Handbuilt, A Potter's Guide: Master timeless techniques, explore new forms, dig and process your own clay

In Search of Wild Clay

I bought land in the Arkansas Ozarks with friends in 2002 before I was a potter. Little did I know it would become my clay farm. I had no idea what I was doing the first time I dug up a bucket of clay on the land and brought it back to my studio in North Carolina, but I tested it by making a pinch pot. I didn't know what would happen to it in the kiln, so I placed it inside a bowl made of trusted clay and fired it that way. If the pinch pot melted, I would only have sacrificed one bowl. I got lucky! The pinch pot survived the cone 10 firing.

Next, I made a wild clay pinch pot to test each glaze I used. When these came out of the firing, the glazes had shriveled and cracked off the pots. This meant my clay was shrinking far more than the glazes. The clay was also hard to use because of its natural sticky and stretchy qualities. It was too plastic. This isn't always the case when you dig and use wild clay. Sometimes it's the opposite—'short'—not plastic enough.

Now I needed to turn my wild clay into a workable clay body. I had no idea what that entailed and that’s probably what kept me from overthinking and becoming overwhelmed at what to add and how much. I asked friends who'd tried the process where to start and with their advice, I came up with a basic recipe and tested it. Then spent the next few months tweaking the recipe, testing ingredients in differing amounts.