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I studied the alchemical process of Abu Bakr al-Razi to make my local clay more workable.
Also, improving the refining process does wonders. It could be that your local soil is rich in clay but that clay isn't very good. You can refine it further once you get enough of it, until you get a quality that is very close to store-bought clay.
How do you further refine it? I went with letting the sand/silt/stones settle out and then poured the clay slurry off and then over time remove the water.
If that can be improved I still have a bucket of it somewhere so I could try further refining it. The quantity I have is fairly large compared to what you would need to make a small pot.
Ah, so you wish for me to divulge the ancient alchemical process to you? Very well. I shall share this esoteric knowledge.
So, here's what you do.
Step One: Boil some rice. Ideally without salt. Boil the crap out of it, until the water turns white. You don't need a lot of rice. Half a cup is plenty for making a pot. Then, strain the rice, and KEEP THE WATER.
Step Two: Boil down the rice water. How much? Until it's nice and good. You'll figure it out. Just don't burn it. Once it's thicker than regular water, you're good.
Step Three: Get a haricut. Not for aesthetic reasons. You will need hair for this process. How much hair? I think you already knwo. Enough to be enough. Chop it up real fine. Around one to two milimeters in length.
Step Four: Get some vinegar. You'll need it for this recipe. It slightly helps with plasticity, and prevents the clay (which will have rice water in it) from growing mold while it dries (probably).
Step Five: Grind your refined clay into a fine powder. You can use a mortar and pestle that you have previously crafted out of clay. IF you don't have one, just use whatever to get the clay at least as fine as aquarium sand. It's gotta be easy to mix.
Step Six: You just kind of mix all those things together. Start with the dry ingredients of clay and hair, mix them good. Then add the rice water and vinegar to hydrate the clay powder.
In the end, the clay will be much more plastic and hold together easier until it is fired. Although this process is mostly for upgrading lower quality clay. You should focus on repeatedly refining your clay by decanting. You first get rid of silt, sand and any debree, and once you got what is mostly clay, you refine that the same way. The finer the clay particles, the better the clay, so you will lose A LOT of clay during the repeated refining process if you are starting with a low quality source.
If you did al-Razi's method correctly, your finished piece should be hairy like a kiwi fruit once it is dried (but before it is fired, all the hair and other non-ceramic stuffs burn away during firing).
Edit: IMPORTANT!!! Once you make your alchemist clay, use it right away. It WILL start to rot and mold if you leave it wet for too long. It has rice water in it, of course it will rot. DO NOT make my mistake and leave it in a bucket covered in foil. That's how you get a funky fungus that ruins your entire batch.
Thanks! That could be worth trying and experiment with. Along with also trying to further refine the clay.
Ideally could do with making an area of the garden for refining clay really. Perhaps I should dig for some more at some point and refine in larger quantities.
Years ago had friends talking about wanting to make some pottery, I suggested let's do it I'll go get some clay. Now I have the crumbly clay and they don't have any interest in touching it. They don't even know its crumbly because they don't want to bother trying when the opportunity is presented.
One idea I had was pressing the clay into tiles and carving into them, lacking plasticity shouldn't be such a problem if it is being pushed into a form.
One more thing, young mystic.
After you make your clay as pure as can be, you should add some silt and sand back in. In a controlled way. It minimizes cracking, because silt and sand don't expand as much as clay (or at all) when hydrated. From my experience, a tablespoon of dry silt should be enough grog for a single bowl. You can also use other kinds of grog, depending on what qualities you want the fired ceramics to have. If you want porous, you add used coffee ground (it pyrolizes during firing and leaves pores). You can also add various metals to change color and qualities of the ceramic.
And the process I described does work. Tried it myself. Seen it done by others. It does make the clay more workable. If you fire it right, it makes a perfectly functional ceramic (something that usually wouldn't be possible without this process).