Once you have figured out your baking temperatures and times, consider how you will transport your work to the oven. When I first started working with clay, I laid out aluminum foil on an oven tray. Then I would set my work on the foil to be baked. Other sculptors place their pieces on a tile or glass container. Here's the dilemma: what if the pieces you are working with on the foil, or tile or glass are not flat? Or what if they are heavy?

I made my first doll in one piece. I placed her lying face up on aluminum foil and then baked her. When I removed her from the oven, her head, bottom and the areas closest to the foil had become slightly flattened. Luckily, after wigging and dressing, this "little trouble" was concealed, but I learned a fast, hard lesson. What I did learn was that it doesn't happen all the time; and it may depend both on the piece's weight and on the clay's plasticity - the softer the clay, the easier for this trouble to occur.

In the years since, I have discovered that you will not encounter this problem with all sculpts and the piece won't need to rest on anything. But there are going to be times when you must bake a piece as one solid piece. I have. For instance, when I bake small dolls like babies, I sculpt them as one piece, and they must lay down to go into the oven.

Now I've figured out a way to work around the problem this way: take one or two sheets of thick kitchen paper towels (the very absorbent type) and crumple them without reaching the point of making a ball. Now set the small sculpt, or in my case a baby on the crumpled paper and place it in the oven. Since there isn't just one supporting spot but several points of contact, the piece has even weight distribution and will not have flat spots.

However, this will result in a few marks on the clay. In case there should be some marks, it will be very subtle and easily wiped out with a light sanding.

I hope my remarks may be of some help to you. I am happy to have the opportunity of sharing them with you.

Noemí Pascual, IGMA Artisan