Slip and Rainwater: Clay, Moisture, and Making by Hand

Water is one of the first things you learn to manage in ceramics.
Too much, and a pot slumps. Too little, and the clay won’t move.

In our Abbotsford ceramic studio, it shows up everywhere — in reclaim buckets, on sponges, in the rhythm of cleanup. We spend hours adjusting moisture. Adding, waiting, covering, uncovering.

Slip — that slurry of clay and water — is everywhere too. It coats our hands, the wheels, the spines of brushes. It joins handles, fills joins, slicks the surface for smoothing.

It also tells you what the clay’s doing. Too thin, and it won’t hold. Too thick, and it resists. You get better at reading it, at noticing the moment between wet enough and too far.

I watch students struggle with this every week — rushing the join, using dry clay, trying to attach handles that are already stiff. Then they learn to test it. To wait. To keep pieces under plastic just a little longer.

One of our buckets is always full of reclaim — scraps softened into something workable again. It’s not romantic. It’s heavy and sticky and incredibly useful.

This is part of the rhythm of the studio: use, soak, return. Wait, adjust, reuse.

Moisture control might not sound like much, but it’s half the work of good ceramics. And like everything else in pottery — you learn it by touch.