Decoration

[Vechietto]

I am a maths teacher and my students would like to know how designers/decoraters manage to fit repeating patterns etc. around the edges of circular/oval plates, precisely. I have a feeling that this is/was not done by calculation but manufacturers often devise their own ingenious and practical methods for dealing with this kind of problem. Can anyone help please?

[GEP]

I hope this doesn't disappoint you... I used a template which is a translucent plastic circle that has the divisions marked on it. It does every number from 3 to 16. Cheating? Maybe. But it saves a lot of time.

[AndyL]

If you're making impressions use a roulette stamp. A template as GEP suggests would be effective as well as a stencil.

[Barro]

I am a maths teacher and my students would like to know how designers/decoraters manage to fit repeating patterns etc. around the edges of circular/oval plates, precisely. I have a feeling that this is/was not done by calculation but manufacturers often devise their own ingenious and practical methods for dealing with this kind of problem. Can anyone help please?

 

 

I would bet that manufacturers, as in mass producing factories, do use calculations, probably software that let them fit/shrink/enlarge a pattern as many times as they want around a plate, they do the design once and then produce a gazillion pieces. The studio potter may use templates or just eye-ball it. Here is an example of the latter technique when faceting a tea cup, "calculations" with the eye-ball technique happen at 2:50, at 5:39 and at 8:01 take a look @:

 

 

 

[Chris Campbell]

For the fun of it, have them think of many other places where people would need to know these exact divisions.

Some of my guide pieces are discards from textile factoiries, inserts in packaging, clock gears .. etc.

Potters are scavengers by nature ... Like crows ... and often we use little things that we find in other places.

If they looked around their homes they could find lots of them.

[Lucille Oka]

 

Patterns were etched on copperplates. Instead of ink, enamels and/or oxides were printed on paper and the paper transferred to the vessels in quadrants using a simple register.

 

 

[Pres]

I am a maths teacher and my students would like to know how designers/decoraters manage to fit repeating patterns etc. around the edges of circular/oval plates, precisely. I have a feeling that this is/was not done by calculation but manufacturers often devise their own ingenious and practical methods for dealing with this kind of problem. Can anyone help please?

 

 

I like to work with dremel carved wooden stamps. I also happen to weigh my clay, and make the same size diameter rims on plates and bowls-kiln loading is easier. So I often will figure the circumference of the plate, figure how many repeats of the pattern, and carve a stamp to match the fit. Once 2 or three patterns have been carved, I can interchange them and do all sorts of things. Some of the patterns are made to be continuously repetitive in their design anyway.

[Marcia Selsor]

I use to play with compasses as a kid. The compass can divide a circle into 6 parts very easily.

I love looking at Islamic tile design and all the development of various patterns come from Algebra. You, as a math teacher, might be able to bring that into the classroom.

Marcia

[Marcia Selsor]

Here is an example of tessellations before computers...probably around the 13th century.

Marcia