How did they do this ?

[Textree]

I'm attaching a picture.  Does anyone have an idea about how this was made? Specifically I mean the carved out honeycomb type texture of the clay that looks like it was filled in with I guess either different clay, slip, or glaze ? 

[Gabby]

Ceramics supply stores have what are called texture mats. One can roll out a slab of clay with a rolling pin,  and then roll the slab on the texture mat or the texture mat on it.

Peel them apart and, voila, you get a slab patterned like this.

You can cut the slab to the shape you need and hand-build the pot.

I have a pot coming out of the kiln today using this sort of texture mat, except mine is the sort where the areas that are gold here are the depressed areas rather than the raised ones.

When I glaze it, I intend to use a glaze that breaks over texture, which is to say it will naturally show a different shade in the depressed areas than the raised areas.

 

[Sputty]

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[Textree]

Thanks. I've seen texture mats, spheres, rollers etc. I just thought it was interesting how the carved out divots were filled with a different material. It seems like glaze wouldn't fill them without running out or covering the boundaries or walls between the divots. but I guess it wasn't what I thought at all. 

[Min]

Another way you can do it with clay is to slip cast a piece using different colours of slip then carve through the layers. Examples of work done like this here.

 

[Callie Beller Diesel]

If it were me, and I was making this out of clay rather than wood, I would slab build the piece with a thrown addition for the neck of the bottle.  I'd then carve it with something like a DoAll trimming tool, because it echoes the shape of some spoon carving knives, which I'm guessing is what the original artist used. After bisquing, I'd go one of two ways: for both, I'd start by spraying glazes to get that variegated look, and if the clay was an ivory/beige colour fired, I'd scrape off the high points left from the carving. Alternately, you could not scrape the high points clean, and do a third firing with gold lustre instead.