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Making Activities Project Two for Schools with Ceramics Facilities: Making a simple dish for decoration Suitable for Key Stage 2 and up Materials needed Sturdy Tables Wooden boards / cloths for rolling out on Rolling pins / Guide sticks Clay Newspaper Pottery knife / cutting tool Kiln If you have moulds, use those. If not, this is a very easy way of making a large, flat dish / platter which is ideal for decorating. The principle is the same as laying pastry in a pie dish. The coil you make will support the rim of the dish. 1. Roll out clay, and cut out a large circular slab. 2. Make a thick coil of clay, (approx. 3/4" diameter), and lay it in a circle on a board, making it slightly smaller than the flat circle of clay, (slab), you’ve just cut out. The coil is going to be used to raise the edges of the slab to form the rim of the dish. 3. Cover the coil with strips of newspaper. This will make a barrier and prevent the coil and the slab sticking together. 4. Lay the slab on top of the coil to make the dish. The middle should lie flat on the board to make the base of the dish, the rim should rest on the coil. Ideally the edge of the dish should stick out beyond the coil so the edge can be finished properly. 5. Decorate! You could look at the techniques described in Projects 1 and 3 for ideas. 6. Leave to dry. Once dry, the clay will keep it’s shape without support and the decorated dish can be lifted off the coil. (Be very careful with it at this stage as dry clay can be brittle and fragile. Lift it with both hands. Once fired it will be strong.) 7. Work should be fired and glazed. Note: I have used a round dish as an example, the photo shows a rectangular dish. In fact you can make the dish any shape you want, you just have to make sure you lay your coil/support in the same shape as your slab of clay