Arcilla de las Montañas
CLAY OF THE MOUNTAINS
Archilla de las Montañas is a research film shot in the Sierra María - Los Velez national park in Spain.
It depicts the entire process of collecting wild clay. This is started by by collecting dry clay from the side of the mountains. It can be hard to distinguish the clay* from rocks just by looking. If you pick up a piece and it doesn't break apart when you press it between your fingers, you know it is stone and can be discarded.
The clay can then be saturated with lots of water and passed through a sieve. After mixing the clay particles will have formed a slip. This can then be passed through a sieve**, separating the slip from any additional stones or organic matter. Now only the clay is suspended in the water. After a few hours, the clay will sink to the bottom, leaving clear water at the top of the water. This needs to be gently poured away, and you’re left with liquid clay. To get the clay to a more plastic form, the slip needs to be poured into a cloth (for this video an old pillow case was used) and hung up so the water can drip out. Once it feels like another water has escaped, the clay can be unravelled and its transformation revealed. It has become a material that can be kneaded and wedged using the same techniques as industrial produced clay.
*when foraging for wild clay in wetter climates, such as England, the wild clay is more recognisable because it may already be plastic in the ground
**clay is the smallest particle that is found soil, so after the mixture is passed through a fine sieve, it will be the only material left suspended in the water
