Clay Run (And a Sincere Apology)

Three weeks without a post and I’m sure I’ve lost some of you.  It really is bad form for a blogger to write nothing for so long. I sincerely apologize for the hiatus and for leaving you hanging. I must backtrack about a month to catch you up – but what a month it’s been!

A combination of becoming suddenly very busy, passing the holidays, and making a visa run to Thailand had put me into some kind of writing slump. Writing requires digestion. When a person is too distracted to reflect, nothing of value can be written. It’s as if I’ve been eating and eating, but never digesting. Now that I have had some time to digest and write, you can read the crap that comes out!

December started with a clay-buying trip. Though most my work is with the community development team, I still help at the filter factory whenever I can. With the factory running out of clay, a clay run was desperately needed. Aside from my intense interest in going, my having a couple years’ worth of high school ceramics is more experience than anyone else can claim around here, so Derek brought me along for the trip. We needed to address the problem of inconsistency within batches. The ones that usually fail our tests are either misshapen, or water flows through too quickly or slowly. All filters are handled much in the same way, so we assume the differences come from either the clay material used, or each filter’s specific position in the kiln when firing. A trip to Jian Shui would address both issues.

Jian Shui potter at work

We get clay from a small town called Jian Shui, a place with hundreds of years of ceramics history; home of one of the four renowned types of Chinese pottery. Our contact there is the man who built our kiln, and he is quite a character. In his mid-60’s, he looks only 40, and has a calm observant demeanor that makes him hard to read. From what I’ve gathered, he is extremely cunning. Pushing him to do or say too much causes him to either clam up or throw a nervous tantrum. I get the sense that by being occasionally unstable or edgy, he purposefully maintains a reputation that can be quite useful in his business dealings. But again, I cannot be certain for he is very difficult to read. I do know that I liked him, as he stayed with us the entire day and proved to do everything to help us.

From left: Clay-Man, Kiln-Man, Derek

Through Kiln-Man, we met Clay-Man, an uncouth, illiterate man who happened to live on land with great clay beneath it. Though we supposedly speak the same language, I couldn’t comprehend his speech, so Kiln-Man translated all day long. I did understand one sentence, though: “I’ve been digging clay for thirty years!” which was repeated at least thirty times throughout the day. He supplies most the town’s expert potters with excellent clay, and we decided to purchase thirteen tons of “five-color clay,” which is really five types of clay, naturally mixed. The five types give the potter certain advantages of each, for instance the plasticity of one and the durability of another. Prices were high, so Kiln-Man methodically got him drunk at lunch. Without informing me or Derek of the tactic, the price was talked down in that unintelligible form of Mandarin they used. Unsurprisingly, for much rice liquor (aka “white devil”) was consumed, Clay-Man turned red and sloppy. However, we both observed that while Kiln-Man matched him cup for cup, he seemed to sober as the discussion went on. Very peculiar.  

Pug mill

Clay studio courtyard

Kiln-Man’s assistance did not stop there. He answered our kiln-related questions and suggested raising our chimney to increase oxygen flow through the kiln for a better firing. We wanted to see pug mills (via churning and squeezing, pug mills homogenize clay and eliminate air bubbles which can cause explosions in the kiln as heat expands the air) so he led us to the back-rooms of different potters’ studios, which I was very keen to examine. He instructed us to keep a clay sample to use for comparison, so we could be certain we weren’t cheated upon delivery. Hidden sand in clay is another scam, as it adds to the weight and reduces quality. So he showed us how to add water and rub a clay rock between our fingers to root out any sand. And then he bought us a whole roast duck for the long drive home.

We had a great trip, but it left us exhausted, and we both fell ill as a result. It wasn’t the first time this happened to me in these few short months, and it wouldn’t be the last. The important thing was we got good clay, and learned a lot. Hopefully our efforts result in more successful filters per batch and a  reduction of operating cost, which can be passed on to the villagers who desperately need clean water.