@@AncientPotteryNorth West Tennessee, USA Red Clay is underfoot everywhere. Ya have to rinse 8t several times to get the Premium out of it, but there's also more premium locals, down by the M River. M = the Mississippi Come and take All You want. 😘
Thank you so much for addressing the signs of natural clay in a DRY environment. So many videos feature people reaching into a stream bed, grabbing a handful of clay and showing how to do a coil test. Some of us don't have a lot of water nearby!
I went out clay hunting today. The creek I had my eye on was virtually inaccessible due to thick brush. Then I spotted a nearby irrigation ditch, bone dry...and it looked like the earth that the ditch-digger tossed up to the sides was clay. The bottom also looked like clay but was a little questionable in color. It was hard, but looked like the cracked clay; some was in odd shapes it had taken and dried. I gathered some and came home...felt good in the water. I've strained it (it had seashells in it because we live IN a prehistoric lake bed) and pillow-cased it and it's hanging. If it's clay, I've found a gold mine! lol
Sounds great, I hope it works out for you. Watch those seashells, if you get too hot in your firing they can turn into quick lime and cause spalls in your pottery.
@@darz_k. no. Lol It's extremely short, and when wet, the moisture seems to want to settle to the bottom rather than being uniform moistness throughout. I managed to work some lopsided pieces and they're okay. I had better luck at construction sites. Lol Takeaway: lacustrine clay is weird.
Ooo there's a place i know, a narrow concreted path that runs alongside a stream which leads to a river and it's always deep in sludge / silt but it dries with cracks like that river bed 🤔 hmmmm I'm super curious if it's very clay now, oooooo!
I dug into grey clay once about 4 or 5 feet deep . But i was grounds keeping at a cemetary . Digging graves .It was more at the bottom of a hill . Up the hill halfway was dry sandy dirt almost like styrofoam or cake . Youre on the clock working so everybody had no time to sample it .
Great video. You may also find gray clay on the sides of the rivers and streams. Clay sticks to your tools and is hard to wash off. Here you must be careful because darker, black colored sticky soil may be silver bearing soil, not a clay. Either way you win.
Wow! New subscriber here! I use to play with Alabama "mud". I told my mom it was fun because it was like Play Doh. I was about 12 or 13. She told me it was just mud. But I think it must have been clay. I'm 65. I am going to see if I can find some clay. Thank you so much for this video! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
I'm taking a ceramics class at my school, and I decided to look up some pottery UA-camrs. I'm afraid I've become addicted to your channel... lol! Keep up the great work!
The gist of this video is this: to find clay=look for craggily ground where waterbeds are/were. This was very informative and will help me survive in the future.
I am from (and still live) in New Mexico. I guess I’ve been looking at clay my whole life. It all looks so similar and very familiar to me now after seeing this. Can’t wait to get out and find me some. Thank you!
We fossil hunt at Wilson's Claypit in Grosvenor, TX. The clay is purple and green. Shades from lilac to aubergine and light sage to teal. As you drive to it you can see the purple and green hills of mined materials.
you are my favorite youtube channel hands down! your videos have helped me in so many ways , financially,spiritually and, reconnecting with art and nature. sometimes personally, being in nature isn’t enough for me to get out my head. now everytime i go out, it’s an adventure. thank you
Hi, I live in Oregon. We had one of the wettest springs on record. It rained the first 3 weeks of June 2022, almost every day. The last two years were like living in California, much warmer & dryer than normal. Even got evacuated for fires in 2020. I love putting in a vegetable garden and it was just too wet to plant my tomatoes & zucchini in my garden, except for a couple raised beds. It was 92° yesterday. I was out trying to amend my soil in the garden so I could plant some of my tomato plants. On average I would get my garden tilled by Mothers Day. I was wanting to go no till this year. All this additional rain has made gardening nearly impossible. As I was digging yesterday preparing soil to plant 2.5 foot tall tomato plants the soil was still hard & wet as it only stopped raining about 4 days ago. When I cut in with my shovel, it reminded me of clay in my pottery class my Senior year of high school, several decades ago. I thought, add water to mix in this compost because It's so hot now the tomatoes need to keep hydrated or they might die in this heat. What a mess! Bad idea. We will see how hard it is today. Last year I had an area of my garden I didn't plant so I tilled in wood shavings as an experiment thinking after a year it would break down and loosen the clay soil, No sign of it, it disapeared. I add compost and composted steer & chicken manure to the holes I dig for tomatoes every year. This year the clay is so expanded from months of rain I've decided I need to start extracting some of the clay every year and making things out of it. I have lots of buckets now. It's going to be 98°+ today. So I don't know if I will get much done, but your video has given me a whole new perspective on my clay dilemma. If life gives you lemons you need to learn how to make lemonade right? Who knows I may have some fantastic clay here, I know I sure have a lot of it. My garden has almost no rocks, I removed the few it had over the last 20 years. Pottery was my favorite class in high school. The only class I got A+ all year. Happy Summer everyone! I'm a new subscriber, Thank you for your videos!
Yes, clay can be a blessing to a potter and a curse to a gardener, I have personally been on both side so that. I hope your clay turns out to have good working properties.
I live next to a huge green belt (large strip of fields, protected by English law) and these videos have helped me realise that the dirt there has a lot of clay in it. I noticed a huge patch of clay last year while on a bike ride, and recently realised that the dirt cracks a lot when the farmers don't till it for a while, and their truck tracks stay for months. Definitely tempted to pick some up on my next bike ride now
I love your channel so much I enjoy creating art with clay so much for so long i was convinced that BUYING clay was the only way (and being honest i don't always have the possibility 💸) you opened my eyes! Not only that, but the idea of doing a little adventuring to find my own clay is amazing✨ Edit: I live in the Patagonia, and for a long time in ancient B.C. times a large portion of the land was completely under water I was living surrounded by clay!
these are supremely well-planned videos! i love your content, and i was really shocked to see you only have 79K subs. please keep releasing great videos like these!!
if you want to know if your area had a body of water a long time ago you can look up paleogeography for the area to see what the map was like a long time ago. Also if your area has lots of limestone and sandstone.
i love your channel! just found you, and it gets me so excited to do some pottery. I grew up next to a river, and all our garden soil was extremly clay-y. i once tried making a little pot out of the garden soils just as it was, and fired it in the wood stove. it worked out, it had one crack, but otherwise held up, which for totally unprosessed clay with no added sand is pretty darn good. i gonna go visit my dad and steal a few buckets of dirt! :D
I lived in Costa Rica for a long time and I had a house with red/brown clay, but when we dug we found deposits of white clay that the locals make stuff with a little. When we had a big hole dug with a backhoe we found enough to surprise me. I also found a lot of fragments of old pottery shards from the indigenous people there. It was all brown.
Where I live in southcentral Pennsylvania, I am located next to a creek, and off the side of the creek there is an old water raceway cut into the ground that feeds water into an old flower mill that was turned into a house. In that raceway, there is so much water, silt, mud, and broken-down leaves that have been collected over many years, from flooding all the way back to colonial times. It's so deep that if you walk in it, you will get stuck and sink into it up to your arms. The water raceway never drys out, so every year a new layer is added from flooding. I have used it for making clay once, and I was surprised at how well it worked. I just threw a bucket in and let it sink, then dried it out, crushed it up into a fine powder to separate it from any of the decomposing leaves and sticks, and then added water to it. Also, right next to this location, 120 yards away, there used to be a native village, and it would not be surprising if they even used it for making pottery.
Thank you. I stopped the video and went outside on my property and was able to identify clay right away on my road and in various other places around the homestead.
Thank you for the video Andy! I don't live in a dry region, I live in Pennsylvania with a lot of moisture but just the part where you talk about tire tracks etc was priceless for me. It's helped me identify the places on my property where I have clay. Fantastic. Thank you!
Andy, you really are just describing all the dirt in Oklahoma. Doing some research to find some natural clay to make some simple vessels as a hobby. Slowly finding out that I could likely dig a hole anywhere here in OK and find something usable.
Haha came to UA-cam trying to find out how to identify clay after having a very hard time trying to dig a fire pit (also in Oklahoma), and yes, every single one of his clues could be found by walking 50 feet from my house in any direction.
This video just helped me talk my husband into going on a clay hunting adventure here in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Andalusia this weekend! Can't wait!!
Great video, it was very informative, glad this randomly came up in my recommendations. I've Been thinking about getting into making my own clay for awhile now as I really want to try my hand at some sculpting but don't want to invest any money into it until I find out if I'm any good or not... came across your video tonight and after hearing about how clay can differ region to region I decided to run a quick search about finding clay in my area and discovered that the piedmont region of northwest Georgia where I'm from, is apparently famous for it's "red clay" also discovered that the dirt isn't Red everywhere else you go in the world..so that's neat. 😅 I remember being a little kid and visiting my aunt who lived down a long dirt road in the foothills of the smoky mnts and how my mom always warning me not to get into that "red clay mud" that made up the driveway cuz I'd ruin my clothes... I'd totally forgotten all about that until looking it up a earlier... Now the question is, will red clay be suitable for sculpting with? Maybe I'll find out while I'm off this weekend 😏
So happy I live around so much wet clay but also so happy that since I will live part time in a desert area in the next few years , I can now find clay there too❤
thank you so much for this entire channel, but specifically the tip to try dry ponds and lake beds, i found some bluish gray clay just below the surface of my friend's pond, and it gets purer gray as i dig deeper! so excited to process and age some of it. at the moment i'm doing small things, just practicing, but soon enough i'll be making the big stuff! thank you again for inspiring me and giving me a strong foundation for this burgeoning passion for pottery in me!
Idk why your videos came up 3 years later. I'm not a potter or artist of any sort. But I'm sort of loving this and tempted to try to make something with natural clay all of a sudden!
Most of my clays have naturally occurring organic matter in them which does not effect the outcome but can leave a dark area inside the ceramic body that can only be seen when broken. This playa lakebed clay somehow does not seem to have any organic matter in it, which makes no sense to me.
We have literally hundreds of thousands of termite mounds on the surrounding plains here. Our village is built on clay, and so I'm wondering if these abandoned Termatoidae colonies would be suitable as pottery clay. I guess extracting and processing will determine that.
I have zero experience with termite mounds because where I live termites don't build mounds. So I would say do some experimentation and see how it works.
Several of the primitive building channels here use termite mound material as a substitute for cement, for things like sealing a swimming pool or fish pond. Based on that, I probably wouldn't want it in my pottery but would in my adobe bricks. What a neat resource to have nearby!
So great! Thank you so much, gentle and connected to Nature knowledge you share with us. I appreciate your humanity in the way you show us this amazing activity called ancient pottery. Yeah! I will try to find mud when i get back in Canada and do a small fire! Thanks again
The soil here is called black gumbo or Montmorillonite. It seems to be rock hard or so sticky it will pull your boots off or pull your hip out of socket. I first encountered it on a dirt bike 35 years ago. I had a hard time getting it off the bike and its tires using a 1600 PSI pressure washer. When it dries you can twist your ankle in the cracks. I dropped a beer bottle in a crack one August and it fell out of sight. Is it useable for pottery.
Oh my gosh. When I first saw the crackle ground, I was reminded of one of the empty lots from the neighborhood I grew up in. The cracks are deeper in this video though. Cool!
Having taken pottery in college and then with job, household and kids I gave up on doing pottery, no time and no room or money for a wheel and kiln..... your videos are exciting! All I need now is to dig about a foot down in my back yard and see if that red clay would be any good😁
I live in Tucson. LOVE your videos. I’ve successfully fired about a dozen pieces with help from your videos. Thank you for all the amazing information. I am curious about the legal/moral implications of harvesting clay. I would like to go to Wilcox playa as it’s close to me and seems to be a good place from your video. Do you have any tips or suggestions on where it is ok to harvest clay, how much should you take from one place at a time etc... ? Thanks a bunch Andy!
Interesting questions Sean. Most places I collect, a 5 gallon bucket worth of clay is not going to make a difference, so I take a little and then a smooth the ground over behind myself so it's not unsightly. Try to not ruin the area for other potters or any other land use, if people leave a big ugly hole people may get upset and put up no-trespassing signs. Roadsides are usually fair game legally, most Forest Service and BLM land will allow small amounts of minerals collected for personal use, but again, don't ruin things, don't disturb plants, don't leave a big hole, etc. The Willcox Playa is owned by the US Department of Defense and as far as I know is never patrolled by military police. Take a small amount and cover up the hole you left, nature will fill it in before long. You should try looking for clay around the old clay quarries on the north side of Marsh Station Road. If you want directions for how to get out on the playa, send me an email using the contact form on my website ancientpottery.how
I also live in Tucson. One of my friends has a mom who is really into pottery. She buys it from Marjon Ceramics, which is on Oracle Road, just north of Grant Road.
Oh how I wish your viewers who where looking for clay could visit my homestead 😊 it’s nothing but clay. Thick, sticky, and everywhere! We have dug several trenches through the 15 acres and gone as deep as five feet down and still, nothing but blue clay. So much so that we need to build raised garden beds because if you just amend the clay soil at ground level you end up with root rot because you essentially made a dirt filled pond. I’ve often wanted to utilize it but was unsure how. I’ll be watching your videos and getting educated 😁 thank you for sharing your wisdom with us!!!
In my hometown, finding clay has never been the problem. Dealing with clay, now... I've spent most of my life hacking at clay, chopping at clay, tilling clay, spinning out on clay, swearing at clay, scraping clay off various possessions, declaring war on clay, losing to clay, and many other clay-related activities. And now, thanks to this channel, I'll be making things with clay. (Though I'll probably still be swearing at it while I do.)
very interesting topic, great approach on the delivery of the content, good production value. really interesting video, Sir. Thank you very much for the effort you put into it, it really shows.
We have alot of clay up here in Alberta/Sask, I'll have to try making my own low fired pots this summer and maybe do some vids on it, thanks for all the info on this subject!
Arizona my 500 flower pots of vegetables tomaties , carrots , lettuce , watermelons , kept dying . And later i emptied the pots , cups , pails , and had made bricks 😂 . Mayei should grow bricks
Really love the Arizona scenery and environment. I've gotten pretty good at locating clay-bearing soils in my area of interest. Still trying to work out whether, after levigating, I've got mostly clay. What do you think about 200 mesh sieves? I know clays are much smaller than that. After decanting the light material between a couple buckets several times, I'll run the result through a 200 mesh sieve and feel pretty good I've got mostly clay.
I haven't had much experience running may clay through very fine sieves. If it is clay you will know it because it will be plastic and can be formed into shapes. Once you get all the sand screened out you need to add temper back in so maybe you are making work for yourself. I like to leave it all in if I can. Have you seen this video? ua-cam.com/video/ntn2-Le4DB8/v-deo.html
@@AncientPottery Yes, I did see that, and ended up getting the same grinder. When I started a year ago (when I knew nada) I wasn't levigating my wild clay but managed to make bowls and some fairly large "jars" out of it I was even adding temper in some cases up to about 35%! It was plastic enough but tying knots with a coil was out. Later, I began a process of drying the raw clay completely, slaking it, then levigating where the last step is putting it through a 200 mesh screen. It's obviously got a high percentage of clay in the result; I'm just not sure how high. I might see if I can get it analyzed as it's part of a little research effort.
hi andy! I just found you here on yt, but I already love your videos. I live in Brasil, and in a city were most of the regular earth is red earth, a pretty sand free kind of dirt that has a lot of iron on it. In my home it has a HUGE inactive ant's nest that except for some plant roots, wood and insects, is very basically pure red earth. It feels pretty plastic. do you think it is any good for caly making, or the Iron can interfeer somehow in the oven process?
I found this video by accident and was surprised to see you at the Playa - I live on 5 acres in Hereford, AZ and the entire 5 acres is greasy, dark clay, with sand on the surface. Interesting stuff!
Thank you for telling us about Identifying clay in Nature, when I have a chance to find clay in nature to identify here in my country. I do interest to know more about clay and making clay pots, mugs n others😀👍🙏
Hi Andy, does wild clay’s color indicate anything about its workability or is that just a cosmetic attribute? (We have a deposit of a yellowish/blondish clay on our Connecticut farm and I’m wondering if it’s worth trying out.)
Generally color is not an indicator of clay quality. Give your clay a try, thats the best way to find out how usable it is. My video that comes out next Wednesday (May 5) is all about testing new clays to determine if they are usable.
Im new coming to this sourcing clay but, in my back garden I have a shady damp area which really sticks to my boots when its raining, basically this soil never seems to dry out as it gets no sun even in the summer, I'm wondering if it contains clay because I literally sink and stick in it when walking in it. I will use your method to try to separate some out. But my question is, if I find the clay how will I know what temperature to fire it at please?
The county I live in actively puts clay on the otherwise sugar sand roads so all the roads have clay in them. There are large deposits in certain areas of my town which were the some of the original sources of the county's clay not sure who technically owns them since they're pretty much abandoned nowadays and are mainly a hangout for teenage stoners.
@@AncientPottery your right, great insight thank you. , it would be fun to try a one and done experiment and see if it would keep. Don't worry I wear all the PPE and live by the get out of the way rule. :) Bentonite is suggested and what I have used in the past as a binder with the sand.
Love this video! Thank you! Question: When you dug down to the moist clay in the lake bed, were you just looking for moisture and you could use all the clay/material you moved? Or did you have to dig down to get the clay? I am leaning towards the former, but unsure. Thanks! :-D
Arroyo are good places to find clay laid down in the strata of the walls. We found clay in the creek on my sister's farm in Maryland. There is clay ranging from dark purple to white all over the region
at a certain spot at the beach I go to, there is a patch of clay that is exactly how it is in art class. lol. it is so fine and already is moist to squish around and dries evenly very cool.
Wendy Middleton: 😂🤣😂👍🏽👍🏽 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 My husband says the same. I’m always dragging him into tilling my garden at the end of the 2nd summer garden before I plant my winter garden then after my winter garden, and again before spring garden. The best part after seeing this video is that I’ve quite literally dug up & sometimes even dug to the clay level. Hubby was in underground telecommunications. He knows where all the clay soil. He now knows we’ll be clay hunting in the future. He still has access to a trencher with scoop. I can’t wait until we’re able to get a couple days.
Super Informative. I have a question, where would I look in a forest area (I know you said you lived in Arizona but I was wondering if you had any tips, thanks!)
Aww man, all those years of my Mum cursing the chunks of pure grey clay in our back garden here in the UK - and I could have been using it? Fascinating stuff
I live in the coast of Peru and have a place where i think can find clay. They are deposits of earth where Landslides flooding had passed. Do you think it might work?? Thank you for all your videos! Im suscribing to your online classes☺️
I have plenty of playas near me, and I've dug up some playa clay and tried to work with it. Maybe I don't knead it enough, but it seems to want to stick to my fingers more than it sticks to itself, and when it dries it shrinks, crumbles, and falls completely apart almost right away. Even after levigation. All the mountains around me that feed the playas are made of limestone, sandstone, and volcanic ash. I wonder if a playa surrounded by granite mountains would host better clay in it?
The parent material would definitely have an effect on the clay produced. The playa in my video is the Willcox Playa and the nearest mountains to the place where I was digging are granite. Every clay is different and not all clays are usable, yours sounds like it is not so good. You may want to look elsewhere.
Thanks Andy, I thought I remembered that your area of Arizona has some gorgeous granite. Interesting comparison between the rhyolitic ash flows of my area and the granite of yours -- both have the same bulk composition, but in granite the silica is mostly sequestered into quartz grains and out of the way, while in rhyolite it tends to be spread throughout the glassy matrix. I end up with clay high in silica and low in aluminum, smectite and bentonite, while you get the good stuff. One thing your channel emphasises quite well is just how limited the sources of manufacture of ancient pottery were, and the importance of trade networks in distributing them. Since watching your videos, I've come to appreciate even more the advanced levels of social and economic sophistication in the civilization of Pre-columbian native American Southwesterners.
The one guy that didn't like this video probably found a bunch of potters, digging for clay in his front yard, the day after this was released. 😆
LOL, truth
2 buys at this time. They both meet your criterion. LOL
😂😂😂
Wish the dislike button was back. These jokes are no longer available to be made based on dislikes.
Lmao 😂😂😂😂😂
What a super cool guy, simply teaching the world about self sufficiency and craftsmanship.
Cheers to you bud 🤎
Thank you kindly
@@AncientPotteryNorth West Tennessee, USA
Red Clay is underfoot everywhere.
Ya have to rinse 8t several times to get the Premium out of it, but there's also more premium locals, down by the M River.
M = the Mississippi
Come and take All You want.
😘
You sent him a clay heart! How adorable
Thank you so much for addressing the signs of natural clay in a DRY environment. So many videos feature people reaching into a stream bed, grabbing a handful of clay and showing how to do a coil test. Some of us don't have a lot of water nearby!
No kidding. I live in Arizona and clay is almost never naturally wet here.
I'm looking for video that show where to find clay in wet climate...
Yes, it seems to be more complicated in a wet climate. Nearly everything sticks together here.
I went out clay hunting today. The creek I had my eye on was virtually inaccessible due to thick brush. Then I spotted a nearby irrigation ditch, bone dry...and it looked like the earth that the ditch-digger tossed up to the sides was clay. The bottom also looked like clay but was a little questionable in color. It was hard, but looked like the cracked clay; some was in odd shapes it had taken and dried. I gathered some and came home...felt good in the water. I've strained it (it had seashells in it because we live IN a prehistoric lake bed) and pillow-cased it and it's hanging. If it's clay, I've found a gold mine! lol
Sounds great, I hope it works out for you. Watch those seashells, if you get too hot in your firing they can turn into quick lime and cause spalls in your pottery.
..how did you get on?
Was it pay dirt?!
@@darz_k. no. Lol It's extremely short, and when wet, the moisture seems to want to settle to the bottom rather than being uniform moistness throughout. I managed to work some lopsided pieces and they're okay.
I had better luck at construction sites. Lol
Takeaway: lacustrine clay is weird.
Ooo there's a place i know, a narrow concreted path that runs alongside a stream which leads to a river and it's always deep in sludge / silt but it dries with cracks like that river bed 🤔 hmmmm I'm super curious if it's very clay now, oooooo!
I dug into grey clay once about 4 or 5 feet deep . But i was grounds keeping at a cemetary . Digging graves .It was more at the bottom of a hill . Up the hill halfway was dry sandy dirt almost like styrofoam or cake . Youre on the clock working so everybody had no time to sample it .
There’s this creek by my house that has veins of PURE gray clay! It even comes with a bit of sand mixed in!
Great video. You may also find gray clay on the sides of the rivers and streams. Clay sticks to your tools and is hard to wash off. Here you must be careful because darker, black colored sticky soil may be silver bearing soil, not a clay. Either way you win.
Not much of that around here in the desert, but no doubt a great tip for people with good rivers and streams.
A bit of silver in your pottery doesn't sound that bad.
how do you identify silver bearing soil?
Wow! New subscriber here! I use to play with Alabama "mud". I told my mom it was fun because it was like Play Doh. I was about 12 or 13. She told me it was just mud. But I think it must have been clay. I'm 65. I am going to see if I can find some clay. Thank you so much for this video! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
@@babystepsgarden6162 the red stuff? Yeah, that's just red clay, man. I live in southeast alabama, the dirt roads are made out of it.
I'm taking a ceramics class at my school, and I decided to look up some pottery UA-camrs. I'm afraid I've become addicted to your channel... lol! Keep up the great work!
Awesome, thanks for watching.
There are worse things to be addicted to! 😂
I adore his channel also, just discovered it last night. 😊
WHAT IS THAT PROFILE, EXPLAIN DEMON!!!!
@@jennibeck1 😈
Am I the only one that wants to hang out and run around the desert with this guy 😆 🤣 😂 Absolutely awesome 👌 👏 👍
The gist of this video is this: to find clay=look for craggily ground where waterbeds are/were. This was very informative and will help me survive in the future.
Glad you found this useful.
I am from (and still live) in New Mexico. I guess I’ve been looking at clay my whole life. It all looks so similar and very familiar to me now after seeing this. Can’t wait to get out and find me some. Thank you!
There is a lot of great clay in New Mexico, have fun!
We fossil hunt at Wilson's Claypit in Grosvenor, TX. The clay is purple and green. Shades from lilac to aubergine and light sage to teal. As you drive to it you can see the purple and green hills of mined materials.
I gotta place to visit now!
What colors does it fire into?
this video and channel is a such a blessing, clay is truly an incredible technology from nature
yes it is, thanks
you are my favorite youtube channel hands down! your videos have helped me in so many ways , financially,spiritually and, reconnecting with art and nature.
sometimes personally, being in nature isn’t enough for me to get out my head. now everytime i go out, it’s an adventure. thank you
Glad to help, this is the same for me, it gives me a reason to get outdoors and think about other things, it is very good for mental health.
Hi, I live in Oregon.
We had one of the wettest springs on record. It rained the first 3 weeks of June 2022, almost every day. The last two years were like living in California, much warmer & dryer than normal. Even got evacuated for fires in 2020.
I love putting in a vegetable garden and it was just too wet to plant my tomatoes & zucchini in my garden, except for a couple raised beds.
It was 92° yesterday. I was out trying to amend my soil in the garden so I could plant some of my tomato plants. On average I would get my garden tilled by Mothers Day. I was wanting to go no till this year. All this additional rain has made gardening nearly impossible.
As I was digging yesterday preparing soil to plant 2.5 foot tall tomato plants the soil was still hard & wet as it only stopped raining about 4 days ago. When I cut in with my shovel, it reminded me of clay in my pottery class my Senior year of high school, several decades ago.
I thought, add water to mix in this compost because
It's so hot now the tomatoes need to keep hydrated or they might die in this heat.
What a mess! Bad idea. We will see how hard it is today. Last year I had an area of my garden I didn't plant so I tilled in wood shavings as an experiment thinking after a year it would break down and loosen the clay soil, No sign of it, it disapeared.
I add compost and composted steer & chicken manure to the holes I dig for tomatoes every year. This year the clay is so expanded from months of rain I've decided I need to start extracting some of the clay every year and making things out of it. I have lots of buckets now.
It's going to be 98°+ today. So I don't know if I will get much done, but your video has given me a whole new perspective on my clay dilemma.
If life gives you lemons you need to learn how to make lemonade right?
Who knows I may have some fantastic clay here, I know I sure have a lot of it. My garden has almost no rocks, I removed the few it had over the last 20 years.
Pottery was my favorite class in high school. The only class I got A+ all year.
Happy Summer everyone!
I'm a new subscriber, Thank you for your videos!
Yes, clay can be a blessing to a potter and a curse to a gardener, I have personally been on both side so that. I hope your clay turns out to have good working properties.
I live next to a huge green belt (large strip of fields, protected by English law) and these videos have helped me realise that the dirt there has a lot of clay in it. I noticed a huge patch of clay last year while on a bike ride, and recently realised that the dirt cracks a lot when the farmers don't till it for a while, and their truck tracks stay for months. Definitely tempted to pick some up on my next bike ride now
Oh wow, you might have a real treasure there in that green belt.
I live in East Tennessee and all our dirt is clay, thankful it's finally useful
I love your channel so much
I enjoy creating art with clay so much
for so long i was convinced that BUYING clay was the only way
(and being honest i don't always have the possibility 💸)
you opened my eyes!
Not only that, but the idea of doing a little adventuring to find my own clay is amazing✨
Edit:
I live in the Patagonia, and for a long time in ancient B.C. times a large portion of the land was completely under water
I was living surrounded by clay!
That's great, I am glad I could inspire you to try wild clay.
Patagonia Argentina or US?
these are supremely well-planned videos! i love your content, and i was really shocked to see you only have 79K subs. please keep releasing great videos like these!!
I gain more subs every day. Thanks
if you want to know if your area had a body of water a long time ago you can look up paleogeography for the area to see what the map was like a long time ago. Also if your area has lots of limestone and sandstone.
Thanks for the tip
Thank you so much!🙏
Everywhere had a body of water when the whole world was flooded
Man, this is amazing info. Thank You! Watched your other vid about processing wild clay too - I had no idea clay is simply defined by particle size!
i love your channel! just found you, and it gets me so excited to do some pottery.
I grew up next to a river, and all our garden soil was extremly clay-y. i once tried making a little pot out of the garden soils just as it was, and fired it in the wood stove. it worked out, it had one crack, but otherwise held up, which for totally unprosessed clay with no added sand is pretty darn good.
i gonna go visit my dad and steal a few buckets of dirt! :D
Awesome, thanks. Isn't it funny how our minds always go back to playing with mud as a child.
Thanks man for inspiring me to do what i always wanted. We have this blue clay near the sea. Its increadebly fine and everywhwre
I lived in Costa Rica for a long time and I had a house with red/brown clay, but when we dug we found deposits of white clay that the locals make stuff with a little. When we had a big hole dug with a backhoe we found enough to surprise me.
I also found a lot of fragments of old pottery shards from the indigenous people there. It was all brown.
Where I live in southcentral Pennsylvania, I am located next to a creek, and off the side of the creek there is an old water raceway cut into the ground that feeds water into an old flower mill that was turned into a house.
In that raceway, there is so much water, silt, mud, and broken-down leaves that have been collected over many years, from flooding all the way back to colonial times.
It's so deep that if you walk in it, you will get stuck and sink into it up to your arms.
The water raceway never drys out, so every year a new layer is added from flooding.
I have used it for making clay once, and I was surprised at how well it worked.
I just threw a bucket in and let it sink, then dried it out, crushed it up into a fine powder to separate it from any of the decomposing leaves and sticks, and then added water to it.
Also, right next to this location, 120 yards away, there used to be a native village, and it would not be surprising if they even used it for making pottery.
Thank you. I stopped the video and went outside on my property and was able to identify clay right away on my road and in various other places around the homestead.
Cool
Thank you for the video Andy! I don't live in a dry region, I live in Pennsylvania with a lot of moisture but just the part where you talk about tire tracks etc was priceless for me. It's helped me identify the places on my property where I have clay. Fantastic. Thank you!
Glad I could help.
Homie spent like 30 min hammering that lake. Bed for the clip love the dedication thank you for the information my guy
You bet
Andy, you really are just describing all the dirt in Oklahoma. Doing some research to find some natural clay to make some simple vessels as a hobby. Slowly finding out that I could likely dig a hole anywhere here in OK and find something usable.
LOL, yes, I have lived in Oklahoma and can vouch for that.
OK... so OK soil is OK? Got it :p
Haha came to UA-cam trying to find out how to identify clay after having a very hard time trying to dig a fire pit (also in Oklahoma), and yes, every single one of his clues could be found by walking 50 feet from my house in any direction.
I live in norway and i will for sure be trying this out next year when the frost is gone!
This video just helped me talk my husband into going on a clay hunting adventure here in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Andalusia this weekend! Can't wait!!
Great, have fun
Great video, it was very informative, glad this randomly came up in my recommendations.
I've Been thinking about getting into making my own clay for awhile now as I really want to try my hand at some sculpting but don't want to invest any money into it until I find out if I'm any good or not... came across your video tonight and after hearing about how clay can differ region to region I decided to run a quick search about finding clay in my area and discovered that the piedmont region of northwest Georgia where I'm from, is apparently famous for it's "red clay" also discovered that the dirt isn't Red everywhere else you go in the world..so that's neat. 😅
I remember being a little kid and visiting my aunt who lived down a long dirt road in the foothills of the smoky mnts and how my mom always warning me not to get into that "red clay mud" that made up the driveway cuz I'd ruin my clothes... I'd totally forgotten all about that until looking it up a earlier...
Now the question is, will red clay be suitable for sculpting with? Maybe I'll find out while I'm off this weekend 😏
So happy I live around so much wet clay but also so happy that since I will live part time in a desert area in the next few years , I can now find clay there too❤
thank you so much for this entire channel, but specifically the tip to try dry ponds and lake beds, i found some bluish gray clay just below the surface of my friend's pond, and it gets purer gray as i dig deeper! so excited to process and age some of it. at the moment i'm doing small things, just practicing, but soon enough i'll be making the big stuff! thank you again for inspiring me and giving me a strong foundation for this burgeoning passion for pottery in me!
You're welcome, glad you are enjoying my content.
I grew up in Willcox; dad was always teaching me of the history and geology of the area whenever we would be out hunting.
I hope this man is appreciated cuz this right here is quality content
loved the video the songs were amazing too. Keep it up
Thanks
I now know how to find natural clay, thank you!
You’re welcome 😊
Idk why your videos came up 3 years later. I'm not a potter or artist of any sort. But I'm sort of loving this and tempted to try to make something with natural clay all of a sudden!
you are a wonderful guy!! watching 4 videos of yours have solved my issues, thanks so much I have learned a lot!!🙏
In wet climate sides of roads are a great place to find clay
Works the same anywhere
Wow your channel is so underrated! I can tell that you really love making videos and pottery. I hope you become more popular.
Thank you. I am passionate about the subject.
Very apt comment. I've been looking for such content for a long time - professionally prepared and engaging.
How well does lake bottom clay perform? Does the organic matter in it cause blackening or other detriments to the finished pot?
Most of my clays have naturally occurring organic matter in them which does not effect the outcome but can leave a dark area inside the ceramic body that can only be seen when broken. This playa lakebed clay somehow does not seem to have any organic matter in it, which makes no sense to me.
We have literally hundreds of thousands of termite mounds on the surrounding plains here. Our village is built on clay, and so I'm wondering if these abandoned Termatoidae colonies would be suitable as pottery clay. I guess extracting and processing will determine that.
I have zero experience with termite mounds because where I live termites don't build mounds. So I would say do some experimentation and see how it works.
Several of the primitive building channels here use termite mound material as a substitute for cement, for things like sealing a swimming pool or fish pond. Based on that, I probably wouldn't want it in my pottery but would in my adobe bricks. What a neat resource to have nearby!
i use termite clay and its very plastic might wanna add lot of grog for it to not crak while it's drying.
plus the smell of decaying plant lol
Primitive technology routinely recommends termite soil as they process out alot of pebbles and twigs saving you labor.
Primitive technology has used termite mound material for wares AND primitive kiln builds.
Excelente trabajo 👏
So great! Thank you so much, gentle and connected to Nature knowledge you share with us. I appreciate your humanity in the way you show us this amazing activity called ancient pottery. Yeah! I will try to find mud when i get back in Canada and do a small fire! Thanks again
So nice of you
In Illinois I would go to creeks to find pure grey clay. Sometimes you have to dig a bit. Other times you can find it in the creek banks
That's cool
Thanks for this video, I was able to identify clay because of this!
I'm going to try making something out of it now
The soil here is called black gumbo or Montmorillonite. It seems to be rock hard or so sticky it will pull your boots off or pull your hip out of socket. I first encountered it on a dirt bike 35 years ago. I had a hard time getting it off the bike and its tires using a 1600 PSI pressure washer. When it dries you can twist your ankle in the cracks. I dropped a beer bottle in a crack one August and it fell out of sight.
Is it useable for pottery.
Oh my gosh. When I first saw the crackle ground, I was reminded of one of the empty lots from the neighborhood I grew up in. The cracks are deeper in this video though. Cool!
Thank you for the guide. This really helps to know what to look for.
Glad it was helpful!
Having taken pottery in college and then with job, household and kids I gave up on doing pottery, no time and no room or money for a wheel and kiln..... your videos are exciting!
All I need now is to dig about a foot down in my back yard and see if that red clay would be any good😁
Glad to provide some inspiration for going back to the clay.
I live in Tucson. LOVE your videos. I’ve successfully fired about a dozen pieces with help from your videos. Thank you for all the amazing information. I am curious about the legal/moral implications of harvesting clay. I would like to go to Wilcox playa as it’s close to me and seems to be a good place from your video. Do you have any tips or suggestions on where it is ok to harvest clay, how much should you take from one place at a time etc... ? Thanks a bunch Andy!
Interesting questions Sean. Most places I collect, a 5 gallon bucket worth of clay is not going to make a difference, so I take a little and then a smooth the ground over behind myself so it's not unsightly. Try to not ruin the area for other potters or any other land use, if people leave a big ugly hole people may get upset and put up no-trespassing signs. Roadsides are usually fair game legally, most Forest Service and BLM land will allow small amounts of minerals collected for personal use, but again, don't ruin things, don't disturb plants, don't leave a big hole, etc. The Willcox Playa is owned by the US Department of Defense and as far as I know is never patrolled by military police. Take a small amount and cover up the hole you left, nature will fill it in before long. You should try looking for clay around the old clay quarries on the north side of Marsh Station Road. If you want directions for how to get out on the playa, send me an email using the contact form on my website ancientpottery.how
I also live in Tucson. One of my friends has a mom who is really into pottery. She buys it from Marjon Ceramics, which is on Oracle Road, just north of Grant Road.
Ey! I live in Arizona and wondered where exactly to find clay. This video is perfect for me!
That's great!
Oh how I wish your viewers who where looking for clay could visit my homestead 😊 it’s nothing but clay. Thick, sticky, and everywhere! We have dug several trenches through the 15 acres and gone as deep as five feet down and still, nothing but blue clay. So much so that we need to build raised garden beds because if you just amend the clay soil at ground level you end up with root rot because you essentially made a dirt filled pond. I’ve often wanted to utilize it but was unsure how. I’ll be watching your videos and getting educated 😁 thank you for sharing your wisdom with us!!!
Some people are more blessed than others.
Great share, beautiful work.
Lovely Voice and Excellent instructions.
Thank you 🙏
My pleasure 😊
In my hometown, finding clay has never been the problem. Dealing with clay, now... I've spent most of my life hacking at clay, chopping at clay, tilling clay, spinning out on clay, swearing at clay, scraping clay off various possessions, declaring war on clay, losing to clay, and many other clay-related activities. And now, thanks to this channel, I'll be making things with clay. (Though I'll probably still be swearing at it while I do.)
I live in northern georga where it's a very humid climate and most of the ground has high clay content.
very interesting topic, great approach on the delivery of the content, good production value. really interesting video, Sir.
Thank you very much for the effort you put into it, it really shows.
Much appreciated!
We have alot of clay up here in Alberta/Sask, I'll have to try making my own low fired pots this summer and maybe do some vids on it, thanks for all the info on this subject!
You're welcome. Let me know if you make a video on this subject.
I live on red clay and rock (a small mountain in the Ozarks). I have to garden above the land in raised beds.
Oh yes, clay is not good for gardening in. But you might be sitting on a treasure trove of good pottery clay.
Arizona my 500 flower pots of vegetables tomaties , carrots , lettuce , watermelons , kept dying . And later i emptied the pots , cups , pails , and had made bricks 😂 . Mayei should grow bricks
Thanks Ward. You're helping me really. Greetings from other side of the planet.
other side of the planet? I,m in New Zealand
@@hugoamkreutz2081 Turkey
You are very welcome. All you Kiwis, Turks or whatever. Clay is universal.
I am 100% going to have to try this
Awesome, thank you. Now i'm wondering if i have clay in my back yard! The adventure awaits :)
Maybe so, one way to find out...
Thank you for this great in depth information 🙏
You’re welcome
Great video. Now I know where and how to look for clay!
Glad it was helpful!
Really love the Arizona scenery and environment.
I've gotten pretty good at locating clay-bearing soils in my area of interest. Still trying to work out whether, after levigating, I've got mostly clay.
What do you think about 200 mesh sieves? I know clays are much smaller than that.
After decanting the light material between a couple buckets several times, I'll run the result through a 200 mesh sieve and feel pretty good I've got mostly clay.
I haven't had much experience running may clay through very fine sieves. If it is clay you will know it because it will be plastic and can be formed into shapes. Once you get all the sand screened out you need to add temper back in so maybe you are making work for yourself. I like to leave it all in if I can. Have you seen this video? ua-cam.com/video/ntn2-Le4DB8/v-deo.html
@@AncientPottery Yes, I did see that, and ended up getting the same grinder.
When I started a year ago (when I knew nada) I wasn't levigating my wild clay but managed to make bowls and some fairly large "jars" out of it I was even adding temper in some cases up to about 35%! It was plastic enough but tying knots with a coil was out.
Later, I began a process of drying the raw clay completely, slaking it, then levigating where the last step is putting it through a 200 mesh screen. It's obviously got a high percentage of clay in the result; I'm just not sure how high. I might see if I can get it analyzed as it's part of a little research effort.
hi andy! I just found you here on yt, but I already love your videos. I live in Brasil, and in a city were most of the regular earth is red earth, a pretty sand free kind of dirt that has a lot of iron on it. In my home it has a HUGE inactive ant's nest that except for some plant roots, wood and insects, is very basically pure red earth. It feels pretty plastic. do you think it is any good for caly making, or the Iron can interfeer somehow in the oven process?
Iron will not cause a problem, many of the clays I use have iron in them, it makes the clay red.
Super informative! Thank you!!
You're welcome
Great info, thanks for sharing
You're welcome
Thank you for sharing this beautiful ideas to make some things nice again thanks ❤
You are so welcome!
It's really helpful. I didn't know that I have so much clay around..
Glad it was helpful!
I found this video by accident and was surprised to see you at the Playa - I live on 5 acres in Hereford, AZ and the entire 5 acres is greasy, dark clay, with sand on the surface.
Interesting stuff!
I used to live in Hereford and I grew up in Sierra Vista. There is a lot of good clay in the Hereford area.
Thank you for telling us about Identifying clay in Nature, when I have a chance to find clay in nature to identify here in my country. I do interest to know more about clay and making clay pots, mugs n others😀👍🙏
You are welcome, have fun
Hi Andy, does wild clay’s color indicate anything about its workability or is that just a cosmetic attribute? (We have a deposit of a yellowish/blondish clay on our Connecticut farm and I’m wondering if it’s worth trying out.)
Generally color is not an indicator of clay quality. Give your clay a try, thats the best way to find out how usable it is. My video that comes out next Wednesday (May 5) is all about testing new clays to determine if they are usable.
I'm told red clay is iron rich but none of the potters here have ever commented to me about handling differences
Im new coming to this sourcing clay but, in my back garden I have a shady damp area which really sticks to my boots when its raining, basically this soil never seems to dry out as it gets no sun even in the summer, I'm wondering if it contains clay because I literally sink and stick in it when walking in it. I will use your method to try to separate some out. But my question is, if I find the clay how will I know what temperature to fire it at please?
The county I live in actively puts clay on the otherwise sugar sand roads so all the roads have clay in them. There are large deposits in certain areas of my town which were the some of the original sources of the county's clay not sure who technically owns them since they're pretty much abandoned nowadays and are mainly a hangout for teenage stoners.
Sounds like it would be easy to grab some of that clay and try it for pottery
thank you - on my land in Italy there area few types of clay depth - the blue layer is the strongest
Man you have me thinking now on how I can get clay together for adding to sand casting and other projects !
The trouble with castings is that it gets really hot and you need a clay that will stand up to that heat
@@AncientPottery your right, great insight thank you. , it would be fun to try a one and done experiment and see if it would keep. Don't worry I wear all the PPE and live by the get out of the way rule. :) Bentonite is suggested and what I have used in the past as a binder with the sand.
Thanks for the information and details!!! From Germany
Glad it was helpful!
Love this video! Thank you!
Question: When you dug down to the moist clay in the lake bed, were you just looking for moisture and you could use all the clay/material you moved? Or did you have to dig down to get the clay? I am leaning towards the former, but unsure. Thanks! :-D
The purer material is down about a foot. The top layers can be used but require more purification.
@@AncientPottery awesome! Thank you for the clarification 😊
Thank you so much.
So grateful ❤
Great work Andy 👍🖐
Thanks 👍
Thanks finaly i know what to search
Glad to help
Arroyo are good places to find clay laid down in the strata of the walls.
We found clay in the creek on my sister's farm in Maryland. There is clay ranging from dark purple to white all over the region
Awesome
at a certain spot at the beach I go to, there is a patch of clay that is exactly how it is in art class. lol. it is so fine and already is moist to squish around and dries evenly very cool.
sounds cool
@@AncientPottery definitely is, haven't been in that particular spot in a while though. Gatta check if it is still there and take some home
Okay I've decided... you're my new best friend. My husband always said he envisioned me making mud pies. LOL
Wendy Middleton: 😂🤣😂👍🏽👍🏽 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
My husband says the same. I’m always dragging him into tilling my garden at the end of the 2nd summer garden before I plant my winter garden then after my winter garden, and again before spring garden. The best part after seeing this video is that I’ve quite literally dug up & sometimes even dug to the clay level. Hubby was in underground telecommunications. He knows where all the clay soil. He now knows we’ll be clay hunting in the future. He still has access to a trencher with scoop. I can’t wait until we’re able to get a couple days.
😁
This video is Awsome! 😊
Thanks! 😄
i don't no how I come here but intersting to see. good explained
Thanks for watching
Thank you for this 🙂
You're welcome 😊
Super Informative. I have a question, where would I look in a forest area (I know you said you lived in Arizona but I was wondering if you had any tips, thanks!)
Aww man, all those years of my Mum cursing the chunks of pure grey clay in our back garden here in the UK - and I could have been using it?
Fascinating stuff
Thanks!
Thank you so much Sandra!
I get plenty of that in my backyard here in Phoenix.
Very nice video.. hope it will help to the pottery makers
I hope so too. Thanks
I live in the coast of Peru and have a place where i think can find clay. They are deposits of earth where Landslides flooding had passed. Do you think it might work?? Thank you for all your videos! Im suscribing to your online classes☺️
Give it a try, that's the best advice I can offer. Clay is everywhere on earth. Thanks!
We used to find clay in the creek that felt just like store bought. Like it was ready to use! I live in north West Florida though.
That's cool. I had someone just today leave a comment that there was no clay in Florida. I said northern Florida had it.
It was either natural clay or someone was canoeing with their giant collection of Play-Doh and spilled it all in the creek!
You had me at strata ❤
This is very informative thanks for the advice
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you
I have plenty of playas near me, and I've dug up some playa clay and tried to work with it. Maybe I don't knead it enough, but it seems to want to stick to my fingers more than it sticks to itself, and when it dries it shrinks, crumbles, and falls completely apart almost right away. Even after levigation. All the mountains around me that feed the playas are made of limestone, sandstone, and volcanic ash. I wonder if a playa surrounded by granite mountains would host better clay in it?
The parent material would definitely have an effect on the clay produced. The playa in my video is the Willcox Playa and the nearest mountains to the place where I was digging are granite. Every clay is different and not all clays are usable, yours sounds like it is not so good. You may want to look elsewhere.
Thanks Andy, I thought I remembered that your area of Arizona has some gorgeous granite. Interesting comparison between the rhyolitic ash flows of my area and the granite of yours -- both have the same bulk composition, but in granite the silica is mostly sequestered into quartz grains and out of the way, while in rhyolite it tends to be spread throughout the glassy matrix. I end up with clay high in silica and low in aluminum, smectite and bentonite, while you get the good stuff.
One thing your channel emphasises quite well is just how limited the sources of manufacture of ancient pottery were, and the importance of trade networks in distributing them. Since watching your videos, I've come to appreciate even more the advanced levels of social and economic sophistication in the civilization of Pre-columbian native American Southwesterners.