Clay Modeling I: The Manual

A Year of Clay Modeling

I will be spending the next year in our local cooperative community guiding the handicraft of clay modeling.   I thought it would be interesting to journal our experiences and all those things we learn along the way.  Hopefully, this record will help others as they try the handicraft of clay modeling.  You can find the other posts in this series here.

The Manual

We will be using A Manual of Clay Modelling for Teachers and Scholars by Mary Louisa Hermione Unwin.  I was led to this manual through the Alveary booklist and upon further research, I learned that it actually appeared on the PNEU programmes.  This in and of itself didn’t mean that we needed to use the manual, but after I took a look at it and then researching other books, I couldn’t find anything comparable.  This left me very comfortable proceeding with Unwin’s manual.

Where to Get the Manual

Unwin wrote A Manual of Clay Modelling in 1895, and it is out of copy-right.  It is available for free on Hathi Trust (where you can download individual page PDFs) and Google Books (where you can download the whole book as a PDF), or it can be purchased from Yesterday’s Classics or Amazon.

I chose to download the manual and have it printed through Best Value Copy.  This was very economical as it was part of another order qualifying for free shipping.

Wherever you choose to get your manual, I highly recommend you have it spiral or comb bound or put it in a 3-ring binder so it can lay open flat or fold back on itself.  As you work with clay, your hands are going to be quite messy, and you don’t want to find your self struggling to keep a manual open.

Once You Have the Manual in Hand

It is good to read the preface and introduction.  If you are pressed for time, skip the preface for now, but do not skip the introduction.

Next time, I will share about the clay I have chosen for us to use.