Pottery can be produced in three basic forming traditions: handwork, wheel work, and slipcasting. It’s very common for wheel-worked pieces to be finished by handwork techniques. Slipcast pieces tend not to be, as that negates one of the prime advantages of casting.
Handwork methods can be considered both the most primitive and the most individualized techniques, where pieces are constructed from hand-rolled coils, slabs, ropes, and balls of clay, often joined with a liquid clay slurry, or slip. No two pieces of handwork will be exactly the same, so it is not suitable for making precisely matched sets of items such as dinnerware. Doing handwork enables the potters to use their imagination to create one-of-a-kind works of art. These methods are often referred to as “handbuilding”.
