From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 5
This is my large clay dewatering setup made from livestock mineral tubs (the kind that hold 200 lbs). I use it after wet sieving my wild (dug) clays, allowing the clay to settle before siphoning …
Tag: processing clay
From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 4
This is the silty material after it has been sieved and most of the clay has been poured off. It hasn’t been fully washed yet, so there’s still some clay mixed in. At this stage, …
From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 3
This is how I sieve local clay. My McCurtain County might be showing a bit. Feel free to make fun of my accent. Sieving is necessary to remove organic material (roots, leaves, etc.) and rocks …
From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 2
In part 1, I showed where this material came from. Here’s what it becomes after washing away the clay, sieving it, and drying it. What started as a bucket of muddy silt turns into a …
From Local Earth to Finished Pottery – Part 1
If you had walked by me on this day, you probably would have wondered why I was filling a bucket with mud. I originally hoped this would become a clay body. It didn’t—but it ended …
Processing the Black Water Trough of clay
Some of you may remember me posting about a huge water trough full of clay I got when we did the foundation for our shop. I’ve used this clay for years by processing out more …
More working with the silty clay
This is the batch I dug a few days ago and processed half of it to see if I can recreate the accidental perfect batch. I posted a few days ago. I kept it a …
Digging Clay
In my last post (the clay with 0.3% absorption at cone 9 oxidation), I mentioned it comes from a low spot on top of a hill. Well, here it is.
100% Local Clay Body
This clay comes from an odd low spot, on top of a hill on our land. Right out of the ground, it’s very silty and not plastic enough to throw, fires to above cone 8. …
Letting go…
A customer asked me yesterday if it’s hard to let favorite pieces go. Yes, sometimes it is. But there are always pieces like this one. It’s a native clay body, and it was on the …