Turning plaster
Plaster turning is a technique that is mainly used on an industrial scale, but we also like to experiment with it. The advantage is that you can get exactly the same products and you can produce faster. This is very nice if you want a set of dishes, plates that stack well are very handy. And it cuts costs a bit. The disadvantage, we think, is that it makes products a little less unique and there is a lot of time in the preparation.
Anyway, how does it work? With plaster turning you make a plaster mold of the negative shape of what you want. So for example the inside of a plate. You then have a plaster mold of a bulge. You can design these yourself. That mold comes on a turntable.
Then you need the rest of the board. You make a knife in the shape of the bottom of the board, so the leg. The knife is stuck in a handle above the turntable that you can push down.
Then you take a ball of clay, push it slightly flat and place it on the mold. You turn on the turntable and push the lever down. The knife and the mold determine the shape. The turntable ensures that the clay is forced to take on that shape. The clay creeps in every corner and forms a bulge on one side and a leg on the other side.
We would like to further develop this technique. Especially to make series of products. Unfortunately, we do not have a plaster turntable ourselves, so this will have to be limited to how much we can work on at school.
Back to our techniques.
