Ceramic Handbook
Topic outline
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What is Ceramic Handbook?
Ceramic Handbook is an open online resource for students, teachers, artists, and designers working with ceramic materials. The goal is to provide an accessible information, instruction, and inspiration for studio learning in ceramics, and to support alumni and life wide learners in their design and art projects with ceramic materials.
The handbook is developed in Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Finland. The venture is a joint effort between the teachers, researchers, studio personnel, students, and alumni in the Department of Art, Department of Design and Aalto Ceramic Studio. The handbook includes textual information, illustrations, animations, and videos to deliver the learning content. The site also highlights projects and current research conducted in Aalto University. The development of the Ceramic Handbook was funded by the Aalto University's A!OLE, Aalto Online Learning project.
Who is the Ceramic Handbook for?
The Ceramic Handbook serves as a teaching material both in basic and advanced level. It is developed to be an open educational source for various pedagogical approaches in different levels of education and can be applied in many ways.
It gives the basic information of the materials and techniques and elaborates those towards advanced level with more detailed information, artist demonstrations and interviews, academic research, and project examples - to inspire learners' creativity and individual approaches in how to use the material for design and artistic work.
How to use Ceramic Handbook?
Ceramic handbook is designed in a way that it allows you to start in any section and browse through the material. The basics are in the Aalto Open Learning site directly, and the advanced material is in the pdfs at the end of each section. You can get started by browsing the Table of Contents.
Disclaimer and Feedback
It is important for the reader to note that few things in the management of materials and techniques are absolute truths. It is in the nature of design and art that everything is suitable to try, to combine materials and techniques, and to develop new techniques. Experimental approach and curiosity open up new paths.
When working with ceramic materials, it is important always to follow good studio practices and the safety instructions given by the manufacturer and the importer.
The Ceramic Handbook is under development, and in a testing phase. Please provide feedback if you find anything to improve in the material. Let us develop the material further as a collective effort. Thank you for your feedback!Working group
Jaana Brinck, Department of Art
Tomi Pelkonen, Aalto Infra, Ceramic studio
Nathalie Lautenbacher, Department of Design
Eeva Jokinen, Department of Design
Priska Falin, Department of Design
Saija Halko, Ceramist, Designer
Mimi McPartlan, Ceramist, Designer
Aura Latva-Somppi, Department of Design
Karen Visuri, IDBM Master’s programmeIllustrations and animations: Nikolo Kerimov
Photo credits in referencesGraphic design: Erin Turkoglu and Camilo Cortes
Special thanks to Aalto Online learning/Yulia Guseva
and Aalto Studios/Iikkamatti HauruAalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Finland 2021