Pinch pots "ceramics"

During this session we were tasked with making pinch pots and was the most difficult skill so far to learn, there is no soild origin or date as to when pinch pot were first made, though the earliest model/proof of the pinch pots can date back to 40,000 years ago this date is ever changing as archeologists keep find pinch pots that pre date that of the oldest they find.

Our first task was to make a pinch pot bowl to get the basics. You start with your clay, this then need to be rolled into a neat ball, once this is done a hole need to be made through the middle but not all the way through we then had to stretch the hole to create a bowl shape the base was simply pinched from the solid mass at the bottom. We had to keep stretching the bowl till it could only just hold/sustain its structure.

For our second task we had to make a sinister looking vase, we were given a small ball of clay the objective was to make as big a vase as we could from the clay given, this included decoration and clay for a lid, this task posses its own challenges stretching the pot big enough to make a suitable vase but also not over stretching the structure so that it rips of collapses. One problem people were having was the pot becoming lop sided due to the thinness of the clay from pinching this was easily corrected by creating supports in the pot by rolling the clay in the cylinder shapes and placing them in the pot to strengthen it, they need to be blended in otherwise they don't stick. 

For our final task we had to make a pinch pot animal, I made a robin he technique behind this method required our experience from our first task. We had to make two bowls with not bases, these then needed to be connected together to create a hollow ball, once the joints are blended and the shape resembles a sphere, decoration was then added. Howls need to be made so that the hollow areas don't exploded and allow for air ventilation during kilning.