Shortly before we moved out to the country, Robbie and I took an informal, mixed-level ceramics class with the Craft Guild of Dallas. We worked under instructor James Olney, who brought us from knowning next-to-nothing to be at least basically proficient in wheel throwing and firing. It was a great experience, and we made a few souvenirs:
These are just two of the assorted bowls and things we produced. They're not complicated, but they bring great memories of a fun time (and make useful soap dishes).
This past week in mid-May, we were relocating our jar fountain from the courtyard to the patio space by the pool, where it can be enjoyed more often. While digging the platform, we ran into thick veins of remarkably good-looking clay in the soil just over 1' deep. Having never harvested natural clay before, but having always been interested in doing it, I decided to take it on as an experiment.
First, I saved the purest and best hunks of clay from the shovel as I was digging. I collected these in a 5-gallon bucket, and when I had about 10 lbs, covered them with water to sit. Then I started researching. Turns out, it's not terribly hard! The good folks at Practical Primitive have a very informative online tutorial about how to go about it, which was extremely helpful.
Basically, after letting the raw clay hydrate in a bucket for a day or two, blend the lumps in your hands and breakup any pieces. I continued to let mine sit for another day or two, breaking it up and running the "mud" through my hands a few times a day when I passed by.
After that, it's a process of letting the heavier particles settle and pouring off the clay. I also had a very fine-mesh window screen onhand, and poured the liquid clay back and forth through it, washing the screen and bucket between each pour, about 12 times. When it finally produced no sediment and was silky-looking, I poured it into an old pillowcase and hung it to slowly drip dry, which took about a week. The end result looked like this:
I left this to sit a day longer, as the middle part of the clay was still a bit 'soupy'--I also massaged the clay in the pillowcase to get the drier parts and wetter parts re-distributed for even drying.
Here's a piece of the clay on the day it was officially ready:
Still shaped like the pillowcase it hung in, but beautifully pure and smooth. Next, I broke it into manageable pieces and began hydrating it with a little water to wedge out. 'Wedging' is kinda like kneading bread, but a slightly different motion. It conditions the wet clay and makes it smooth and uniform while working air bubbles out.
Now, it's time to make some small test pieces to see if/how much 'grog' conditioner we'll need to actually use. The clay itself is beautifully smooth, silky and and has a nice rich red color. We'll just be using it for craft purposes, but trialing wood firings and in-ground kiln firings will be loads of fun.
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