Bottle slumping mould: Clay demonstration

In our lesson on Friday 8th October, Mr Peacock showed us how to make Bottle slumping moulds, out of air dry clay. This is how we did it.

Equipment

• Clay mat
• Rolling pin
• Knife (that you don't mind getting dirty!)
• Fork (again that you don't mind getting dirty!)
• Beaker full of water

Materials

• Air dry clay (make sure that it is in a plastic sort of state)

Method

1. On the mat, flatten out the lump of clay with the palm of your hand. As you are doing this, repeatedly turn it over until until it is approximately even in thickness. 
2. If you need to, use a rolling pin to make it completely smooth. You want a fairly long; with the width around half of the length; slab of around 1 cm thick. 
3. Trim the edges with the knife to make a fairly even and neat edge. 
4. Place the bottle that you will be using for the Bottle slump onto the table, and with the left over clay, mould into two 'squishes' to hold the bottle still whilst you are moulding. Place one 'squish' on one side of the bottle and the other on the opposite side. 
5. Carefully place the clay slab over the bottle, and mould over it.Experiment with different shapes of the base- for example, you could make it wavy to end up with a wavy glass bottle! 
6. Using the fork, cross hatch in 4 different places on the back of the clay mould (they should in the formation of corners of a square).
7. With some more clay, make four balls and place them onto the cross hatched areas. To make the balls stay, brush them with the water, making clay 'slip' (which is the form of clay glue!)
8. Leave the mould for approximately a week, allowing it to go bone dry. 
9. Place it into a kiln with the bottle, following the instructions on my 'Bottle slumps' post.
10. Reuse as many times as you like!

Here are some photos of some moulds that people have made.