Free-Form Pots

Lachlan F

For our pottery piece this term we made free-form pots.

We started with slabs of clay, which we decorated by pressing on leaves and string to create a surface pattern. We then prepared small balls of clay to create the feet, before moulding the slabs over our knees (a technique that has been around forever, and is always such fun!) We attached the feet to the base while the slabs where still draped over our knees. The resulting pots have a great oriental-style look.

After bisque firing we spray painted the pots with a base coat of indian red - a rich metallic red-brown colour that is the perfect base for the bright colours we dribbled by wiping our loaded brushes against the rim of the pot. I advised the kids to choose 2 colours - I love the mandarine orange and ocean blue combination  that Lachlan has selected in the example above. The dribbles run unpredictably, and seem to fit well with the free-form shape of our pots.

In the time we had at the end of the pot-painting session, we made these cute snake finger puppets :)
I photocopied the templates from Mr Printables - great for cutting skills practice and lots of fun for a half lesson fill-in!

Finished Snake Coil Pots

Kate P (Yr 5)

Our long-awaited 'Year of the Snake' coil pots are fired and ready for the finishing touches! To see how we made them go to  previous post 'Snake Coil Pots'.

We've finished them with water based house paint. The kids have a free hand in color choices and how they apply the paint. Most painted their entire pots, but some (including Kate whose pot is pictured here) decided to paint a pattern, while leaving much of the natural clay unpainted.

Year of the Snake Inspired Coil Pots

Clay - one of our favourite lessons each term!

I do love it, but I must say I'd enjoy it a whole lot more if I didn't have to lug 2 X 12kg blocks of clay (plus all the other paraphernalia) into each school, and then the finished pottery pieces (plus all the paraphernalia) back out to my car, then out of the car to store/dry in my garage, then back in/out of the car to a friend's kiln for firing, then back to the schools for painting..... Multiply it by 5 schools and it is a really exhausting couple of weeks!

But I can't complain when the kids obviously love it so much :)

This term we've made simple coil pots, sealing the coils on the inside as we go, and leaving them visible on the outside to represent a coiled snake. We wound the end of the last coil up to form the snake's head. Some of the kids went further and wound the last coil around the body of their pot so that their snakes are wrapping themselves around the pot.

This was a great activity for my after-school classes, which are multi-age (Prep to year 7 in each class.) Even though some of the littlies  had trouble building the sides of their pots symmetrically, and some of their coils droop a little bit, this actually enhanced the 'snakiness' of their finished pots. At the same time, there was lots of opportunity for the older students to explore some really interesting ideas. They are ALL beautiful, and I can't wait to see them after firing and finishing!