How To Identify Clay in Nature

hey guys today i'm out here to talk to you a little bit about how to identify clay in the wild now i know a lot of you that are watching my channel are going out and trying to find clay and some people are really struggling to locate it you'll find that clay exists almost every place in the world but it really helps to know what you're looking for and if you're expecting it to look like what it does in art class you're going to be disappointed especially in a dry climate like where i live clay is never plastic like you find it in art class it's actually sometimes hard or it can be like dirt so one of the first things i like to look for to narrow down my search are these horizontal layers of strata like you can see behind me here horizontal layers of strata indicate that that ground was laid down underneath maybe an ancient ocean or a lake bed or a riverbed and those are the kind of places where clay in nature will naturally settle and accumulate so that's a good place to start your search when you see these horizontal layers like this back behind me that might be a good place to climb up carefully and start looking at some of those layers and seeing if there's clay in there let me show you some of the other characteristics of clay that i find in nature that helps me identify clay from sand and dirt and silt and other things that are not clay [Music] one of the best ways to recognize clay of nature is to look for that crackled texture like you can see on the ground here where i'm standing this is the bottom of a dried up pond and so it gets that crackled texture like you might see in the bottom of a dried-up mud puddle and that is an indication that the material here is what they call expansive that is when it gets wet it expands it gets bigger when it dries it contracts it shrinks up and that's what causes that crackled texture and clay is by nature expansive so it's a great indicator when you see that texture that there's clay there [Music] do when you finally do find clay it's going to look something like this it has that crackle texture like we talked about in the bottom of the pond or the mud puddle when it's dry it tends to be rather hard like you know you would expect clay to be it's not as soft as say dirt if it has a lot of sand and it's going to be looser you don't want it to have a lot of sand in it of course the real test is getting it wet rolling it between your hands seeing how plastic it feels if it's got the right texture if it's plastic if it's soft enough to mold if it'll hold its shape then it's worth doing some more tests on and trying to form a small vessel [Music] here's another great way to recognize clay in nature and that is road tracks places where cars have driven through and it made this really hard mud now if you live in a wet climate i mean it's not going to be dried out and hard like this but still good clay is going to hold its shape just like if you form a jar or a sculpture out of clay a clay is going to hold its shape if it's too much sand or silt in it it's just gonna crumble or fall apart after the over the course of a few days but good clay when you drive through it when you walk through it it could be cow tracks horse tracks it doesn't matter it's gonna leave a semi permanent track in the mud and just driving down dirt roads and looking for these tracks is a good way to find where there's clay now you can see that same crackled texture we already talked about but in this case the track is another clue itself you can see there where a cow stepped in the mud left really deep tracks it's been some time back and yet there they are that's because this soil is high clay content you also have that crackle texture along there you wouldn't want to drive up this road in the rain [Music] what are you doing [Music] all right now i'm out here on the wilcox playa to help you understand plastic clay because i live in arizona and the desert clay is almost never in a plastic state it's almost always dry either like dirt or hard almost like a rock so in places like this a playa in the southwest is just an ancient lake bed so there used to be a huge lake here called lake cochise the lake dried up eons ago nowadays occasionally there's you know a couple inches in lots of this and then a lot of the time most the time it's dry as a bone like this but it's always damp underneath the lake bed and there is clay here as you can see from the crackled texture of the surface but it's down about a foot and i didn't bring a hand i didn't bring a shovel with me today either so i'm i'm doing it with my raw hammer okay here it is it's always like clockwork just about a foot a little over a foot down and there is this nice sticky green clay so here's that greenish clay i was talking about and if you live in a damper climate than i do you know clay isn't always hard like i'm showing you sometimes it's soft and plastic so it's easy for you if you live say in the eastern united states or someplace where it's a wet climate when you find clay you can just pick it up and squeeze it between your hands and you'll know it's clay it'll feel like clay for those of us that live in a dry climate you know you have to add water and knead it and let it sit a little bit and then knead it some more maybe and you know get it kind of plastic and then you can kind of make a determination how good it is uh so you know but you're going to be looking for a lot of the same things you might be looking for tire tracks that have gone through mud you can see the texture of it by the way the tracks are holding up uh you can see those horizontal layers in a hillside or in a road cut that are going to tell you hey this is um you know stratigraphy that was laid down by water and this is a good place to look for clay so even though you have different environment uh your clay may be in a different form it may be plastic like this uh you're looking for a lot of the same things uh it's just it's gonna be easier for you to test because you're not going to have to wet it before you test it like we have to do but this clay here on the playa is wet yeah if i had a water jug with me i'd add some water it is a little dry i'm sure if i dug deeper it'd be wetter but it's still plastic you can still tell it has that plastic consistency so that's what we're looking for when we're looking for clay is that plastic consistency you know once it gets wet so if you're out looking for wild clay where you live look for those places where people have driven through it look for the texture where tracks are look for those horizontal layers of strata in road cuts or embankments that tell you that that soil was laid down by water and look for that crackled texture in the ground to tell you that there's clay there those are some good clues that should help you locate clay now if you're enjoying this channel and you haven't already think about subscribing to it so you know when my next video comes out if you enjoyed this video give me a thumbs up so i know you liked it if you'd like to learn more about finding and processing your own wild clay check out this video right here thanks for watching i'll catch you next time [Music] you

Channel: Andy Ward's Ancient Pottery

Views: 213,489

Keywords: pottery, clay, how to, DIY, craft, primitive pottery, ancient pottery, southwest pottery, traditional pottery, primitive skills, andy ward, ceramics, ceramic arts, handmade, handbuilt, handcrafted, maker, creative, wild clay, clay from dirt, clay in nature, natural clay, natural materials, traditional craft, foraged clay, found clay, find clay, searching for clay, arizona

Id: nqiJJDzR3vw

Length: 9min 3sec (543 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020