Slab Building Exercise – Tall Bottle

Elaine Bolt slab built tall battles

12 Feb Slab Building Exercise – Tall Bottle

Posted at 16:17h in Uncategorized, workshop by

Slab building can be a great way to create forms that are uniform and smooth in shape but hard to throw on the wheel. This is a method for making a tall narrow bottle using slab and coiling techniques.

  • Select a tube that is the width you would like to make your bottle. Roll out a slab just wider than the circumference.
  • Wrap a piece of newspaper around the tube so that the clay won’t stick to it.
  • While the clay is still soft, roll the clay slab carefully around the paper and the tube
  • Make sure the clay overlaps. Leave the slab loosely wrapped around the tube and let the clay firm up a little – to a ‘cheese hard’ state
  • When the clay is ‘cheese hard’, make sure the clay is snugly wrapped around the tube and use a potter’s knife to cut through where the slab overlaps. Remove the excess clay from both edges
  • This will leave you with a slab that fits the tube closely
  • Score the edges of the clay where they meet and add slip or water then score again to create a good joining surface
  • Carefully firm the scored edges together to form a strong join. Take care not to dent or deform the slab surface
  • Use a rubber kidney or similar tool to smooth over the join once it is secure
  • Roll out a small slab of the same thickness as the bottle slab to make a base. Draw around the bottle to mark the bottle’s base without cutting through just yet
  • If your bottle is not completely round, make a mark near the bottle base and a corresponding mark on the base slab so that you’ll know where to rejoin them
  • After marking the bottle base on the small slab, score and slip where they will join
  • Score and slip the base of the bottle, then gently slide the cardboard tube out from the clay and remove the newspaper lining
  • Before adding the base or neck of the bottle, smooth over the join on the inside using a wooden tool, taking care not to distort the round form
  • Turn the clay tube over and do the same from the other end
  • Join the clay tube and the base, gently rocking or wiggling the two together to create a good join. Don’t do this until the clay tube is firm enough to stand without distorting (cheese hard)
  • Once the base is firmly attached, use a brush to smooth the slurry from the join
  • Using a potter’s knife, cut around the base, just wider than the bottle (about 1-2mm will be enough)
  • Remove the excess clay
  • Use a kidney to merge the small excess of clay up against the bottle base to create a good join
  • Any small flare out can be tidied up when the clay is leather hard
  • When the clay is leather hard, use a kidney to tidy the base. Here I have cut a notch into an old credit card to create an undercut on the base which will look smart when the bottle is completed
  • You can slide the shaped card around the base to form the shape of the foot for the bottle
  • This is the undercut of the foot ring created by the shaped card.
  • Once the base is complete you can start on the neck of the bottle. If the clay tube is firm, score and slip the top before adding the first coil
  • Roll a soft coil to join to the top of the tube. The coil should be a bit thicker than the tube walls
  • Add the coils to the top, making each one just a little narrower in circumference than the tube top and placed on the inside edge, so that the neck of the bottle will taper inwards as you coil
  • merge the coil to the tube, inside and out
  • Use a wooden tool to smooth out the join
  • Add decreasing coils to create the neck, smoothing roughly as you go. The final surface can be smoothed more finely when the clay has firmed up a little to cheese hard
  • As the neck narrows it can be harder to smooth the inside but use your fingers to create a fairly smooth interior.
  • When you want to create the bottle neck, the next coil can start to go straight up instead of narrowing in
  • Make the neck as tall/narrow as desired, cutting a level top if the rim has become uneven
  • Use a serrated kidney and then a smooth kidney on the clay when leather hard to tidy the finished surface and complete the bottle