Slipware

Slipware is pottery identified by its primary decorating process where slip is placed onto the leather-hard (semi-hardened) clay body surface before firing by dipping, painting or splashing. Slip is an aqueous suspension of a clay body, which is a mixture of clays and other minerals such as quartz, feldspar and mica. The slip placed onto a wet or leather-hard clay body surface by a variety of techniques including dipping, painting, piping or splashing.

Principal techniques include slip painting, where the slip is treated like paint and used to create a design with brushes or other implements, and slip trailing, where the slip, usually rather thick, is dripped, piped or trailed onto the body, typically from some device like the piping bag used to decorate cakes. The French term for slip is barbotine, and this term may be used for both techniques, but usually from different periods.

Often only pottery where the slip creates patterns or images will be described as slipware, as opposed to the many types where a plain slip is applied to the whole body, for example most fine wares in Ancient Roman pottery, such as African red slip ware (note: "slip ware" not "slipware"). Decorative slips may be a different colour than the underlying clay body or offer other decorative qualities. Selectively applying layers of colored slips can create the effect of a painted ceramic, such as in the black-figure or red-figure pottery styles of Ancient Greek pottery. Slip decoration is an ancient technique in Chinese pottery also, used to cover whole vessels over 4,000 years ago.

History

Many prehistoric and historic cultures used slip as the primary decorating material on their ware, especially in early periods.