Sgraffito in Italian means “to scratch”. In the ceramics world, it is a decorating technique done by applying layers of color/s to leather hard pottery and then scratching off parts of the layer/s using a special tool to create contrasting images, patterns, and texture as revealed by the clay color/s underneath.
Wire loops on each end of this tool provide a method of sgraffito in which variations of line width can be made within a single stroke. The furrow created by the loops is smooth and does not exhibit the flakiness usually associated with other sgraffito methods.