We have found clay in almost every place we have looked so far! It's been on the banks of streams and ponds, buried under tilled farm fields and lining mucky swampy areas.
How do we know it's clay and not just soil? We can take a small handful and roll it into a smooth ball. We can roll it into a long coil and wrap it around our fingers without it cracking and falling apart! There are very few rocks in the clay and almost no organic matter. Some locations have had a little more sand mixed in with the clay than others and some clay has been very wet and sticky!
Check out this video by Jordan Becker to see how the clays have been performing!
Charlton — Mill Pond, Crane Street
The first place that we looked came from historical references. The book Stories and Pictures of Charlton by Taylor, Packard and Van Epps describes a location just a mile from the studio where clay was dug to make bricks used in many of the area's homes from the late 1700s through the mid-1800s.
Galway — Heritage Acres & Galway Nature Preserve
About 5 miles northwest of the Studio near what is now Heritage Acres Campground on Division Street near Northline Road was the location of a family of potters in the mid-1800s. Current residents were able to show us the site of an old brick making kiln in the woods. We were able to take samples of clay from the Galway Nature Preserve located a mile north of that important pottery site and can imagine clay lining the many ponds and swamps scattered throughout that area.
Glenville — Alplaus Kill
Don Rodbell, professor of Geosciences at Union College, took a small group to the banks of the Alplaus Kill in Glenville, NY where we saw very distinct layers of glacial clay. These layers were formed approximately 15,000 years ago and the alternating layers of dark and light colored clay represent the changing seasons from year to year — similar to the growth rings of a tree!
Charlton — Farm Fields
When we asked a local farmer where they find the most clay out in the fields, he told us "go where the geese go." Just down the road from that farm, a new house foundation was being dug and we were able to see the clay layers lying under the tilled soil.
West Glenville — The Hills Above the Mohawk River Valley
One of the biggest sources of natural clay that we have found to date is located up in the West Glenville hills on the northern side of the Mohawk River Valley. When you look out from the top of the hills, it's easy to imagine a large lake formed by the melting glaciers covering the land. The clay deposits give us insight into how deep and wide that lake would have been!
