There are 4 main types of wild clay, at least one of these can be found almost anywhere on earth. Finding Wild Clayįirst you will need to locate a deposit of wild clay. I have also written a few helpful blog posts about finding and processing wild clay which you can take a look at here. To go more in-depth on wild clay, how to locate, test and process it, check out my online masterclass Wild Clay 101 which you can learn more about by following this link. It is definitely worth taking the time to learn to find and process native clay for primitive pottery. Although it is possible to make primitive pottery from store-bought clay, such potter lacks the same essence connecting it to the local land that wild dug clay provides. The most important ingredient in primitive pottery, the very foundation of such is wild clay dug and processed by hand.

Techniques: develop the skills to form pottery simplyĭigging wild clay from a stream bank Wild Clay.Tools: simple tools for forming, decorating and polishing pottery.Clay: wild clay, hand-dug from the earth.To make primitive pottery you need three basic things: If you are interested in learning how to leave behind the expensive pottery wheel, electric kiln, slab rollers, pug mills and other machinery that separate us from this simple, beautiful process of our ancestors then read on. No matter where you are in the world, the tools and materials you need to make beautiful primitive pottery are not far from your door.Ĭan we go back to a simpler process for making pottery? Is it still possible to make pottery like our ancestors did? Yes, it is! No matter where you are in the world, the tools and materials you need to make beautiful primitive pottery are not far from your door. You can learn from these potters and from archaeology and ancient manuscripts, using these resources you can successfully recreate the simple but beautiful art made from the earth near your home. In places like, India, Africa and Mexico, families still make pottery in their traditional ways. You can look at primitive pottery traditions around the world and get a glimpse of the pottery that our ancestors made thousands of years ago. Yet, from this simple beginning and long tradition of simplicity has evolved a complex process that is highly dependent on mechanization and cash expenditures. For most of those millennias pottery was formed using simple tools and materials that could be easily made or found by anyone. People have been making pottery for thousands of years, from the very beginning of human civilization.

Primitive pottery need not be crude or plain looking

Small anvil c eramics