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#clay

19 posts13 participants2 posts today
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Pottery by Osa

Virginia is my homeland and I get to bring a little piece of it back to Florida with me. My parents had me while they were students at Virginia Tech, just 45 mins away from where the conference was held.

As fun as it had been to access #clay so easily in the environment here, it’s only possible because about a foot of top soil has been lost to farming, deforestation, etc. Also, the labor of the enslaved is baked into each clay brick in the buildings on Hollins campus. (Lots of #alttext.)

I thought it would be interesting for conference attendees to experience the immediacy of using the clay beneath our very feet to create a small batch of terra sigillata, similar to what ancient Romans used on their pottery. The clay was collected from already-disturbed sites on the university campus, dug up by burrowing animals. We also collected clay from a nearby construction site. The photograph is square, shot from above and shows two objects, closeup, lying side by side on sidewalk cement. There is a yellowish tan dry clay sample on the right and on the left a ceramic test tile brushed with terra sigillata made from the same clay. It is a common, but beautifully iron-rich color with a soft, satin sheen. The test tile is rounded at the top and has a bit of stamped texture.
A conference attendee brought me a small bag of clay from her backyard. She happens to live on top of a micaceous clay deposit! I did not know we had micaceous clay in Virginia, as it is not celebrated here in the same way it is in the US Southwest. The photo is a square closeup shot of three small piece of dry clay piled together. The clay is brighter and a it more orange than the Hollins campus clay and is dotted with metallic specks that can be seen best if you zoom in. The clay sample lies on top of sidewalk cement.
I collected a small amount of clay from the bank of a duck pond I used to visit when I was small. I moved away from Blacksburg at the age of five, after completing kindergarten. So I spent my toddler years at this pond on the Virginia Tech campus, feeding the ducks and geese stale bread. Returning to that place after decades brought back a flood of emotions. This is the only wet clay sample I collected. It is probably quite similar to the Hollins campus clay and, if I use it, will probably give me similar results. So I only collected it for sentimental reasons. The photo is a square closeup, and my hand is holding the wet clay sample in front of a green bush. The clay itself is yellowish with a hint of orange and light gray streaks of organic matter.
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