Clay As Communication

In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age.

Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed (reed pen). Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were fired in hot kilns (or inadvertently, when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict) making them hard and durable. Collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries. Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East.

So clay has always been used for a way of communicating. Whether it be on vases to show the way in which human interactions happen and the way of life, or a personal approach we have always seemed to use ceramics as a form of paper over the years.

The question that still bugs me is the idea that clay has been around for the longest but now has the less impact when it comes to contemporary art as a form of narrative.

Clay has rather become something that has been used to suit all human purposes, Birth -a bowl to wash and feed- adult- to feed and drink- death to place ashes into. The form of even making ceramics from making something from the ground into a hopefully ever lasting item related to the human desire of wanting to make their impact on the world.