How to Decorate Pottery With Sgraffito. Step-by-step Technique Illustration and Tutorial

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Sgraffito Pottery Technique - Tutorial

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Sgraffito (in Italian "to scratch") is a decorating pottery technique produced by applying layers of color or colors (underglazes or colored slips) to a leather hard pottery and then scratching off parts of the layer(s) to create contrasting images, patterns and texture and reveal the clay color underneath. The layer(s) of color can be underglazes or colored slips. Below is an example of one technique and what can be achieved.

Custom Made Commission Work

Tools used: Wire trim tools or mini ribbon tools (Kemper Tools is a good source). Use rubber shapers or wooden tools to clean fine lines from debris. When complete, clean thoroughly with a dry brush.

Clay used: Make sure the clay item is leather hard and not too dry but hard enough to hold shape when pressure is applied.

Mini wire trim tool: where to buy

Mini ribbon trim tool

Rubber shapper for clean up

Leather hard clay (tile / coaster)

Transfer design to tracing paper and then use sharp pencil and trace design to clay. Tracing paper is flexible and able to withstand the wet clay and multiple tracings. If using black underglaze, we like Amaco V-370 or LUG-1. Both perform well up to cone 6 glaze firing.

Design pattern on tracing paper

Trace pattern on clay with pencil

Lift tracing paper and verify

Use underglaze or colored slip

Apply 2-3 coats of underglaze and wait to dry before starting the scratching-off process. The tools and the pressure you decide to use is dependant on the affect you wish to see on the clay. If looking for rougher surface texture, push the tool a bit harder and take more material using more pointy tools. Scratches can have uniform or random patterns. NOTE: Only sue a soft dry brush to remove debris to avoid damaging the colored areas.

Apply underglaze heavily (2 coats)

Insure tracings can be seen

Remove color where desired

Unwanted colored areas removed

The cups below use a slightly different technique than above. Only the traced pattern is painted on and the outline and lines within the pattern are scratched off.

Same process applied on a cup