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Wild Clay: Creating ceramics and glazes from natural and found resources
The ultimate illustrated guide for sourcing, processing and using wild clay.
Potters around the world are taking to the local landscape to dig their own wild clay, discover its unique properties, and apply it to their craft. This guide is the ideal starting point for anyone – from novices, improvers and experts to educators and students – who wants to forge a closer bond between their art and their surroundings.
Testing and trial and error are key to finding a material's best use, so the authors' tips, drawn from long experience in the US and Japan (but which can be applied to clays anywhere) provide an enviable head-start on this rewarding journey. A clay might be best suited to sculpture and tile bodies, throwing clay bodies, handbuilding and slab bodies, or simply be applied as a glaze or slip. The specific properties of found materials can create a diverse range of effects and surfaces, or, even when not fired, can be adapted for use as colorful pastels or pigments.
Beautiful illustrations and helpful technical descriptions explain the formation of various clays; how to locate, collect and assess them; how to test their properties of shrinkage, water absorption, texture and plasticity; the best ways to test-fire them; and how to adapt a clay's characteristics by blending appropriate materials. From prospecting in the field to holding your finished product, there is helpful advice through every stage, and a gallery of work by international potters who have embraced the clays found around them.
Potters around the world are taking to the local landscape to dig their own wild clay, discover its unique properties, and apply it to their craft. This guide is the ideal starting point for anyone – from novices, improvers and experts to educators and students – who wants to forge a closer bond between their art and their surroundings.
Testing and trial and error are key to finding a material's best use, so the authors' tips, drawn from long experience in the US and Japan (but which can be applied to clays anywhere) provide an enviable head-start on this rewarding journey. A clay might be best suited to sculpture and tile bodies, throwing clay bodies, handbuilding and slab bodies, or simply be applied as a glaze or slip. The specific properties of found materials can create a diverse range of effects and surfaces, or, even when not fired, can be adapted for use as colorful pastels or pigments.
Beautiful illustrations and helpful technical descriptions explain the formation of various clays; how to locate, collect and assess them; how to test their properties of shrinkage, water absorption, texture and plasticity; the best ways to test-fire them; and how to adapt a clay's characteristics by blending appropriate materials. From prospecting in the field to holding your finished product, there is helpful advice through every stage, and a gallery of work by international potters who have embraced the clays found around them.
- GenresNature
176 pages, Hardcover
Published October 25, 2022
About the author
Matt Levy
5 booksMatt Levy is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Credera, a management consulting, user experience, and technology solutions firm based in Texas. Credera is the sandbox where most of the ideas discussed in this book have been learned and practiced over the last 20 years. Credera has been recognized by several notable organizations including Fortune's 100 Best Medium Workplaces, Fortune's Best Workplaces for Millennials, Inc. 5000's Fastest Growing Private Companies, Texas Monthly's Best Companies to Work for in Texas, Houston Business Journal Best Places to Work, and Dallas Morning News' Top 100 Places to Work. Learning to practice The Business of Faith has turned out to be one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of Matt's career. Matt and his wife, Amy have two teenagers in Dallas and are members of Watermark Community Church.
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September 18, 2023I will definitely need to revisit this book after learning more about potter’s chemistry and soil science. A bit over head, but we’ll get there eventually.
March 26, 2023
loved it...so informative/
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews