What clay did to me, and what I made of it - Make your own clay.
I got into clay super late. Of course, I got into it as a baby/child playing with mud, probably, but I didn't have that "whoa-moment" that felt like clay profoundly affected my existence.
I was already 28 Years old when the mud struck, and oh my, it really threw me into a wheel of obsession with earth.
I made this teapot from self-made clay from the garden, and I will take you on a little Illustrated journey of how I ended up making clay and how this specific teapot came into being.
The Studio
Ever since Lea, an old classmate from middle school, opened a little studio in Frankfurt, clay has become a constant part of my life. She was a huge support and inspiration, providing me with the platform, the wheel, and the room I needed actually to start that journey. I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate her and the space she created for so many people to explore that medium.
Where I crafted.
What you need
Making clay is ultimately an outdoor activity; the very experience depends on the place where you're actually making it! At the same time, it will connect you to exactly that place in ways that hardly any other medium can do. The only thing you need there is:
2 x Bucket 
1 x Sieve
1 x Cotton Bag 
3-5Kg Gypsum 
And most importantly - Water! 
Earth - Finding the Clay
I found myself spending a lot of time in the garden with my daughter, where we were just gardening, going about our own business, and I was in total ignorance about all the clay I was standing on.
It was only after I moved into more theoretical realms, learning about glazes, temperatures, and the firing itself, that questions arose about the substance that the very medium is made of. I always knew that clay comes from somewhere beneath the ground, but buying it out of a store never provided me with an actual sense of connection to where it came from.
This was the original site close to my garden, where people dug out earth from about 1m below the surface. After 50cm, the earth contains much less organic (carbon-based) material, and the earth turns from a brown and dry to a more reddish wet color and consistency. Which means already we're much closer to what we know as "clay" in its natural appearance. The red color usually comes from Iron Oxide.
Later that day, I returned with a bucket and filled it with the red earth.
I sometimesdrop lo
Preparing The Clay
USGS Definition of Clay: The term "clay" is applied both to materials having a particle size of less than 2 micrometers (25,400 micrometers = 1 inch) and to the family of minerals that has similar chemical compositions and common crystal structural characteristics.
I think the idea of making your own clay is, in itself, a little bit silly and maybe comes from our modern understanding that humans are the "creators and inventors" of things, when in reality, we're mostly just remixing things that already exist. With clay, it's no different, as there are two main types of clay that can be found in nature, ready to work with. The two Types are:
Primary Clay
This is probably the purest form of clay and appears usually close to its source rock, which was extensively altered over a very large amount of time, weathering into a white moldable goo. It is a bit more chunky, but it is used for things like very fine porcelain. Like Kaolinite, which Europe found long after the Chinese, and started their journey into finer ceramics.
Secondary Clay
Usually, one more surface level, like river banks, where primary clay has already been washed away and the fine particles collected as sediment over a long period of time. Even the small quartz particles of the Sahara (not the sand, but the dust of it) can travel thousands of miles to form caly somewhere else
In my case, I've been working with secondary clay that I collected from the pile shown in the picture, and put it into a bucket with a lot of water, where I cleansed it by kneading it inside of the water until it became an almost watery mass.
The First Pouring
This brown liquid mass will be poured through a sieve to seperate if from sticks, leaves, and roots (so-called organic material).
You really want to stir up the clay from the ground when pouring so you have as much clay as you can in the water. While also trying to keep the very large bits of rock and sand on the ground of the bucket. You don't have to be super accurate with this one, the accuracy comes in the next step!
Separate the stones and sand from the clay.
The trick after the first pouring is to let gravity do work. So after pouring, the only thing you have to do is: Wait.
Already after an hour, you will see how the water on the top of the bucket will separate from the clay. (Little bonus tip: Use a transparent bucket, and you will beautifully see the layers forming.
Some also let the bucket stand there for a night, but it's up to your preference and how fine you want the clay to be. The surface level clay is usually the most refined.
Pouring the Clay - Be gentle and careful now. 
The most important step now is the second pouring phase. Now that everything has settled, you want to very carefully lift the bucket without moving it too much, and first pour the clear top layer of water away, in such a way that only the water drains, but the clay surface below remains intact and doesn't get stirred up too much. Once the water is gone, you will see how the clay starts to pour out with the water. This is the moment when you want to pour ONLY the clay into another bucket.
You will pour the reddish mass just as much until you see the slightest amount of sand pollution or change of color in the bottom of the bucket. Immediately stop, because you wouldn't want that. (unless you actually want it, for whatever reason). The finer the clay, the easier and the more detailed you can work with it!
Congratulations, essentially you now have clay, but it's too watery to work with and form.
Let the bucket sit overnight, pour the excess water away that will separate on the top, and you will be left with what will be poured into:
The Cotton Bag
Any cotton bag will do; make sure it's actual cotton and not a plastic bag. You fully empty the bucket into that bag and make sure you find a good spot where the bag can hang, so it isn't exposed to direct sunlight but gets air evenly from all angles. It will dry too quickly, and you would have to start all over again, which is just annoying. You'd learn a lot along the way, but let's not make that mistake today.
Depending on the humidity, you can leave the bag for one or two days and then pour the gooey mass straight onto:
The Gypsum Board
I genuinely cannot recommend or favor any gypsum here, and have tried different ones, and they are pretty similar to me.
The Preparation of Gypsum is super straightforward. For two parts of gypsum powder, there is one part of water. So two cups of gypsum, one cup of water.
With gypsum, the water goes first! Then you slowly start pouring in the powder while you're simultaneously stirring. I like to take a very flat container, like an old flat and wide baking jar that I don't use anymore. Sealed cardboard can also work sometimes if it's thick enough to hold water for a moment. Most important is that the material is a little bendable and flexible, so you get the hard gypsum piece out. Don't be surprised if the jar gets warm along the way. When the gypsum touches water and starts to dry, you have an exothermic reaction resulting in a slight heating of the mass.
for two days somewhere dry, and it's ready to use!
Once it's ready you can put the clay on it, which looks somwhat like this. Now you have to keep an eye open because depending on the room temperature and humidity the clay can dry up within hours and you want to find the sweetspot where it's perfectly modable.
The Actual Clay
You can see when the top layer starts to be less shiny; it should be ready. In my example, I was a little impatient, as you can clearly see that some parts are still wet.
Peel it off and form it into a ball. Congratulations, you just made a nice piece of clay! 
This is already a huge step when you made it till here!
Play with it, form it - examine it! It's the perfect moment to get to know the clay in its "base form," from which you can venture in so many directions, and it opens a whole range of possibilities of what you could do with it now.
My next post will be about how I'm making the teapot!
Don't miss out when I'm posting my next making of! Get notified by subscribing to my newsletter. When you're ready, you can start your journey of creating your own teapot!
It often sounds like a cliché to say that clay is therapeutic, but it is real. It is something tangible and usable that provides a stable reflection and allows me to work with aspects of myself that don't have a chance to surface in that medium.
Why has learning about clay been so transformative? I guess because Earth is everywhere; it follows you wherever you look. Whether you're looking at a building or the ground beneath you, you see silicon oxide in some shape or form. It feels as if our hands and bodies already know this material instinctively, which makes sense since we come from the soil.
Happy kneading,
Kemane
Enjoying fatherhood, storytelling, worldbuilding, learning from mother earth. I like perfectly ripe blackberries and good brushes. Co-founder of @konduktum. Working for systemic change in the creator economy!
