Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
From the brains behind Brains On, this is the Moment of Um. Answering those questions that make you go, um. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Anna Goldfield. One of the most wonderful things I've ever seen in a museum wasn't some shiny golden statue or a cool stone axe. It was a little clay pot.
made around 3,000 years ago from what is today New Mexico. I was about 10 years old and visiting a museum with my parents. On this little lumpy clay pot, I could see small fingerprints left by the person who made it. The fingerprints weren't much bigger than mine, so they must have belonged to a kid. 3,000 years ago, a kid just like me was learning to make the kinds of clay pots that adults made for everyday use.
I knew that my clay came from an art supply store, but 3,000 years ago, there weren't any of those. So how did these people get clay to make their pottery? I'm not the only one with this question. Hello, my name is Bree. I'm eight years old. I'm from Ottawa, Ontario. And my question is, how do you make clay for pottery? Essentially, clay is rock that has been decomposed by weather.
More specifically, clay is igneous rock, which is formed when molten rock under the Earth's surface solidifies. I am Lauren Sandler, and I am a ceramic artist and educator. Feldspar is one of our most
common rock-forming minerals on the Earth. So when feldspar gets weathered, there's a chemical change that happens to feldspar. And so what happens is the molecule of water gets chemically bonded to it. And that's actually what turns it into clay. That's what makes it soft and malleable. When we make something with clay, I shape it with my hands and we put it back in the kiln and we put it through that intense process of heat,
that chemically bonded water escapes and that material turns back to stone. You know, to make it into clay, it takes, you know, thousands of years. And then, you know, hours in a kiln turns it back to stone. Not all clay is the same. Not all clay is workable or best suited for, for example, making pottery.
We can find it in many different places. Good places to maybe go explore to see maybe if there's clay is in areas by water, such as lakes and ponds and streams, or even where the earth has been dug up, like in an area where there may be a construction site where they're digging deep into the earth. There's probably clay under there.
And so there's some things you can do to find out if maybe that is workable clay. So what one can do if you're walking by a stream and you're curious, what is this here? Can I make something with this? You can literally like go pick up a little bit of that material that you find by the water and you can roll it up in your hand and see if it actually shapes a ball. Then you can even roll it in between your hands and make a little coil.
And that too, oh, if it's holding the shape of a coil, that means there's some fine particles in there. There's some clay in there. And then you can even bend that coil and see how much does it hold its shape or how much does it break? The more it breaks, maybe the more other materials are in there. But the more it holds its shape, that means there's some clay in there. There's some good material there to potentially play with and shape with. Um, uh,
If I wanted to make clay pottery just like the stuff I saw in that museum, I'd have to dig the clay up myself. It's made of certain types of rocks that have broken down. Sometimes, if you know where to dig, you can find nice pure clay. Lots of times, though, it's all mixed in with other soil and sediments. You have to soak it in water to let the heavier clay bits sink to the bottom while the rest floats on top. That would probably make a big mess, and I probably shouldn't dig big holes in my front yard.
Good thing there's an art supply store right down the street. I'm going to make a clay cookie jar. If you like this episode, take a second to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you're feeling shifty, check out the Brains On podcast where we have a whole episode all about the ultimate shapeshifters, cuttlefish. If you have a moment of um question, we'd love to help you answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact.
See you next time and the next day and the next day and every weekday. Until then, uh...