Del Rio: Digging Clay

OK, I've been asked by many how in the world do you find clay in an area you've never been to? Well, that's simple. The USDA has sampled almost all of the soil in the United States, so either get a physical soil sample book for the county you want to visit, or find the county on the web from this site: http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/HomePage.htm and learn your way around.

Del Rio is nicely mapped. I was able to find an outcrop of soil/clay and using the net and my gps I found the area which was sampled in the report.

The area was baron, but in a different from the rest of the area.

I dug down and took a small amount of clay from about 6 inches from the surface. I tested the plasticity: Could I make a coil without it cracking too much, and could I smash it and do it again. I could.

So I dug about 40 pounds and placed it in my truck. And off I went back home. 8oo miles round trip.

And I started testing. How can I separate the undesirable from the clay? First I made a slurry out of the clay with water, then I sponged off the top (thinking about the Tera Sigillata: I knew clay would "ride" on water because of the small particle size and that the heavier, non clay particles would sink.) Then I ringed the sponge out on some plaster bats.

Clay. Del Rio 2335. (named after the FM road it was found near.)

I was able to throw a nice cylinder. This clay does not have the impurities I found in the Ellis County Brown clay I dug earlier so I am hoping when it's fired it will stay strong. It has a very plastic quality and I might be able to pull a handle from this clay.

My next post will document the cleaning process.

Del Rio: Book Number one Accomplished

Book: So, I’m burying book number one. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and bury my book at the same place I was going to extract clay.

Off of Interstate 90 in the city of Del Rio, Texas, Farm to Market road 2325 veers north. About 1 mile north of the intersection of 90 and 2325, on the east side of the road, is a barren field which is different from most of West Texas. Instead of a caliche rock covering, there is a loamy, soft clay covering. I had found exactly what I what I was looking for.

Del Rio is a bustling small southwest Texas border town. There is a small historic downtown with the traditional Catholic influences and the limestone County Courthouse was created by an Italian team, which was common in small town Texas in the 1880s. I was clearly not home.

The day was a bit overcast and cloudy and a bit chilly, around 50 degrees or so. The field I chose was about 100 yards off the road, and where I chose to dig was in a naturally occurring low area. I was 300 yards from the County Corrections lockup facility.

At about 5 till noon I started digging. I felt odd. Uncomfortable. I had a ceremony planned and I wanted cars to drive by, to watch what was going on, but not to see. I got everything I wanted.

When the hole was deep enough and I placed in the book. I was reeling. 400 miles from my home and very much outside my comfort zone. I placed the book in the hole and dusted with some Ellis County pine needles.

Now it was noon, and the county tested their sirens. The book I was covering looked like a baby, swaddled in burlap. More clay covered. And people kept on driving by. Watching but not seeing. Witnesses to nothing yet everything. And I covered it with the clay I was going to dig in a bit.

When it was over, I felt relieved and accomplished. The first of four to go into the ground.

New Book, Terra Sigillata, and a pit fired pot

The wheels have been spinning lately but due to the weather, not much digging is going on around Texas. This weekend I will travel to the Del Rio area, armed with my soil studies, and search for the elusive clay in the West Texas area. I say elusive because there is much hard rock covering the area. More on that to come.

My new book is being created and this one has a narwhal-mermaid-ocean motif. I was channeling the ancient Greeks with this one, thinking of my college time on the island of Create, and in particular the aqua blue of the rebuild plaice.

The Terra Sigillata met with mixed reviews in Waxahachie. The low-fire potters in this area use colored slips and these pots looked somewhat unfinished compared to those. I want to create some new terra sig, but I will use a clay with more iron to make a darker color than that of the pot. I'll post those when complete.

The final pot is a Terra Sig pot placed in the outdoor fireplace I have set up at my house. I buried the pot in ceder, pecan and oak and fired it for about 12 hours. We had 12 inches of snow, a record in these parts, and this pot is a good record of that storm. I love the reduction areas, and where I had wood burning inside the pot I got some excellent patterns. This is my first attempt at pit firing ever, and I'm learning that it's all placement of the fire next to the pot. The lip did crack off, but the pot itself stayed together with very few stress cracks.

All pots are Trinity Ceramics Terra Cotta, an earthenware which fires a light brick red at 06. These pots were fired to 06, and I usually glaze this clay to 03. All oxidation with the exception of the pit fired piece.

Progress: Book 1

Book one is done: It's ready now to be buried deep in the State. With ceremony. So, I never thought it would be so difficult working on something and letting it go: I never thought it would be part of this.

Its a new uncharted level of this project. It took time to create now it will be out of my hands.

The pages are bamboo, red grass, locally dug clay, and a school schedule. Each element represents different decades of my life and particular memories.

Note: This is part of an email I had with my professor which explains some of the thought process when dealing with these books:

My Epitaph Books are a visual interpretation of this theme expressing personal conflicts left unresolved and embattled. Pages in the book will be highly representative, vague by design, and mean nothing to anyone but me. I am toying with the idea that during the ceremonies, participants will either be blind-folded or faced away from the hole when the books are lowered, in effect, not witnessing the placement of what will be destroyed within a decade.

What these books are not is a symbolic burying of problems from the past. I am not ceremoniously covering conflicts to forget about them or tritely say "hey those issues are now buried." On one level these books are a direct confrontation of unresolved issues, but ultimately these books are a statement of the conflict in relation to the limited time we have left to live and the disappearance of all conflicts due to the disolvance of all those involved, human and otherwise. The amount of time spent creating and ceremoniously burying, “witnessed” by blindfolded participants and turned away audiences, and ultimately, the disappearance of the physical piece itself, all crescendo and manifest in the internal struggle of existence and ultimate failure of self-perseverance.

These pieces are the embodiment of the theme of Man vs. Self.


I like the idea of burying this one by a highway so people watch without really seeing.

Ellis County Brown No. 1 major fail

I threw pots with the remainder of the ECB no. 1 this weekend.
Last Friday I put my two test pieces on my speakers in my art class and when I came to school on Monday, the two pieces were transformed into grog.

Causes? I might have fired too high. I'll make more small test pieces to determine if this is the case. Also, there might be something in clay which burned out which made it unstable.

Book One: Raw

I've been working on this bird of prey. I'm still evoking the Egyptian Totum motif. I will cut the pages today and then start "writing" by this weekend.

Fired Ellis County Brown No. 1

I fired the test batch of the EC Brown #1 and was pleased with the results. The clay was very grainy when I threw it and I was worried that this grain would explode under heat, but it must have been some sort of organic material, perhaps a shelled creature about the quarter size of a piece of sand.

The material burned out and the result is a hard, dunky, light piece. The color went from a dark chocolate brown when wet to a lighter brown when bone dry. The fired color is a light buff.

I will formalize the following tests and come up with or use a standard scale for the following:

Weight: With the burn out of the organic material, this clay resembles soft brick used for kiln building with the ability to quickly "sand" it down.

Hardness: The terracotta I use is the Trinity Terracotta or the Armadillo Red, both high in iron and both very tight and hard when fired. If this were on the "normal" end, the EC Brown #1 is much softer.

Throwability: This clay is difficult to throw and form. More on this after my 20 lbs has dried a bit more.

Sound: When thunked, terracotta makes a high pitched ring. This clay wants to resonate the same, but comes out lower. Other clays will ring higher when fired higher so I will glaze the test pieces and report.

Other notes: I spoke with the Ellis County Texas Archaeological Society past president yesterday. I heard her speak several years ago and part of her display had a picture of a pictograph created when this area was filled with a transient native population. While she has the display packed away, she did say that she had a book with pictures of decorative pots of the area and she would scan them and send them to me. With the new batch of EC Brown #1 I will decorate in the same fashion and use some Terra Sigilatta on some.

Good stuff to follow.