Clay Tiles

On the weekend of July 20/21, 2024, I participated in Janet Doble’s Exploring Clay in the Natural World course through the ArtLab in Parrsboro.

We went to the shore near Diligent River and dug out some clay, cleaned it, and turned it into clay tiles.

This was an excellent course, and I recommend that anyone who can, take it. Since taking this course, I’ve been experimenting with building a mud kiln and trying to fire pottery at home.

I ended up doing four tiles. There is another one that isn’t shown here. I wanted to show the texture and colour of the natural clay, so I didn’t use tinted slips for the most part. The lobster is probably my favourite, though I’d envisioned it being more red. I guess the iron oxide stain I painted it with got oxidized in the kiln and turned blue. That seems to be part of the fun when working with clay.

The tile on the left is meant to recreate a picture I took of where we dug the clay out — shown below. I’m not sure I would know that if I hadn’t seen the picture before. The shape of the trees was made by pressing in a piece of the tree itself.

The one on the right is meant to be a simple blackberry design, where I tried to layer multiple colours of glaze. I think in some parts that it worked, but in others it just looks muddy.