fasommerfeldt@mmm.com on tue 5 may 98
Is there such a thing as organic clay??? Maybe a recipe that we could
follow to make pots for an elementary school project?? A little of
this, a little of that, and wal-la clay for the kids to make pots for
growing plants.
Please let me know.
Thanks,
fs
Cindy on wed 6 may 98
FS,
Organic clay, huh? I suppose this depends upon your definition of
"organic". If you go with the scientific definition, which, if I remember
correctly, means "containing carbon", then all the organic stuff should
burn out in the bisque. On the other hand, clay *is* earth. How much more
organic can you get than that?
You can get recipes for salt dough and corn starch clays, but you can't use
these for growing plants or other functional purposes. If you want to make
your clay from the ground up, you may be looking at some work here.
Find a nice bank of red/yellow/whatever clay. Dig a couple of boxes full.
Spread it out on a sheet in the sun. When dry, sieve it through different
meshes of hardware cloth stretched over wooden frames. Starting with a
large mesh decreases your work-load . . . gets rid of the boulders and all,
you know. Finish off with a fine-mesh window screen.
Your clay will still have fairly large particles in it after going through
the window screen, but it should be okay for hand-building little flower
pots or clay ocarinas or whatever. You may want to temper it by mixing it
with around 10% fine sand. Experiment to see what works best before
presenting the project to your students. My own personal seat-of-the-pants
method is to grab a little sand from my daughter's sandbox and squish it
in, but this relies more on luck than on science and may result in
disappointed children.
Make your projects and set them in the sun for a few days. You want them
very dry and with not too much unevenness in thickness. The thicker and the
more erratic the forms, the longer they need to dry. At this point, you can
bisque fire them in an electric kiln to about 010 or there-abouts. You
could also skip that step in the absence of an available kiln, but more of
the projects will break if they aren't bisqued. Now put them in a hole and
build a fire over them (or skip the hole if you like and just build the
fire on the pile of pots. When the fire goes out, cool the pots and you're
done. Lots of fun.
There are books on this type of pottery--check your library.
If this sounds like a bit more trouble than you had in mind, you can go to
your local ceramics/pottery shop and buy a 25lb bag of low-fire clay (it's
"organic" ), then have the art teacher fire the finished projects in
the electric kiln. Or the ceramics shop would perhaps be willing to fire
for you.
Cindy Strnad
Earthen Vessels
Custer, SD
USA http://blackhills-info.com/a/cindys/menu.htm
| |
|
