foraged clay

Once you like clay and pottery, every occasion is right to play. Be it at the riverside in the summer, or on a walk in the mountains in the winter, when I find clay I can't help but touch it and make a little something with it.

Wild clay is very different from what I was used to: perfectly designed clay bodies ready to be thrown, without a single issue (even though I always mixed collected materials in the bought clay).

Foraged clays often have at least one problem, sometimes more at once: low plasticity, a lot of unwanted materials mixed in, low or complicated availability.. but this are compensated by the character, and the challenge to work with a new clay, beautiful and complex, is a great booster. And also teaches to accept that not everything can be done with every clay, and finding the right material for that shape, and leave the clay express itself..

They develop shapes, surfaces, effects that are unique, and that is priceless.

Collecting your own clay you set yourself outside the industrial circuit. It is often hard to establish where exactly the materials used by the industry to mix clay come from, and at which expense for the environment. Also, the working conditions of people in this field could be very harsh.

Foraging one’s own clay is a fair, rewarding and beautiful practice.