Modelling with Clay

1Uwase's muddy hands

It rained all night. In the morning Uwase walks down to the stream behind her home, and the ground there is soft and grey.

She digs out a lump with her fingers. It squeezes. It bends. It stays in whatever shape she leaves it.

That grey lump is clay, ibumba. Today you will turn a lump like it into a pot, and then into an animal, using nothing but your two hands.

2No clay near you? Make dough

If there is no clay where you live, you can model with dough instead. Mix 2 cups of flour with 1 cup of salt, then add water slowly, a little at a time, until it is soft but not sticky. It behaves just like clay, and everything in this lesson works with it.

3First, wake the clay up

Fresh clay hides tiny bubbles of air inside it. Air bubbles are the enemy. A bubble trapped in the wall of a pot makes the pot crack open while it dries.

So Uwase squeezes her lump flat, folds it over, and squeezes again. Ten times. Twenty times. This is called kneading, the same word we use for bread dough.

When the lump is smooth all the way through, with no cracks and no dry crumbs, it is ready.

Too dry and crumbly? Wet your hands and knead again, adding only a little water at a time. Too wet and sticky? Leave it in the air for a few minutes and try again.

Worked example: Uwase makes a pinch pot

Follow her step by step. You can do exactly this.

1. She rolls the clay between her palms into a smooth ball, about the size of a hen's egg.
2. She holds the ball in one hand and presses her thumb slowly into the middle. She stops about halfway. Her thumb must not come out of the bottom, or her pot will have a hole in it.
3. Now the pinching. Her thumb is inside the hollow, her fingers are outside. She squeezes them gently together, pinch, and turns the pot a little, turn. Pinch, turn. Pinch, turn. Round and round.
4. Every pinch makes the wall a little thinner and the pot a little wider. She stops when the wall is about as thick as her little finger.
5. She presses the bottom gently down on a flat table. Now the pot can stand up on its own.
6. Last of all she dips one finger in water and rubs the cracks on the rim until they are smooth.

Notice why she keeps turning. If she pinched in one place only, that side would go thin while the other side stayed fat, and the pot would lean over and fall. Turning is what keeps the walls even.

Worked example: Mugisha models a cow

Mugisha wants a cow with long horns.

1. He rolls a fat oval for the body, about as long as his hand.
2. For the legs he does not stick four little sausages on. Instead he pulls the clay downwards out of the body itself, four times, and shapes each leg. A pulled leg is part of the body, so it cannot drop off.
3. The head is a smaller oval. This one he cannot pull, so he must join it on. Here is how you join clay properly.

4How to join two pieces: rough, wet, press, smooth

Mugisha holds the head against the body and it sticks, for now. But clay shrinks a little as it dries, and a lazy join pops open. Every year, somewhere in Rwanda, a clay cow loses its head this way.

Do it properly:

1. Rough. Scratch the two faces that will meet. Use a stick, a nail or your fingernail. Scratch them criss-cross, like a ploughed field.
2. Wet. Put a drop of water, or a smear of very wet muddy clay, on the scratches. That is your glue.
3. Press. Push the two pieces together and hold them while you count slowly to five.
4. Smooth. Rub clay from one piece across onto the other with your finger, until you cannot see the join line at all.

Rough, wet, press, smooth. Now the horns, the ears and the tail, the same four steps every time.

5Drying

Your pot is finished. Do not put it in the hot sun and do not put it on a hot metal roof.

In strong heat the outside dries and shrinks fast while the inside is still wet, and the pot cracks right open. Put it in the shade, where the air moves, and let it dry slowly, over two or three days.

Rwandan potters have known this for hundreds of years. Shape the pot, dry it slowly in the shade, and only then take it to the fire.

Try it yourself

Think about each one and say your answer out loud, then tap Show answer to check.

1. Why does Uwase squeeze and fold her clay twenty times before she starts?
2. She presses her thumb into the ball and it comes out the other side. What has gone wrong, and how can she fix it?
3. Keza's pot has one thin wall and one fat wall. What did she forget to do?
4. Mugisha's clay cow lost a horn while it was drying. What did he forget?
5. Your pot must be finished by tomorrow morning. Should you dry it on the hot roof? Why, or why not?

Answers

1. To push out the air bubbles. Air trapped inside makes clay crack as it dries. This squeezing and folding is called kneading.
2. She pushed too far, so the pot now has a hole in its bottom. She can squeeze the hole shut, smooth it with a wet finger, and press her thumb again, this time stopping halfway.
3. She forgot to turn. Pinch, turn, pinch, turn. Turning is what makes the wall the same thickness all the way round.
4. He forgot to scratch and wet the join. Rough, wet, press, smooth. A smooth-to-smooth join always pops open when the clay shrinks.
5. No. Fast drying cracks the pot, because the outside shrinks while the inside is still wet. Dry it slowly, in the shade. A cracked pot tomorrow is worse than a good pot the day after.