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Rope Impression Decoratio


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Chantay,

From a distance the textured surface appears to be "cord marked".  Take a paddle, spatula, ruler, etc. and wrap

some type of 2 or 3 ply cordage around it and smack the surface.  You'll probably need to place a hand or an

anvil inside to minimize the distortion, then afterwards take a rib and go back inside to make it "round" again.

There are some who throw cylinders, then cordmark them, then bell the shape from the inside.  You can tell

if the markings around the center are slightly wider than the neck and foot.  For depth, don't make the wrap

so tight, but spread the wraps about a cord wide.  On ancient pottery there is usually evidence of the

paddle and anvil technique due to dipples on the inside or exterior of the pottery.

     The Japanese have been stamping pottery for the last 10,000 yrs...i.e. Jomon pottery.  Many other

cultures around the world have taken up the textured decoration practice at one time or another.

Good luck,

Alabama

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Check Google image for the work of the Japanese potter Shimaoka.  He is my favorite Japanese potter; I like his work even more than I like Hamada's.

 

He used a technique called mishima, in which the rope marked indentations in the clay are covered in a contrasting slip, and then scraped even with the vessel's surface to reveal the design.  Wonderful stuff, in my opinion.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the image you posted was one of his.

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am i the only person who thinks that video is one of the worst i have ever watched?  the technique was a poor way of doing anything, the slip was not colored so why use it at all and the scraping of clay in a room full of people breathing the stuff in was the dumbest safety violation i remember anywhere.   is it just me?

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am i the only person who thinks that video is one of the worst i have ever watched?  the technique was a poor way of doing anything, the slip was not colored so why use it at all and the scraping of clay in a room full of people breathing the stuff in was the dumbest safety violation i remember anywhere.   is it just me?

 

The lady in the background with the double jointed elbows was kinda interesting.

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Hey, 

Well, of the several ways of decorating with texture, the video shows one way even though its more like

artistic expression with one strand of rope being pressed into the clay body.  Ancient potters would

take on the old adage "form follows function", whereas they would have tried making the new medium,

clay, appear to have a stylized surface that best represented the surface of a coiled basket, with

wefts and warps.  The fastest way would be a cord wrapped paddle that would be used to texture

a large amount of surface in the shortest time.  Its much the same way that a simple check stamped

vessel appears to have a stylized form of a split cane woven basket.

    An undecorated vessel serves the same purpose one with decoration, but when you're changing

mediums from baskets to clay, who wants to be the one to cause the sun not to rise just because

the new vessel wasn't decorated?  Thats alot of pressure for one potter.  Thereafter, it's tradition.

    Another type of decoration is "brushed".  It mostly appears on the large cooking vessels

known as sofki pots.  Here you have vessels with large surface areas that for all practical

purposes have to be decorated by sweeping dry corn cobs across the leather hard surface.  To

me it appears like a stylized method that resembles a deer hide with the hair left on.

  There are examples in the U.S. during the transition of quarried stone vessels with chisel marks to

pottery where the fiber tempered pottery has chisel marks also.  There isn't a rational reason for

pottery to have chisel marks except in order to function like one medium, it has to look like the other.

     Today, we have to decorate to be competitive.  We could just glaze the interior and rim but the

potter in the next booth glazes his interior and exterior, plus splotches a 4 stroke palm tree on

the side!  So to stay competitive we paint either a rising or setting sun with "M" birds on the horizon.

     So my vote is for a cord wrapped paddle to texture your pot like you want it.

Good luck Chantay,

Alabama

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chantay, there is another technique involving rope.  make a round pot like the one you showed us and loosley circle a rope around it with a lot of space showing.  push out the parts that do not have rope and make a lumpy pot with rope trails.   it was done by Paulus Berenson in his wonderful book about pinch pots.   i know you are thinking pinch pots are tiny but not his!

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Thanks everyone. I think my past failures were from the rope being to thin.Will pick up some thicker rope.

 

There's some short footage in this vintage video (Potter's of Japan, Party II by Richard Peeler) which shows how Shimaoka used rope to impress a decoration in his pottery.  You can skip to 10:00 to see it.  Notice the ropes below the paddles. They are fairly thin in diameter and are used by rolling across the pot.  

 

 

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Guest JBaymore

I've been doing this technique a long time.   Years ago I had the pleasure and honor of having Shimaoka-sensei personally show me a bit of the ins and outs of the technique and some "tricks" in using it one of the numerous times when I was at his workshop. Shimaoka-sensei's father was a maker of the cords that are used in tieing the traditional kimono..... hence the "connection" to his work.

 

I now frequently go to hardware stores and buy 6" sections of every rope they stock.  Yes, they look at me very strangely.  ;)

 

(Hint: rock climbing ropes produce great subtle patterns!)

 

These sections of rope are then pressed into a small pad of clay to test the patterns they make.  The ones I LIKE are then prepared for actual use.

 

The pieces are usually trimmed a tad to shorten them to between 4" and 5" long and to also clean up the end cuts from the store. 

 

Then if the rope is a plastic one (gasp!) that will melt with some applied heat... I use a small flame like a butane lighter to "seal" the cut ends (ventilation please!).  If the ends sort of get uneven and bubbly doing this, I use a file and sandpaper to smooth them off to a rounded taper.

 

If the rope is a natural fiber one, I drag out that old Boy Scout skill that I learned years and years ago: whipping.  To "whip" a rope end you get some strong thin thread.  Lay the thread along the long axis of one end of the rope with the loose end about in the center of the section and the piece that you will use to "whip" projecting off the cut end.  Carefully loop the long part around and over the piece that is laying along the rope..... and catch it under the first winding.  Wind the thread neatly around the rope with the one strand of thread laying along the rope under all the winds.  Do this neatly, with each new thread wind tightly pulled and right next to the one before it.  When you have wrapped about 1/4" of tight winds, take the remaining loose ends of the thread and tie them tightly.  Trim the excess thread off.  Repeat this procedure on the other end of the rope section.  Now it is ready to use.

 

To get the rope impression onto the wet clay piece, you simply roll the rope section either up the sidewall of the work or down the wall.  Use the pads of the flat palm fingers to get even pressure.  Don't try to press too hard.  Move the rope slightly along to the adjoining bare un-patterned clay and repeat this move.  There is no real need to try to "align" the rope pattern...... it sort of takes care of itself.  Alternately, roll the rope around the piece.

 

Clay consistency at this point is crucial.... experiment a lot.

 

To do the Jomon Zogon technique (Shimaoka-sensei's adaptation of the Jomon rope impressions and Korean mishima) you let the rope pattern set up a bit.  Then liberally cover the whole surface with some contrasting color slip.  Let this slip (and the piece) then stiffen to a consistency beyond leather hard but not the level of dusting when worked.  Using a SHARP (sharp, sharp, SHARP) trimming tool, shave (not really scrape) the surface so that the high points of the main clay body are revealed.  Do not over shave. 

 

The sharpness of the tool matters a lot.  If it is dull, it chips and creates a rough surface.  If the clay is too wet when you shave, the pattern smears and blurs.

 

Before glazing fix any serious roughness by LIGHT sanding or scraping any "nasties" off. (ventilation again!)

 

Then cover this with a glaze that reveals the contrasting colors of the slip and the clay body.

 

best,

 

........................john

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Thanks so much John,

 

The rim of a plate is what I want to put the pattern on. Rolling will work. I didn't think I could paddle the rim. Have tried this before but failed due to wrong type of rope. Plan to try wishing also.

Your humble student,

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I now frequently go to hardware stores and buy 6" sections of every rope they stock.  Yes, they look at me very strangely.  ;)

 

best,

 

........................john

 

 

Hardware Store Employees:  "Pssst, here comes the 'Rope Guy' again..."

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