Slip Decoration

I love slip decoration, it’s a great way to add texture, colour and interest to the surface of a pot without relying on a coloured or reactive glaze. Slip decoration is a very traditional method of decoration, and in truth am not a huge fan of some of the older slipware that was produced extensively in the 60’s,  70’s & 80’s.

My main interest was sparked in April 2022 when I attended a course at The Sculpture Lounge in Holmfirth delivered by artists James Oughtibridge & Rebecca Appleby. Rebecca focussed on creating interesting surfaces in clay and demonstrated techniques using layers of slip, similar to those utilised by Lesley McInally. Below are some images of the textures I produced during that course using slip​

In August of this year I did an online course with Scottish born Canadian artist Lesley McInally, Lesley is known for her complex, layered slip decoration where she uses a range of techniques to create textured, brightly coloured and interesting surfaces on her ceramic vessels. I have attached som images below of her work.

I created test tiles using the departments house stoneware clay body, I added coloured slips in a variety of different ways. I produced 3 sets of 5 tiles and used marbling, sgraffito, monoprinting (layering the slips), paper resist and painterly drip work to add effects to each, see below pictures. These tiles will be bisque fired initially and then used to explore the effects of clear glaze, coloured glaze and oxides, and I will blog about this later.