What is clay made of?
What “clay” is these days is a little bit confusing. In the past, the word clay mostly referred only to the material gathered from the ground (mostly wet ground minerals, perhaps mixed with organic matter-dirt) which was dug up and shaped into useful items such as bowls, dried, then fired at a very high temperature in a buried pit of coals or in an above-ground kiln to make it even harder and stronger. You can read a lot of interesting stuff about “clay” at Wikipedia from this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay …and that page also has links to other “clays” There have been many more types of clay-like materials invented or discovered since then though, and often the people using that particular material will refer to their own version simply as “clay.” They differ in various ways though… weight, smoothness before and after hardening, ability to shape fine details, ability to be colored, method that has to be used t
