Clay, Mind by Jordan Taylor
My research into clay began with an image evoked by the foreword to Michael Cardew’s book Pioneer Pottery:
‘Cardew has spent years under a kerosene lamp at night in the African tropics, sweating at his geology and chemistry in order, literally, to understand the lie of his land; to find and to be able to use intelligently the rocks and clays, ashes and oxides with which… pots are made.1
In 1996 I made several hundred glaze line blends using clays I had dug, and wood ashes. Underlying that research were ambitions that I no longer hold exclusively: my goal was to make serviceable glazes from indigenous materials. I’ve since reversed this relationship. What I make while exploring a new clay is my response to a clay’s material and firing properties, rather than shaping clay to execute a plan.
I’ve visited clay mines and paddled portions of several local creeks and rivers. Where previously I had looked to solve a variable equation (material to fulfil role x, with characteristic y) I’ve learned that I’m looking for a catalyst for my next series of work in the form of an untested material. While there are thousands of variations in materials readily available for purchase, including gravel and sand of any mesh size, I take perverse pleasure in limiting myself to materials and ‘inclusions’ as they occur, integrated with their geologic substrate. Dividing materials into mesh sizes leaves me slightly underfed in the textural nourishment of the finished piece, even when another viewer may not be able to tell the difference.
David Abram’s book Spell of the Sensuous has been a touchstone:
‘Each thing, each entity that my body sees, presents some face or facet of itself to my gaze while withholding other aspects from view… The clay bowl resting on the table in front of me meets my eyes with its curved and grainy surface. Yet I can only see one side of that surface – the other side of the bowl is invisible, hidden by the side that faces me. …I myself am simply unable to see the whole bowl at once… its very existence as a bowl ensures that there are dimensions wholly inaccessible to me – most obviously the patterns hidden between its glazed and unglazed surfaces, the interior density of its clay body…’ 2
Abram equates the interior of the pot wall with the human subconscious. The interior of the wall of the bowl and the human subconscious are integral parts of their respective whole, yet cannot be directly observed. In the case of the bowl, a user cannot see inside the pot wall without breaking the bowl. We are aware that our subconscious affects our conscious mind yet we cannot consciously examine it.
Abram’s bowl galvanised my interest in the part of a vessel contained by the thickness of the wall. Erosion, cracking, and rocks that pierce the wall of a vessel wash away, pierce or reveal this unseeable territory. The view that such “flaws” afford us, of the inside of the pot wall, are a conscious glimpse of the subconscious territory, even as such flaws destroy a pot’s potential as a utensil.
Abram’s text brought clarity of focus to my obsession with unscreened clays. I began by taking the clay body from the studio where I had apprenticed and locating the same materials in as crude a form as I could find. I gathered and tested different deposits of local clays, soils and sands. While satisfied by this building of a visual and tactile textural experience beginning inside the vessel wall and working outward, I remained unmoved by a narrow range of colours. In 2004 I attended a factory auction and came away with 14 tons (14000kg) of an unidentified English kaolin free of charge. Working with kaolin-based bodies cultivated a wider colour range to offset the textural experience.
This expanded colour palette grew from early tests blending salvaged kaolin with local soils. Later, a geologist friend living in North Carolina sent me samples of different kaolins he was working with at a brick manufacturing plant. He described what he sent as ‘high silica kaolins’. I asked him to not send me technical analyses of the clays. The Carolina kaolins offered silicaceous, feldspathic and manganese rich inclusions that variously expanded, fused or, in the case of the manganese, melted and ran. The Stancill family clay, sand and gravel pit in Maryland, near the Chesapeake Bay, offers a wealth of material. Two materials I selected there that might be classified as fireclays, contain a high proportion of silica aggregate, and have slightly higher iron than many kaolins.
While exploring this line of inquiry I’ve become discouraged enough with the potential of functional form to express all the characteristics of my new materials, that I’ve made my first detour into purely sculptural forms. These thicker forms allowed me to include gravel and stones in the clay. I returned to functional work with previous assumptions set aside. Silicaceous pebbles and iron rich shales would expand, cracking smaller vessels or perforating larger ones.
Questions arose around glazing (if any) and duration of firing. My early tests coincided with my first firing lasting six days (I had been firing 3-4 days). The hottest, ashiest parts of 6-day firings inspired several 10-day firings. One 2008 firing dropped cone 15 in the back of the kiln, and left only an eroded cone 17 standing in the front.3 This style of firing blurs any delineation between clay and glaze.
A series of sculptures using clay designed for a 3-day firing behaved a lot like hot ‘Rice Crispy Treat’ (an American delicacy involving baked puffed rice mixed with melted marshmallow) when subjected to a 6-day firing. Making this series involved a pyroplastic sculpting of clay based on firing a 400lbs (180kg) mass two to four cones beyond its range, watching though a stoking port (all of mine measure 7″ x 7.5″) and cooling the kiln once satisfied with the evolution of form. (The focus of this article is on developing clays. A separate article could be written on the varying firing environments the pieces illustrated represent.)
My research and the resulting direction in my work have culminated in a large-scale public installation. A series of four, 6ft (1.8m) 4 ton (4000kg) stelae have been installed in a public park near my studio. As a result of an estimated 6-8% porosity, they will slowly erode and follow the watershed as far as the Chesapeake Bay, back to the lie of the land.
Jordan Taylor is, at the time of this writing, packing to move to Chapel Hill NC. This article describes his research and exploration of clays for wood firing during the years 2002-2009 while living in the Endless Mountains Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Endnotes:
1. Cardew, Michael. Pioneer Pottery. St Martin’s Press, New York, 1969. Foreword by Bernard Leach, p. viii.
2. Abram, David. Spell of the Sensuous. Random House, New York, 1996. pgs50-1.
3. November 2008, a 225 hour firing, using 32 cords of wood (half red pine and half mixed hardwoods, largely oak and ash) with pyrometer readings of approximately 1340°C, (2440°F) left Orton cone 17 a toothpick-sized finger of material with no curve to it.
Appendix: Clay Recipes
Starting point
50 Yellow banks 401, airfloated
25 Hawthorne bond fireclay
15 tile #6 kaolin
7 Custer feldspar
3 silica 200 mesh
Clay 1
80 crude yellow banks #401 (southern Indiana)
20 local brown clay (Starrucca Creek, screened to 1/4″)
Clay 2
80 salvaged kaolin
20 local brown clay (pond excavation, unscreened)
Clay 3
50 salvaged kaolin
50 local brown clay (pond excavation, unscreened)
Clay 4
40 salvaged kaolin
20 local brown clay (pond excavation, unscreened)
20 nepheline syenite
20 silica sand (4-30 mesh)
Clay 5
56 Candor, NC primary kaolin
24 Lughoff, SC secondary kaolin
20 nepheline syenite
Clay 6
40 salvaged kaolin
28 Candor, NC primary kaolin
12 Lughoff, SC secondary kaolin
12 nepheline syenite
8 silica sand (4-30 mesh)
Clay 7
50 salvaged kaolin
20 nepheline syenite
20 Stancill’s BS clay
7 Candor, NC primary kaolin
3 Lughoff, SC secondary kaolin
Clay 8
30 salvaged kaolin
25 Stancills BS clay
21 Candor, NC primary kaolin
8 Lughoff, SC secondary kaolin
8 nepheline syenite
8 silica sand (4-30 mesh)
Clay 9
75 Stancills BS clay
22 salvaged kaolin
3 nepheline syenite
Clay 10
96 Stancills BS
4 nepheline syenite
