Craft & DIY

#25 · Write in wet clay

Press or drag a chopstick through soft clay to carve words, draw pictures, or create intricate surface patterns.

Signing a pot, dating a tile, adding a maker's mark. A chopstick tip is an excellent clay stylus - it cuts a clean line rather than ploughing a raised ridge either side of it, which is the usual giveaway of a piece signed with a biro.

How to do it

1. Wait for the clay to reach leather-hard - firm enough to hold a line, soft enough to take one. Too wet and the line closes; too dry and it chips.
2. Hold the chopstick like a pencil and mark faint guide lines first.
3. Write with slow, even pressure using the pointed end.
4. Brush away the burrs with a soft dry brush once it has dried a little further, not with a wet finger, which smears them back in.

Why it works

Bamboo is softer than the mineral particles in clay and slightly absorbent, so it shears the clay and lifts it away. A metal stylus compresses instead, pushing material sideways into the raised ridge you then have to clean off.

Tips & warnings

• The blunt end presses neat rounded dots - useful for borders.
• Practise on an offcut. Leather-hard is a narrow window and it varies with the clay.
• Sign the base before you glaze, not after.