on top.
Okay, so I have my coil. I'm going to flatten it. And then I'm going to take my little [Music] roller and texture it.
Okay, to level this edge, I could use, um, a variety of different tools. I could use a Sureform, but I'm just going to use a vegetable peeler because that was the closest one that I had at hand. If you're using a vegetable peeler, just make sure you're using it with a steady hand and you're not overdoing it. I want to make sure that it's level all the way around. I still have a little bit of a gap right there.
And lastly, I'm going to do a little cleanup here. I like to use a paintbrush, um, especially if you have grogged clay. Using a sponge can be mighty risky sometimes because if you, uh, sponge, you take away the tiny particles of clay and leave behind the big groggy ones. So the paintbrush, I don't seem to have that issue with it.
Now I am going to use the sponge right along the edge though, just to add a little bit of moisture. Then I'm going to go back over it with my fingers to clean it up, compress it, straighten the edges, smooth it all.
Okay, I'm going to allow these to dry separately. If I allowed it to dry together, I would have a spot in the center that would, uh, dry a little bit unevenly. So I just want to keep it off like that. And I'll cover this with a dry towel to allow it to dry out slowly. [Music]