Locating Wild Clay: Finding, Processing, and Testing Clay for Pottery with Andy Ward Artwork

Folk Craft Revival

Join host Daniel Howell as he explores making and learning traditional skills and crafts with topic experts. From foraging to blacksmithing, weaving to hide tanning, each episode contains guidance and tips for learning to make or do it yourself. Inspired by the survival, homesteading and handmade communities this podcast covers a variety of traditional knowledge for the person that is interested in practical self-reliance, rural skills and artisan craftsmanship. Operating on the belief that knowing how to 'do things' is one of the most underrated skills in modern life and that the joy of craftsmanship and providing for yourself is rapidly becoming lost, each topic is presented in a way to provide you with the necessary information needed to get started now and make something useful in your life! Learn to make what you need, understand how things work, and imbue your life with the self satisfaction that comes from working with your hands! Homesteading, self-sufficiency, primitive technology, traditional knowledge, ancestral skills. . . Folk crafts. These are my passions, lets share them together.

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Folk Craft Revival

Locating Wild Clay: Finding, Processing, and Testing Clay for Pottery with Andy Ward

May 08, 2020 • Daniel Howell • Episode 17

#017- If you're interested in making your own pottery you first need to know how to find and process the clay that is local to your area. In this episode we're discussing how to find and identify local wild clays for making your own handmade pottery. We also dive into how to refine and purify that clay, as well as temper it and test it. Andy does a lot of replica pottery that revolves around the archeological pottery of his area, so we also discuss the cultures of the Southwestern U.S. and how some of their pottery differs.
If you're interested in learning to source your own materials and become more self sufficient in the craft this episode is for you.... and if that's not you, it's still fascinating to learn!

Links to any resources mentioned can be found at:

www.folkcraftrevival.com/17