Whats a cane?
Caning is a technique that originated in glasswork. A cane is a cylindrical log of clay that has a design running through it, so that when you slice the log, each slice shows the design. For example, suppose you make a log of black clay, then wrap a sheet of white clay around it, then wrap a final sheet of black around that. Each circular slice is a cross-section of the log, so it shows a bulls-eye design: black in the middle (your original black log), then a white circle around the black (the white sheet you wrapped around it), and a black circle around the outside (the final black sheet). You can make all sorts of geometric canes like this. With careful placement of different colors of clay, you can also make non-geometric canes like faces, landscapes. etc. You can roll and press the cane to reduce its size without blurring the design; this allows for extremely fine detail in the cane slices. The final cane can be sliced thin and the slices applied to a bead, sculpture, or other piec
