YR 9 Homework Slab Pots and Coil Pots

This is a research homework. Presentation is very important and here you have a choice: it could be a two page presentation in your sketchbook; a PowerPoint presentation; an A3 display sheet – check with your teacher first please. The research is based on a ceramics (claywork) theme. There are two main hand building techniques for making 3D ceramic forms (pots). These are the slab pot and the coil pot techniques. Since ancient times these techniques have been used to create large, imaginative and exciting vessels or pots. Until quite recently they have usually been functional but now they are made as decorative works of art. Many of the potters and artists who make these pots have become well known and their work is collected and displayed in galleries, much the same as paintings and sculpture.

Task For this homework you need to research the work of either one potter or the pottery work of a culture, eg the work of Grayson Perry or Nigerian pottery Find out between ten and fifteen interesting facts about the work of your chosen potter/culture. eg what techniques are used, what scale are the pots, where are/were they made, are they glazed, do they have patterns on them, what techniques were used to create the pattern? Have the pots been made for a particular reason, are they just decorative or do they have a message, is the artist trying to say something? When you have found out all this information plus more if possible put it all together in an interesting way along with some illustrations – remember presentation is important. Then you must add your own comments and opinions about the work. What do you think of it? Analyse and evaluate it etc.

Coil Pots

Nigerian stoneware coil pot decorated with a traditional Nigerian incised pattern

Building a coil pot

Aaron Powers. Coil pot and sculpted hands.

Derrick Wilshaw. Large slab and coil stoneware pot 1967

Grayson Perry ‘Everything Else in the Room is Rubbish.’ Coil built with black slip, applied and overglaze decoration.

Grayson Perry ‘Two Children Born on the Same Day.’ Earthenware coil pot, sgraffito, applied decoration, photographic transfers, copper oxide. 1996

Unglazed earthenware jar decorated with darker slip. Coil pot, Egyptian, about 3300 BC. Height 40.5cm

Unglazed earthenware jar decorated with a pattern of green and brown slip. Coil pot. North west China. About 2000 – 1500 BC. Height 34cm

Unglazed earthenware jar. Part thrown, part coil pot. Applied decoration. About BC. Knossos, Crete. Height 14.1cm

Slab Pots

Fiona Hannon. Slab built lamp. 2007

Roberta Griffith. ‘Nikko Traverse.’ Slab built.9x18x18 cm 1998.

Roberta Griffiths. ‘Nikko Transfer.’ Slab built. 8x35x38 cm

Ken Eastman. ‘Still Life With Seven Forms.’ Slab built and painted.. 19 x cm. 1997

Ken Eastman. ‘Cut Outs.’ Slab built and painted

Stoneware slab pots. 20 th century

David Faithful. Lidded Pot. Slab buit. 1970’s

Shoji Hamada. ‘Vase’ Japan 1938

Toini Muona. ‘Chamotte Vase’ Finland 20 th century

Steve Irvine. ‘Ceramic Pinhole Camera.’ 2007

Kazuo Yaqi. ‘Walking’ Japan

Building a slab pot

Slab pots.

Lisa Pritchard

Chris Theiss. ‘On the Bridge.’ Slab and coil work with sgraffito. 1989