Mishima

I’ve been following a YouTube channel called Karen’s Pots and Glass. Karen’s is a ceramics teaching and during the covid restrictions she has been creating daily videos for her students. She demonstrates a lot of different techniques and introduces new concepts rather well. I thought I’d give a recent technique a try - Mishima.

Mishima involves cutting a design into a leather hard item and then back filling the design with coloured slip. The slip is then scraped away to create a flat surface for bisque firing.

I haven’t fired this yet as it’s been a bit wet and I’m not 100% sure it is dry enough.

Initial thoughts:

I probably should have learned to carve clay first. I need some better tools as a twisted bit of misc wire really isn’t the best cutting tool. I’ll be investing in a tiny little diamond shaped tool next time I visit Potters Market!

I made the slip by blending in some stain (not mason stain) with my stick blender. It hasn’t blended perfectly and there are still occasional dry clumps of stain. Consistency is good so I might try some slip trailing as well.

The slip was too shallow in some of the grooves as it shrunk slightly as it dried or slumped into the lines. I’ve gone over some of them a second time to address this issue. I think using a paint brush instead of a rubber bulb might be the solution for this.

I had trouble maintaining a smooth surface during scraping. I’m going to have to go back and ‘sand’ the outside of the cup with my fingers to remove evidence of the scraping. I doubt there is an easier way to do this apart from reducing the amount of excess slip and thus lessen the scraping.

I think this will make a great layered glaze. I’m curious how it’s go with runny over glaze. Perhaps I could preserve my beautiful delicate black outlines in the bisque firing then runny over glaze will not deform my design. If I didn’t mind the dints, I could arguably achieve something similar by brushing the under glaze onto the leather hard green ware then wipe it off again. Something to follow up!