October 2023
“So why clay? Why aren’t you doing this in wood?”
Bit of challenge thrown out by Rob Parr at a feedback during my MA. After taking some time out to feel a bit aggrieved that it wasn’t self-evident why I needed to work in clay I started thinking around the question.
Why Clay? Glass or wood, even textiles or drawing – I can represent myself in any of them. Either through collecting, curating or making. But no, it has to be clay. It has to be pots.
It’s not just the infinite variety of form and texture you can get in and through clay. It’s not just the basic, almost animalistic, tactility you feel when you’re making and manipulating. It’s that somehow clay embodies self. At its most basic the oldest recordable man-made objects around are made of clay, and has throughout time clay has been associated with our most basic functions, eating and drinking, being buried in funerary vessels, making copies of our various gods. We dig it up from the earth element and we use the element of water mould it, the element of metal to decorate it, the element of fire to transform it, and ultimately it holds in its vessel form the element of air. The 5 elements central to Taoist philosophy.
In our modern times it is used from everything from high voltage insulators to mass produced cups to ease our fractious lives. The things we make in ceramic contribute to the way we order our world, “producing and sustaining values (Tim Edensor: ‘Industrial Ruins – Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality’: 2005).
Philip Rawson puts it best; “in the case of ceramics we are everywhere brought to face with the root. This appears in the primal interweaving of matter, human action, and symbol that each pot represents. Inert clay, from the earth, is made into something which is directly and intimately related to active craft, to the processes of human survival, and to social and spiritual factors in the life of man, all at once. None of the elements is lost, all are reflected in some sort of balance in each successful work. This then becomes what one may call a ‘transformation image’, something undeniably material, wearing the evidence of its material nature in its visible and tangible forms and attributes ......... it can seem .... almost like a projection of his own bodily identity. It thus becomes an external testimony to his existence." (Philip Rawson: Ceramics: Pennsylvania Press 1989)
So the question was posed to me during the 2nd Reflective Practice of the MA, “why clay”. The 3rd iteration of my learning agreement/outline pompously says ‘an exploration of voidness and meaning through form and skilful making and importantly, by use of specific materials/clay bodies within one piece to express and represent types of energy. From early boxes, more complex recurring forms and figurative forms have emerged – though I am unsure which of these will become predominant as the central theme of my work. They may well in some way combine.’ The materiality of clay, its transformative qualities, its link to the 5 elements – when linked to the properties as outlined by Philip Rawson, makes clay the only real emotional and practical choice that I could make.
Then we have the actual material qualities of clay. Using different types of clay to pursue the same basic project theme, and to strictly limit the decorative glazes and effects I can properly explore the development of energy within each piece as it slumps in the making and in the heatwork of firing. By keeping the clay as damp as is possible for building the form takes its own character. I can further manipulate the clay body by piercing it with shards and metal, or tear into or mould it, to alter and redefine the energy I am looking for.
Ultimately I want to make with gay abandon – create like the makers I have felt most in tune with, Sandy Brown, Dylan Bowen, Anthony Caro – but I also want the sublime poetry of making like Jim Malone or Lucie Rie. You really can’t get that from a lump of wood or a painting because it has to be tactile and literally, in the round.
The materiality of clay
The chemistry and chemical structure of clay is basic.
Cooling rocks are infiltrated by hot gases rising upwards, including boron, fluorine, carbon dioxide and water Hydrogen and oxygen in the form of steam. This pressurisation decomposes potentially hard rocks and creates a soft ‘rock’ = clay. The original rock informs the type of clay deposit. Granite creates kaolinite, or pure clay. It has a regular and ordered crystalline structure. Other foundation rocks create disordered kaolinite, which is not chemically pure and has a disordered crystalline structure. An additional mineral formed in this post volcanic process is Mica, a very fine textured silica. They are present in most clays, but can be enhanced in some pure clays or glazes to increase the purity of colour and crystalline structure.
Primary clays are found at their place of origin, unpolluted by glacial or river travel. They are the purest forms of clay, and notably include China Clay.
Secondary clays are sedimentary, having been geologically transported from their place of origin and deposited. Their journey has involved changes to their crystal regularity, quartz sand and mica may be lost and additional elements and minerals, notably iron, are added.
The primary clays composed of organised kaolinite have low plasticity and are white in colour. Secondary clays composed of disorganised kaolinite are more plastic, more workable and are generally coloured by the types of minerals they have picked up – commonly iron.
The level of purity of the ordered or disordered kaolinite informs the melting temperature of the clay, though all clays chemically convert at the same temperature,662 degrees F. Quartz inversion at 1063 degrees F does not so much affect the chemical composition of the clay in a normal oxidised firing, but it does affect the expansion and contraction of clay and glazes and therefore both glaze fit and structural integrity of the clay body. An additional temperature to be aware of is 212 degrees F, which is the boiling point of water. Any remaining moisture in the clay body at this temperature can cause the greenware to explode.
So that is the actual materiality of clay in its most literal sense.
Rocks get broken down by hot gasses forming soft ‘rock’ = clay. Granite as a source rock forms the purest form of clay, kaolin. When this clay remains in its place of origin it is particularly pure, has large ordered crystals, is white, difficult to work and fires at hire temperatures. Other source rocks produce a Heinz 57 clay that is impure, has smaller disordered crystals, is darker coloured, very plastic and fires at lower temperatures. And it depends on what ceramic outcome you want to achieve as to which clay body you decide to work with.
Because I specifically want to explore how the materiality of clay affects the energy (Taoist flow of energy and Te) in the making of a vessel I specifically decided to work across the range of clays.
Because I want to see the clay working in its most basic form I want to work with it as damp and pliable as possible, taking the resultant sagging, cracking, collapse or structural integrity as an expression of the energy within the body – its own integrity and virtue (Te).
Although glazes and decoration will alter the finished vessel as part of the making process I want to focus on the unique qualities of the different clays as I develop my practice. How they transform through the making process and are further altered by the addition of random ceramic shards or metals to alter their balance.
Heatwork is particularly important. If I were using my own kiln I would fire to cones rather than pyrometer settings, and would probably develop specific soaks and at times fire down as well as up to generate movement or change.
So I will at times fire pieces below their optimum temperature to maintain structural stability. At times I will test build techniques and metals to assess how they work at higher temperatures.
PC
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