Ceramics for Beginners: Hand Building (A Lark Ceramics Book) Shay Amber HARDCOVER
 
 
Synopsis:
Ceramics are always popular with crafters, and hand building with low-fire earthenware is a natural place to start. With its wealth of information and images, elegant design, and time-tested advice this beautiful new book by artist Shay Amber will inspire even the most intimidated beginner. Just as in her celebrated workshops, Amber guides would-be ceramists through all the basics, from selecting the right clay body to embellishing the surface with fabulous decorations and gorgeous glaze treatments to setting a firing temperature. She teaches how to pinch forms, create coils, make flat slabs, work with simple molds and armatures, and ornament your piece with stencils, slips, underglazes, terra sigillata, and more. Each technique is laid out in easy-to-follow step-by-step photos with projects in progress and stunning gallery images. Amber introduces a unique, easy-to-follow method for constructing a beautiful slab-built piece, and all the necessary templates are included. A dozen projects including a pinched Tea Bowl, coil-built Espresso Cup Set, and luminous Lantern showcase the key methods. Comprehensive and accessible, this illustrated introduction will become the standard on the potter’s bookshelf.
From Booklist:
Presented as an introductory workshop, this first volume in the Ceramics for Beginners series is from a publisher from which one would expect gorgeous and plentiful illustrations and clear, clean directions—and the book does not disappoint. Hand building is defined here as forming clay by hand into “useful objects” and “sculptural forms.” Techniques and projects are arranged from the simplest to tackle to the most involved, from “pinching” to “coiling” and “draping slabs.” This is an exciting, useful, and relatively easy craft, and this lovely book is a very worthwhile consideration for purchase for all crafts collections. --Brad Hooper