clay mix-ins

Rocks rich in red and yellow ochres collected on walks along the coastal path, roughly crushed in the pestle and mortar and mixed into a buff clay body from St Agnes. These samples will be bisqued and fired to cone 6. The raw colour palette whilst lovely will not retain its vibrancy and differentiation in such a high firing, however, I hope the pockets of pigment and other minerals will create interesting reactions when exposed to such heat.

plasticity tests

Rehydrating the processed bone-dry foraged clays to test their plasticity. I collected the top Brickhill clay earlier in the year in my hometown Bedford which sits on a bed of Oxford clay. The clay was once mined by the London Brick Company, ironically the name of the town is not etymologically linked to Bedfordshire’s brick-making history but clay is easier to source close to the surface in this area due to the gradient. This clay is extremely plastic so I'm using it as a sort of control to compare the local clays to. None of the clays are as plastic as the control but the Clodgy Point and Carbis Bay clays do pass the coil test. The Clodgy Point clay seems promising enough to attempt to throw, the others will need to be mixed with a more plastic clay, however. The coin samples shown in a previous image are these clays mixed with enough St Agnes clay to improve their plasticity. All of these tests will be fired to cone 6 and, depending on the results, a lower temperature to gain more insight into how they can be used as materials.