Tranquil energy is in the air and instrumental Christmas tunes warm the classroom while students plunge into their own fairy worlds creating cozy clay cottages in bright colors. 

Ceramics is a class offered at WEGO that allows students to use their imaginations to mold clay into something special. Students learn about the process of firing and glazing the clay. In October 2023, art teacher Suzanne Richardson’s class began a multi-week project that involved making fairy houses. 

The students were given an instructions page where Richardson sketched out the project the students would be working on, but this was just an example of the fairy house that the students could create: they were free to make their own design choices.

The students started off with a simple, gray cube of clay. Clay starts out as a soft, sticky dough-like material and the more you move and mold it the more it dries out. That is why molding quickly with clay is essential.  Students flattened the clay out with a rolling pin, and made a rectangular shape.

The students then made the clay into a cylinder, pressing the two ends together so the cylinder was hollow. This stood as the main structure of the fairy house.

“Students combine pinch, slab, and coil techniques, as well as subtractive and additive methods of hand building,” ceramics teacher Suzanne Richardson said.

To complete the fairy cottage structure, students carve brick patterns onto the outside of the cylinder, bringing the house to life. The brick patterns give the houses a rustic, woodland look.

Once the houses were molded, they were sent to the kiln. As the houses moved through the kiln they were heated at high temperatures. This process hardens the clay, making it fragile and the clay comes out in a more white/yellow color. After this process, students were then able to paint their house however they wanted.

The next day in class the houses were ready for decorating. Fairy houses come in all colors so students had the freedom to use any color combinations to finalize their fairy cottages.

“It’s been a great experience working with clay, something I’ve never done before. This was more complicated than the other projects but you learn more throughout the process. I wanted to recreate a house from a show I used to watch,” sophomore Jorge Morales said.

The final touches included painting inside of the house and adding flowers/butterflies to the exterior. These little enhancements made the houses pop more.