More clay bashing…

With a few minutes to spare before my pottery class arrived I took the opportunity to start crushing some more clay. Yesterday I was concerned about the dry clay leaving dents in my wooden rolling pin and my table top. So, today I thought I’d try putting some of the dry clay in a plastic carrier bag and crush it by banging it with a hammer. This technique proved to be very noisy and made my arm ache within a few minutes! Also, the bag split and finely crushed clay poured onto my studio floor. Whilst bashing, I wonder how our ancestors refined the clay that they used – what tools did they use? Did they go through the same refining process as me? I’m pretty sure they didn’t use a Waitrose carrier bag and a hammer rescued from the local dump!