Wild Clay Club

Wild Clay Club Sharing information about finding, processing and using wild clay for pottery.

So, I think the weirdness in the slip that I posted originally is to do with it being just the very fine particles. I...
26/01/2026

So, I think the weirdness in the slip that I posted originally is to do with it being just the very fine particles. I turned the bowl today and it was normal and the trimmings are dry and brittle.

It did, however, trim like a dream. I waited until it was fairly dry and used tungsten carbide tools to trim. The curls that were coming off were so long. They didn't stop on their own. I had to break them when there was too many tangled up to see what I was doing. So maybe that IS slightly weird behaviour. 🙂

Hot tip: if you're using tungsten tools, they are much better on drier/leathery clay. They will slice through it like butter, but if it's too wet it will stick.

Green strength seems very good and I was able to trim it quite thin. I tried very hard to get it even thickness, since, in my experience, clays that behave like this are also prone to cracking.

I haven't made test tiles yet, so that I need to do that next.

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This is my first time trying dry processing of clay. I will still wet process it, but this was a necessary test. You see...
24/01/2026

This is my first time trying dry processing of clay. I will still wet process it, but this was a necessary test. You see this is very sandy, and the lumps are really hard. I tried putting some in water like I normally do and nothing happened.

I could tell they definitely had some clay in them - I was getting clay dust on my fingers - but it was locked up in the lumps.

But the lumps weren't too hard to smash with a mallet (well, technically some of them were, but not all of them) so I crushed a bunch. Then I sieved that through a coarse sieve to get a small amount of power. I added enough water to that to get a clay-like texture and voila - rocks into clay!

The ball is very short, but it shows that there is definitely clay in there. I'll crush the rest of it then wet process it like normal to remove some of the sand. Crushing it with a mallet is so tedious though so I am going to look into getting a corn mill. Apparently they are quite effective. If anyone has an recommendations on brand or what to look for, so I don't get one that wears out really quickly, please let me know. I don't want to spend a lot of money, but I'd rather pay more and get one that is going to last a while too.

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This is a new clay, , and I noticed the weirdest thing about it. I don't think I have seen this in a clay before.I lef...
24/01/2026

This is a new clay, , and I noticed the weirdest thing about it. I don't think I have seen this in a clay before.

I left some slip on the bat from throwing, and when I looked at it this morning it was dry. But the weird part - it's flexible. Normally clay like that would be brittle and snap, but this stuff bends!

The clay itself didn't seem that unusual, though it's very different form commercial clay. It's sticky and holds on to water. Very plastic when you push on it, but sheared easily when I was throwing. That's why it's an open bowl rather than my signature shape - the top half tore right off.

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The test pieces made from the and . It turned out they were all too short to make pinch pots from so I went with sla...
19/01/2026

The test pieces made from the and . It turned out they were all too short to make pinch pots from so I went with slab rolled plates instead. Even the very gentle bend I put in them was a bit much for some, so it should still be a decent test. But it's still giving them a fighting chance by making the clay very uniform thickness.

I like that I can see the red speckles in the sandy clays. It makes me optimistic. :)

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So I have a theory that and are actually the same, just at victoria point it's more mixed together with the red rock...
16/01/2026

So I have a theory that and are actually the same, just at victoria point it's more mixed together with the red rocks that are there.

They are both at the same elevation (sea level) and you can collect white clay at Victoria Point if you try.

The last time I used Victoria Point clay, it was given to me already processed and it was very sandy. It was lovely to use and came out a nice, toasty colour.

The Wellington Point clay was processed quite smooth. It's a very pretty light grey, and is really nice to work with. However, it cracks while drying and firing if you look at it funny. It also has the highest shrink rate of all the clays I've collected (which would explain the cracking!)

So, I'm doing some experiments. I've collected some more Victoria Point clay myself, and have also processed it quite sandy. However, I did remove some of the sand and put it aside. It's very red.

So, experiment one is - mixing the VP clay into the WP clay in different proportions. I started with 100g balls of WP and added, 10, 20, 30 and 40g of VP.

Experiment two is - adding the red sand to the WP clay. I rinsed the clay until the water was running fairly clear. As you can see in the 3rd photo, the sand is mostly just quartz but coated in red. But there are some grains of darker stone. The red stone breaks down very easily when you rub it. I started with 100g of WP and added 10, 20 and 30g of sand.

I'm hoping I will get a nice speckle from the same, and a more cooperative clay. I've also considered sintering some dark clay to make grog to add to a light clay as well.

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The is out of its bisque firing and is looking good. #セラミックス #陶器 #陶瓷 #도기류 #...
12/01/2026

The is out of its bisque firing and is looking good.

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Sadly the was not cooperative. I gave it an extra long time to dry because I was suspicious of it, but it really wante...
12/01/2026

Sadly the was not cooperative. I gave it an extra long time to dry because I was suspicious of it, but it really wanted to hang onto some water.

The second photo is the plate I made. It twisted up like this while it was still green so I didn't put it in the fire. It has so much green strength though. I would have to actually try to snap the plate in half, but that means the internal forces are strong too, which is why it can break itself.

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I collected this back in August after seeing a post about "free clay fill" on facebook marketplace. As much as I disli...
10/01/2026

I collected this back in August after seeing a post about "free clay fill" on facebook marketplace. As much as I dislike facebook, it's the only place I know to find ads like this. It's usually very clean and already dug up for you. The hardest part is not taking too much.

It was quite sticky during processing, and was slow to settle, but it was nice to work with and easy to burnish.

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I collected this back in 2019! It's a bit of Breakfast Creek that is easily accessible and exposed at low tide. It had...
10/01/2026

I collected this back in 2019! It's a bit of Breakfast Creek that is easily accessible and exposed at low tide.

It had dried out completely since then, and I had to rehydrate it. It was strange because it was in hard lumps that didn't want to soften with the water, but once I started squishing it softened right up and and turned back into clay. Like, extreme thixotopy.

It's very short and silty, but not as floppy as I expected. Working with it wasn't all that hard. Obviously it cracked a lot when I pinched it. I could have smoothed it out, but I decided to lean into the texture and only smooth out the inside.

It seems like I haven't tested its firing range previously, and river mud clay is a bit unpredictable so I am going to take a lot of care while firing these pieces.

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08/01/2026

What flavour would it even be?

This is and I have a theory about it. You see it has the highest shrink rate of any clay I’ve collected and cracks if you look at it funny.

But the Victoria Point clay is fine. the first lot of VP clay came to me processed, but I recently collected some myself and it’s basically very white clay (like WP) with red rocks mixed in. Those rocks break down very easily into sand and red pigment.

VP and WP are close together and both at sea level, so my theory is they are part of the same clay deposit. So I kept some of the red sand I filtered from the VP clay and I’m going to do a line blend test of adding it to the WP clay, and another mixing the VP clay as well.

Just need to get this gelato slip into a usable state.

This is a spread of the test tiles I have. This shows bisque, cone 6 and cone 10 that I have. I’m missing some bisque ...
03/01/2026

This is a spread of the test tiles I have. This shows bisque, cone 6 and cone 10 that I have. I’m missing some bisque and cone 6 and I need cone 8 for all of them too.

And this isn’t all my clays of course. This is only 27 of almost 80.

I did a cone 6 firing last night and put these 7 clays into the kiln, with very varied results. puffed up like a pillow...
30/12/2025

I did a cone 6 firing last night and put these 7 clays into the kiln, with very varied results.

puffed up like a pillow. Not ideal, but I think it's adorable.

has a shiny surface from melting and was beginning to slump. (I deliberately position the tiles so it's easy for them to slump if they want to.)

also slumped a little, but didn't get shiny.

might be getting close to its firing temp, but , and all have a long way to go. They barely changed from bisque.

Once I have them all fired to 8 and 10, I'll check the porosity and shrinkage of all of them to determine the ideal firing temp. (Except for Mundoolan. I think it's proved itself a low fire clay (if that).)

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