Jean White - Low tech plaster and slip casting for the home studio

In this workshop I will be showing you how to use plaster and slip in a home studio without a lot of equipment and without blocking your drains!

We will be making a plaster sprig mould using a found object (I'll be using an ammonite) and making clay sprigs from it. We'll make a damp box to keep your sprigs in and I'll show you how to slip cast, filling and draining a mould, trimming a cast and fettling it ready for bisque firing. I'll be showing you my low tech home set up that you could easily copy.

At the end of the workshop you'll be able to make a good quality plaster sprig mould and slip cast, without causing plumbing problems!

After this workshop, you could be making amazing work like this:

You will need:
a sheet of glass (no sharp edges)- an old glass cupboard door works well, or a glass worktop saver.
a small (2-3inches) object to make a sprig mould from
some plaster
a soft plastic bowl to mix the plaster in
some scales
a measuring jug
some small wooden battens
a small amount of clay
soft soap (murphy's oil)
a bucket
a slip casting mould
some ready made slip
a large plastic box (under bed storage type)
some wooden battens, a little wider than the box
a plastic knife, or potters knife
a small metal kidney
a sponge

When you buy this workshop, you get:

• Watch my Live Online Workshop
  • The workshop is taking place on 19th October 2022
  • The workshop will be around 1 hour long.
• Bonus Q&A
  • Join my bonus Live Q&A where I answer questions about my process face-to-face
• Lifetime Access to the Replays
  • The workshop and the Q&A are recorded, and you will have lifetime access to it. You can watch it online, or download it to your device to watch offline at any time

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Jean White is a designer-maker working in ceramics. Her ceramics practice began as a creative outlet at evening classes. This combined with a passion for bird watching led to her drawing birds into clay and to complete an MA Design: Craft at MMU in 2021. She has now committed to ceramics.
Jean uses her drawings to carve and model her images in clay. She creates her own plaster moulds and slip casts in either porcelain or parian clay. Her current work highlights the existential threats to British bird life referencing the traditional processes of Wedgwood’s Jasperware, combining sprigged work with clean contemporary shapes. There is a recognised decline in a number of British bird species and she aims to raise awareness of the conservation status of these birds through her work. The visual similarity of fossils to ceramic sprigs helps to inform the work moulding both convex and concave imagery to echo fossils. This creates a metaphor for the threat to birds’ existence, conveying the presence of the threatened species, but also their potential absence. Her current collection is titled ‘Future Fossils’ and has been awarded the Franz Rising Star Award Top Award. This is an international porcelain prize for early career ceramicists working in porcelain, and was exhibited in December 2021 in Taipei, Taiwan.

www.jeanwhiteceramics.co.uk/

www.instagram.com/jeanwhiteceramics/