I really like the combination of step by step instructions and the snippet of history. Plus your suggestion of making something while you did was excellent.
I just want to take a moment to thank you, Andy. I’m pretty slack about “Liking” videos, but I’ve been watching my way through all of yours. I’ve been taught primitive pottery in the past, even done a couple of successful firings on my own, but your instructions are so helpful that you have definitely leveled up my game greatly! I fired my first bowl a couple of days ago, have a few more pots ready to fire, and am about to make yucca brushes and slip paint. I learn and practice and teach a lot of ancient ancestral skills- we moved into our van several years ago to live these skills- and thanks in large part to you, pottery has become one of my favorites. I especially appreciate how you teach ways to do this without spending money. Improvising, bush crafting, and scavenging are the biggest parts of the fun and freedom for me. THANK YOU!
Watching your videos is making me want to work in clay again. I have an Art degree with a minor in ceramics that I haven’t indulged in almost 30 years.
Thank you for encouraging, "You WILL make mistakes... incorporate those mistakes into your design & move on." I've been wanting to do something new (in another material), put off as it'll be imperfect and slow. Now today I'll go to my workspace and do it, IMperfectly.
More snow, zero wind. Come on up. We look forward to having you all. Maybe come up with Gene to look for clay this summer. :) we will miss you tonight but I am firing clay in my kiln. My chicken pot will be done and I plan to try it out with some chicken thighs. Yum.
Sounds great Jeff. I hope to get up to Helena this summer and maybe meet you and Gene in person. Right now I am sitting in Denver waiting for the roads to clear in Wyoming.
Mistakes happen. So far, most of my mistakes(usually brush strokes slipping) have been able to be worked into design by adding even more just like it into the design. Some of the neater elements have happened this way. Like bob ross would say happy accident. My wife dropped a drop of slip right inside a bowl where was supposed to be nothing. She was upset about it and asked me what to do. I didn't see any way to incorporate it into the design. But did notice it looked like a scorpion body. So we added legs, pinchers and tail. Now it's a cool looking point on the bowl. Just go with it. Next pot can try to make perfect...
I really like the visual texture of the pots when you finish smoothing them. It's kind of like hand-brushed metal. The final result looks fantastic, "sloppy" decorations or no. They really don't look sloppy to me. I find a lot of what makes things look like quality work vs. sloppy work is down to consistency. If you put one of these pots on some kind of lathe-like CNC painting machine, I suspect it would look very sloppy indeed. "Put the paint where it looks right, even if that's not where it would go according to ideal geometry" is a very difficult thing to program into a computer. Humans do it by accident. We're so weird.
Oh my goodness this is my favorite of yours I love That you have preserved Native American clay pott making I think it's so beautiful I wished I could be good enuff to make just a small bowl 😊I have never made anything with clay lol I remember growing up I stayed with friends in Hanover new Mexico and found pottery chards on their land small black n white ones never thought to save them at that time I was 7 or 8 now I'm 50 and wished I had them ❤thank you for posting great educational information I could watch your work all day I'm obsessed
@@AncientPottery that's what I figured....do hou sell your wild clay?I think it's so very cool that you preserve the old ways your Potts are amazing luv them
Wonderful video, thank you Andy. I was discussing with my wife today how learning about ancient techniques has made pottery (and other art forms too, such as textiles) more accessible to me. Love your work :)
I'm loving your content. There was a landslide in my area that covered a bit of a hiking trail and I walked the trail anyways, and that was a few years ago. I recently went back there to harvest some wild clay. You got my inspired, thank you The part where you were scraping the sides and making this pot symmetrical, I thought you could drop a go pro inside the pot to try to show what the inside hand was doing. Just an idea.
Thanks for another great video, Andy. You might try using cling wrap (plastic wrap, Saranwrap, whatever you grew up calling it) on the wooden puki to prevent it from wicking moisture from the pottery. With the bandana between the cling wrap and the pot, you shouldn't have any trouble with the pot getting stuck.
First up I’d like to thank you, you have started my journey into clay. I live in Australia and I think the Australian indigenous are just about the only culture in the world that didn’t use clay. As im not really inspired by other countries indigenous cultures too much, though I think the selections are beautiful, I have gone more modern. I think you are very self critical. While I understand your neck might have been too long if you are trying to recreate the original exactly, I think it’s within the bounds of acceptability. Stunning finished project. 💕🙏😊
Nothing wrong with going more modern in your design or whatever floats your boat. Many artists are too critical of their own work, it's just comes with the job. Thanks.
you have been an inspiration for me, i have made a ashtray with clay that i get using the levigation process from dirt from my backyard. unlucky me drop the ashtray and it broke but i glue it back to normal
Your videos have inspired me so much, i started doing research on my ancestors (guarani and charrua natives) from here, Uruguay, sadly there is little information but i did find some pottery and shards they made!! They didnt paint it or polish it but they made indentations on the surface to decorate them and gave them really weird shapes!
Thank you so much for making these videos, I've been toying with a project in my mind (and a prank) and between your instructions on how to harvest clay, what dangers to look for, the refinement processes, and the firing processes I'm extra excited now to start when I'm ready
Andy, love your channel. During this video 8:47, there is a really nice graphic showing lots of styles of pots and the people who made them. Where can I find this image for study/reference?
@@CeeJayKay sorry, I don’t think it is on their website. It is on the wall at the museum. They used to sell posters of this but I’m pretty sure they don’t have those anymore.
Jeeeez that's so pretty. One of my favs. I have an unrelated question to the video.. some of the wild clay I found that is blue grey when wet, more grey when dry, I think its glacial... anyway it really bubbles or fizzles in water when it first slaks. Have you ever seen this? What am I looking at? Edit dude you're giving away the secret recipe?!?! Wow I feel so special. Dude the feeling of jumping into the deep end on something creative like you were saying about the first strokes... nothing like it. So freeing.
A lot of clays do that fizzing when soaked, it just means there's a lot of air space in it. We don't have glacial clay in Arizona so I have never messed with it.
Just curious; I followed your video with John Olsen some time ago, and then again fairly recently you mentioned that he was battling some health issues. I was wondering if there was an update on his condition at all. I realize it's off the topic, but it was on my heart. Thanks.
John finished with his cancer treatment and everything was looking good. Then winter came and he started having trouble breathing and it turned out he had heart problems that were made worse by the chemo. So now he has recently had open heart surgery on top of the cancer treatment and is recovering.
Thank you for this very instructive video. Is the West Branch Brown clay deposited near a modern river or lake? I have this theory that those are the lean ones.I suppose the green one is more a geological clay then.
I'm glad I stumbled onto this channel. I've not done any type of pottery since high-school but it's cool to learn, maybe I'll do something at the maker space. Thank you!
Hey Andy, great video! Do you have any tips for drying out wet processed clay in a rainy environment? I just made a batch the other day and it seems like this is going to take forever lol.
You can put it on the stove and try boiling some water out, or in the oven and bake it out. Unfortunately this is not something I have a lot of experience with in Tucson.
Hey, thanks for all of those realy interissting Videos. They help me a lot on my Pottery journy. I have a question about the wooden Pukis. Have you ever tryed to submerge them into water for one or two days before using them? I can imagen that it wont swell with the clay in it anymore, maybe even shrink a bit and release the pot more. But it would dry alot slower in the bottom with an moist wood puki wich could be an Problem. Have you experience with it?
Loved the pot. I'm new to pottery and have never heard of this "tin can". I find it interesting that its influence was also felt into Texas. Question, I'm interested in learning more about pottery that was produced in the Spanish missions of the southwest. I come from mission San Jose y Miguel de Aguayo. I come from both the local Indians and servants of the missions. Do you, or anyone really, know any good resources about pottery that was made during the mission period? I recently lost my great-grandmother's bean pot. I remember the look of it, but I'd eventually like to try my hand and reproducing it. It was locally made, and was undecorated and very utilitarian, but I grew up eating from it for the first half of my life. I've learned from your channel that it was earthen ware and unglazed.
I know a fair amount about the local mission period pottery here in Arizona. But I have never heard anything about what was made in Texas. It would be a fascinating subject of study. Thanks for watching and this interesting subject of Texas mission pottery.
@@AncientPottery Hmm, you made me think. The thing about the mission period is that the people that were sent to teach the local Indians, were Spanish allied tribes from the south. One group that was used extensively were the Tlaxcala, who still exist. They had a special status as they had been the allies of Cortez against the triple alliance of the Aztecs (Mexica). I know that northern Mexico was opened up by moving them north. Although I come from Texas Apaches, I also come from the Tlaxcala that the Spaniards brought. It's in our mission records. The other thing is that the friars were sent from two main Colleges (orders) of Querétaro and Zacatecas. So it's possible I could look at some of the pottery from history from those areas. I know the Otomi were a large tribe in the central Mexico by Querétaro. I guess I'll have to compare my great-grandmother's pot to the style of pottery from those areas. It's funny how when you have to explain something, it actually makes you smarter. Thanks.
Thanks for asking this important question. Wedging is a tremendous waste of time and effort. A little kneading, yes, but proper wedging is not necessary.
Hey Andy I live in Southern California in the LA area. The San Gabriel river is often dry and there are a few hiking trails along the river near my work. Do you think there might be good clay there? Or is there another area in the region that you know others have had luck with?
I have never looked for clay in the LA area myself. But I have a student who lives there are she has found several clay sources. Also I have explored for clay a little with my friend Tony Soares who lives in Joshua Tree, CA. There might be clay along the San Gabriel but if it is anything like the Santa Cruz River here in Tucson, the river banks are all covered with concrete so you can't see the clay.
One state I have never visited in North Carolina so I have no experience finding clay there. But I always hear from people about how much good clay they have there, so I have no doubt you can find some.
I recently fired my first peices and they did something really strange and I was hoping you might have the answers. I found a reddish brown clay that was pretty easy to work with. I wanted to do some test peices without ny added temper so I made a few tiny pots, but after I took them out they where burned black all the way through the clay and didn't actually fire. Is there something wrong with the clay? Did I just not fire it for long enough and it's normal to go through a faze where its black all the way through the clay, I broke a piece to investigate a little more and the inside was black too.
Fire hotter and longer with better air circulation. That black is carbon that didn't get burned away. Maybe this video will help you ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zDWFu63c12s.html
would i be able to make paints out of side walk chalk? i have side walk chalk. 2nd: can i just dye powdered clay with food dye and water it down? (the stuff i have is water base) would it dry with color? (yes i know it will be dull, but i don't mind) and will the color come out when i fire it? 3rd: i have these white chalky rocks at school, we always use them to draw on the brick walls outside, could i use that, mixed with just a little clay (so it won't be fully white, but that's okay) and use that for paint?
4:25 ehh, I mean it's hand made, don't beat yourself up about it not being "perfect" I'm sure potters of the era had every pot come out mildly different than the last one, even if following from an example like you did.
