Facilitator: Georgia von le Fort & Agnes Kelm
The aim of the workshops were to show the children some simple techniques for working with clay. The first workshop was about tile making. We started building a device which ensured an even material thickness. A board with two evenly thick ledges of 1cm was used for this purpose. In addition, we needed a chapati roller to flatten the clay evenly and a square template that specifies the size.
The children first beat the clay to avoid air inclusions. Then the clay was flattened on the board and rolled out with the chapati roller. Now it was time to bring in patterns, so the children made imprints of previously collected materials such as leaves, flowers, stones, bottle cap, lids etc. Then the square template was placed on the clay surface and the tiles were cut with a knife. The children were very excited and motivated and we constantly had to remind them of the steps they had skipped, which were necessary to achieve tiles that are equal and straight. Sometimes it was difficult to keep track of the many interested children. But overall we had a lot of fun and created many beautiful tiles. There was a group of girls who had been particularly motivated and had worked for a long time. Over time, they improved their techniques and always came up with new, creative ideas for patterns.
In the next workshop we created vessels. As a template for these vessels, the children brought plastic dishes and plates into which the clay was pressed and thus molded. When drying, the clay shrinks and dissolves from the plastic, creating a new clay vessel. Unfortunately, this did not work with all plastic molds, but in the end we have achieved a whole series of nice results.
We brought the dried tiles and vessels to a clay workshop where they were burned by fire in a self-made oven. During this process the color changed from a dark brown to a light red.