Hi, my name is Freya and today I'm going to show you how to make a coil pot in
the style of Grayson Perry.
Perry's pots take a classical form and usually have a
combination of both text-based and figurative designs.
They sometimes include an autobiographical element.
You can see images of Perry as Claire, his female alter-ego
and stories from the artist's childhood on the surface of his pots.
Perry's designs explore universally human topics such as identity, gender
sexuality and social status.
They often include references to contemporary culture.
Coiling is a method of creating pottery. It has been used to shape clay
into vessels for many thousands of years.
To make a pot like Grayson Perry, you will need
a metal kidney palette
a Potter's knife
mark making tools
a toothbrush
some paintbrushes
a selection of letter stamps
a turntable
some water
a cheese wire
a cloth or tea towel
a rolling pin and measuring guides
earthenware or stoneware clay
a sponge
a pencil and paper
some sandpaper
scissors
soluble wax
transparent glaze
a selection of colored slips, oxides and underglazes.
All of the materials are available mostly online
or at your local art supply shop.
You will also need access to a pottery kiln.
I'm just going to sketch out my design before I start.
Grayson Perry usually always plans out his designs so he knows exactly what
he's doing. He usually measures out an accurate plan of his pot in his sketchbook.
Once Grayson has planned his shape he cuts out a template of the
form's profile. This should be the actual size of your pot.
Today we're aiming for about 8 inches tall.
You can use this template as a guide when you're building your wall.
My design is autobiographical and I've just I've gone through my life
almost as a timeline and just picked out key parts of my life that have
really been important to me. My workplace, family portraits, my university experience.
Next I'm going to decide what shape I want my pot to be.
Grayson Perry usually has fairly traditional forms.
That means that the belly is fairly large.
It protrudes out of the pot or it has a high shoulder here and then the
neck is tapered in and it's quite narrow in comparison to the lower half of the pot.
Make sure that the shape of your pot has enough surface area to include your design.
Now that I'm ready with my designs I'm going to start preparing my clay.
I'm just gonna give it a little knead and then we're ready to start rolling out the base.
Use your cheese wire to slice through the clay.
I'm just going to knead the clay
Sometimes when you take it out of a plastic bag it's a bit sticky
on the outside and a bit harder on the inside. We're gonna start out
rolling the base. You need to use your piece of fabric - an old sheet or Hessian
or tea towel. This just stops the clay from sticking to the surface as you
roll it out. I'm going to use my body weight to begin with.
When I'm rolling it out
I'm going to use these two sticks and they're my measuring guides.
So as I'm stretching out the clay under the rolling pin, the clay can't go any
thinner than the thickness of these sticks and that's quite helpful just for
getting a nice even sheet of clay. Now I'm going to make my base.
You can use anything to cut around. The size of your base is quite important because you're
going to think about the size of the base in relation to the form.
But I'm going to start with a small base because I'm just going to do a little small coil pot today.
Rolling coils is actually not as easy as it looks.
Grab a chunk of clay and use your whole hand to squidge it into a thick sausage to start with.
We want these coils to be as thick as your finger
or if you've got really small fingers measure it with your thickness of your thumb.
We start with nice thick coils. As you build a pot it will have a strength to it and as we
refine the walls of the pot we can make it thinner if need be.
Start with the tips of your fingers. Long rolls and as the coil gets longer
you can stretch your fingertips out and move to the ends.
It's quite interesting. Grayson Perry actually always coils his work and most people think that he
throws his pots because they're so well defined and he gets them
really symmetrical and even.
Now we're going to start building the pot.
I've got my base on a turntable and now we're going to start sticking our coils onto
the base and really quite quickly you'll see this will build the wall.
We really have to make sure that you stick the first coil onto the base properly.
If you don't join properly they just separate when they're drying out or when it's being fired.
Around the outside of this we're going to crosshatch it.
You can use things like this as the serrated kidney. It doesn't matter if the crosshatching
looks messy. The whole point is for the texture of the two sides of the clay to
squeeze and lock into each other. And then use a little bit of water.
You can use water or slip. When you add water to clay you get slip. So either one will do.
Start at one end. Push it down with your
forefinger and your thumb. Blend the end. I'm gonna go round and push the coil
into the crosshatching. I'm just gonna blend the first coil.
The bottom half of the pot needs to be like a bowl. You need to open it up.
See this shape here is a bowl and the wall is gradually getting wider as we come to the top.
As you build the wall, with each coil just lean it slightly outward.
I'm going to blend all these coils together. Put one hand on the inside to support it.
You can use your thumb or your finger. Blend downwards.
Grayson Perry uses what we call a Potter's thumb or a spatula to blend his coils together.
But use what's most comfortable for you.
Before I carry on building, I'm just going to let this
stiffen up a little bit. These are called kidneys because they're the shape of a kidney.
And they're really good for smoothing out the
surface of the clay. Continue to build the second half of your shape.
At this point you can use your paper template to check if you're happy with the shape of your pot.
Before I do the skinny neck, I'm gonna stop at this point so I can still
put my hand in and blend all of this.
Grayson Perry always have very smooth
surfaces. So I'm gonna thoroughly get all of these bumps out with this serrated kidney.
Now you should leave your pot to stiffen up until it's leather hard.
This means the clay is still damp but a lot sturdier. It's got a cheese-like texture.
You should be able to carve your nail into the bottom of it fairly easily.
Remember it's continually drying, so be sure to catch it at the right time.
If it's a sunny day your pot might go leather hard in half an hour, an hour.
If it's cold and there's a lot of moisture in the air it could take a day usually.
So when you come back to your leather hard base. That's if you have
left it to go leather hard, just before we add the other coils for the neck,
I'm going to again score it, add a bit of liquid or slip and
just repeat the cross-hatching and the water until the clay is soft enough to
receive the new clay that you're going to join.
Next it's decoration time.
I'm going to make some medulas. These will form the 3D element which sit on
the surface of my pot. I'm going to take these illustrations and cut them out of clay.
I'm going to use any tool to draw out some of the shapes that I want.
I'm going to do a pot because I do pottery. I'm going to do a tree. Make sure that
the elements to your medulas are not too thin because when you cut them out
it would be really difficult to hold them together if they're too thin.
Keep all the parts very thick. I've just smoothed out the edges of my medulas.
Made them a little bit neater. So once you know where they're going to go
you trace out a shape, just roughly, so that you know where to crosshatch.
I've got a sprig mold. It gives me a self-portrait of my father that I'm going to stick on.
It's a mold.
We've sculpted the face and then made a little plaster press mold of it.
They're fairly simple to use but that will take a whole other day to make these.
I've stuck all of my medulas on and I'm now smoothing it out with a damp sponge.
So slips are a liquid clay and with this liquid clay we add stains and
oxides so that we have a different colour. These are going to be my background
tones that I'm going to fade into the pot.
So I've chosen a selection of green tones for the base.
I'm gonna layer this on top of the whites. I've got an apple green
and a more sort of army green. But I'm going to add some bright colour to mine
because that represents parts of my personality.
Now I'm going to add a darker green and grey to add some faded depth.
Now it's a good idea to put two layers of slip on.
As you paint it on is as it will be and you can see the paint strokes.
I'm going to put two layers of slip on,
so that I no longer see the clay underneath the slip.
When they're touch dry you can build these colours up.
Grayson Perry usually would paint on the background layers of slip first and then
place on his 3D medulas. I've done it the other way around. Either way you're
going to have a case of refining the edges of where the paint meets the medula.
I'm going to go around the edge with a wooden tool and remove the slip
from the surface of the medula. At the same time I can outline it as part of
the illustration style. You can do the carving by using a Potter's knife,
a wooden tool or a pin-like tool.
I think Grayson Perry uses his own stamps,
but I've purchased a plastic set of letters. I'm going to push these into the surface
of my pot to add the text part of my design.
Perry has said that 'you have to throw all of your experience,
all of your personality into making your pot'.
I like to see this almost as a diary. How could you reflect your personality in your pot?
When you're happy with the surface of your pot, pierce the sprig medulas
with a small hole. This releases any air trapped inside.
Do this immediately so you don't forget.
Now you need to leave the pot until it's bone dry.
It can take a couple of days for all the water to evaporate.
Once the pot is bone dry, you can put it into the kiln to be bisque fired at 1,000 degrees.
This first firing increases in temperature slowly, to evaporate all the moisture and release any air.
The pot has just had its bisque firing to 1,000 degrees.
So the state of the clay is really quite porous and it's almost like
it's been half-cooked and that helps to hold the glaze on.
Use your sandpaper to file off any rough edges and smooth off the burring from around the carvings.
And then it's important that I just sponge off the dust.
Otherwise sometimes the glaze crawls off, if there's dust underneath it.
If you have soluble wax,
you can put wax on the base of the pot to resist the glaze.
If you don't have wax, you can just sponge the glaze off the base of the pot.
First I'm going to brush on my under glazes and oxides into the carvings.
This is called inlay. Then sponge off any messy sections.
Remember you have slip on the pot which can be
hard to see at this stage. But feel free to add further tones of colour on and
around the medulas to help them pop.
You can also inlay underglazes or oxides at this stage.
Once this is dry, dip your pot into the transparent glaze
This gives the pot a glossy finish. I use my hands, but you can use a whisk of some
sort to mix up the glaze thoroughly. It usually takes moments to dry.
Once your pot is ready it can now be glaze fired.
The pot goes back into the kiln at 1260 degrees to be glaze fired.
Now I'm using stoneware clay, but depending on your clay type this temperature will differ.
This is hot enough to seal all the fine pinholes
where the water once was and melt the glaze into that glossy finish.
My firing is set to take around 24 hours. 12 hours for the temperature to
reach its peak and about 12 hours for it to cool.
There we go. That's it finished.
Wow. It's always a surprise when it comes out the kiln.
There you go. That was how to build a coil pot in the style of Grayson Perry.
I hope you're inspired to have a go.