Once my slip & plate were on the drier-side of leatherhard, it was ready for my class demo last Thursday night. I had already trimmed the bottom of the piece… but now I needed to shave off the top layer of white slip.

The “plan” for sanggam is to shave off the top layer of slip and leave it filled in the stamped impressions! Like I said… this is my first time really trying this technique. And what better place to do it than in class as demo for all of my Thursday night students?!

Turns out that my T2 Arc Trimming Tool from DiamondCore Tools was the perfect too for shaving off the white slip! It’s nice & sharp, and the curved edge seemed to fit in all the right placed without shaving off any gouges or lines!

And now that I have all of the pattern revealed, I’m planning on smoothing it out a bit with some sandpaper after to dries completely… with my mask on of course!!!

After stamping the pattern into my platter, I filled all of the stamps & covered it all with a thick white slip.

It took a little while to get it all filled in… as the thick slip wasn’t filling the indentations easily. So I had to “press it in” with the paintbrush – kinda tapping & squishing it in before smoothing it out.

Once the stamps were filled in… I smoothed it out, and added a second layer of slip to ty and cover the pattern completely.

Last week in my SURFACE DECORATION TECHNIQUES class, we tackled the traditional Korean technique of sanggam.

SANGGAM : The delicate technique of sanggam involves etching the desired motifs on the dry clay body and filling in the carved space with black and/or white slip, after which the translucent glaze is applied and the vessel fired.

I wanted to pre-prep my demo piece in advance, so I started by stamping a pattern in a platter made with brown stoneware. I used a few of my pre-existing handmade stamps. To be quite honest… this is my first time ever trying this technique, so I wanted to keep it kinda simple. Maybe more like a “mandala” kind of stamped pattern. I tried to keep it pretty clean & organized… with some “deep” stamps to help with the white slip that was still to come!!!

Last night in my SURFACE DECORATIONS class, I did a little “Demo-On-Demand” repeat. They saw my post about the handbuilt textured platter from Tuesday night’s class… and they wanted to see it too!!! So I did it again… this time with a commercial roller from a paint store, and a small grooved rolling pin! These are turning out pretty cool… I may need to make more of these???

One last class demo plate, one last stamped & textured rim… for now! I’m “fairly sure” there will be more at some point soon!!!

Another side plate with a textured perimeter…
a gentle spiral and a ring of pointed stamps!

A bigger plate with a bigger flanged rim just screams out for MORE STAMPING!!! One handmade stamp pressed into the clay one by one… by one… by one…

A smaller side plate with concentric circles…
and a perimeter of stamped impressions!

This week in two of my pottery classes I demo’d how to make plates… and then after class I “just had to” do a little stamping in my studio! I mean… how could I possibly leave them plain?!!!

You know how I love a good holiday… especially when it’s National Deep Dish Pizza Day!!! So I felt somewhat “obligated” to celebrate with a slice for dinner before class tonight!!! I mean, if I must…