Double Pinch Pot Animal
Learning Intentions
1. Be able to describe their personality and
personify it in the form of a real or imaginary
animal.
2. Make two even pinch pots with walls that are not too thin or too thick
3. Successfully join to pots together and hide the seam, structure should be very stable.
4. Work from a two dimensional image to create a three dimensional form
5. Enhance form through the use of negative space and texture and additional forms
6. Learn about the properties of clay through notes and hands on experience
7. Use a limited colour palette to enhance the patterns and find a point of emphasis on their pots.
Getting Started:
1. Look at posters or slide show of other pinch pot animals
2. Take the animal in you challenge to find out what animal your personality is most like. Or what
totem animal represents you.
3. Print off at least 2 images of your animal from the internet to work from. You may have two
animals you would like to print off and draw these into an imaginary animal that is unique to
you.
4. Construct two equal pinch pots of even thickness
5. Join pinch pots together using score and slip method
6. Make a coil and reinforce seam with coil
7. Use paddle to smooth seam and gently shape pot
8. Using a wooden skewer, poke 2 holes in your pot to allow air to escape or it will blow up in the
kiln
9. Build a nest for your egg shaped pot out of newspaper or dry paper towel
10. Get large baggy, write your name on it and put egg pot on its nest and into the bag. Get out
most of the air and zip baggy up.
11. Build additions for you animal (wings, ears, hands, feet, tails, head, bowties……)
12. Use stamps or texture pads to add texture to your animal or its additions.
13. If you want to stay in at lunch you can get a demo for how to turn this into a whistle.
14. Use score and slip technique to add additions on. Brace additions with toothpicks, or extra clay
as they are drying.
15. Always keep small additions wrapped up with plastic wrap so they dry out more slowly than the
rest of the body
16. If you want the animal to stay moist over the weekend, wrap with slightly damp paper towel,
before you place in air tight baggy.
17. When finished throughout nest and give Mrs. Wright your animal and your baggy so she can dry
it out slowly over a week. It will then be fired and ready to paint or glaze.
Vocabulary
Hand Building Terms
Wedging- Method of kneading clay to make it homogenous; ridding the clay of
all air pockets.
Hand Building - This term refers to the one of several techniques of building
pots using the only the hands and simple tools rather than the potters wheel.
The term used for creating pottery using the potter's wheel is "throwing".
Pinch - "Pinch" in ceramics is a method of shaping clay by inserting the thumb
of one hand into the clay and lightly pinching with the thumb and fingers
while slowly rotating the ball in the palm of the other hand. Pots made in this
manner are called "pinch pots".
Coil - This is the technique of building ceramic forms by rolling out coils, or
ropes, of clay and joining them together with the fingers or a tool.
Slab - A method in which forms are created by joining flat pieces of clay; the
pieces are thinned and flattened with a rolling pin or slab roller.
Slip - Slip is liquid clay. The easiest way to make slip is to gradually sift or
spoon dry, powder clay into a small cup of water. Stir well as you add because
it will tend to thicken up after it sits for a minute or two. You want it to be
about the consistency of thick cream.
Score & Slip - Score and slip refers to a method of joining two pieces of clay
together. First, score the clay; this means that you make scratches in the
surfaces that will be sticking together. Then you slip it; that is you wet the
surface with some slip, using it like glue. Next, you press the two pieces
together. It is very important to always score and slip clay that is leather hard.
If you do not, the pieces will likely pop apart when they are fired.
Molding - In this technique, flat slabs of clay are pressed into molds in order
to create various shapes or forms.
Stages of Dryness - When speaking of clay, we refer tothree basic stages of
dryness: wet, leather hard and bone dry.
Leather Hard - Clay which is dried sufficiently to be stiff, but which is still
damp enough to be joined to other pieces.
Firing Processes and Terms Dealing with Firing
Firing - This is the process of heating the pottery to a specific temperature in
order to bring about a particular change in the clay or the surface.
Bisque - The term bisque refers to ceramic ware that has been fired once
without glaze.
Greenware - Unfired pottery that is bone-dry, a state in which clay forms are
the most fragile.
Glaze - A glass-like surface coating for ceramics that is used to decorate and
seal the pores of the fired clay.
Rubric
For each criteria give yourself a 0 ( incomplete) 1(poorly done) 2( Done well) or 3( excellent )
Design:
____ Two or more holes are evident for air to escape
____ Pinch pots were evenly pinch out
____ Seam on pinch pot is securely reinforced
____There are no cracks in the animal
____ Emphasis and contrast is created with texture and colour
____ Paint or glaze is applied carefully and no raw clay is showing
____ There is negative space created and the student can point it out
____ Form is exaggerated through the use of 3D additions on the front sides and back of the
animal.
Write a one paragraph reflection about the design of your animal. Discuss any problems that
you encountered and how you dealt with them. Do you like your overall design? Why or why
not? Try to use your new vocabulary words in your paragraph.
Work Ethic:
___Put time and effort into finding an animal that represents them and can say how and why.
___Printed off their drawings and worked from them at each stage
___Used class time well
___Listened attentively during demonstrations
___Cleaned up tools and work area appropriately
___Fine tuned problem solving skills by trying out different ways to resolve a design issue when
clay didn’t behave the way they envisioned
___ Worked independently asking for help only after looking at notes and checking with peers.
___ Clay project was finished on time.
Tell me about how much effort you put into this project. Is there anything you could have
improved on?