Crafting with Nature: Our Clay (Almost)

Glacial Till

Our landscape doesn’t offer up traditional clay. The geology here is too ancient, too wild, rough fractured schist, quartz veins, and the scars of ancient fault lines.

But the glaciers left something useful behind.

Across fields, riverbanks, and shallow folds in the land lies glacial till, a dense mixture of finely ground stone and mineral dust deposited as the last ice sheets retreated from the Highlands.

Much of this material began life as sedimentary rock that was later transformed into schist deep within the earth. Over millions of years it hardened, folded, and changed. Then the glaciers arrived, grinding that stone back down again as they moved across the landscape.

In a way, the planet has already done much of the work for us.

We collect this material by hand and process it into a fine silty powder. It isn’t plastic like true clay, but it contains many of the same building blocks: silica from quartz, alumina from the altered rock, and small amounts of potassium carried in the mica within the schist.

With careful adjustment in the kiln, this ancient ground stone can melt into glaze or become part of a clay body once again.

In the studio we call this material Driftstone, a glaze and clay ingredient born from glacial ground rock. It produces warm, earthy tones and soft satin surfaces that feel rooted in the Highland landscape.

Driftstone also finds its way into our clay bodies, where it brings subtle variation and mineral depth to the fired surface.

Like many of the materials we work with, it’s easily overlooked — just another layer of soil beneath the grass. But within it lies a record of immense geological time: rock formed, transformed, crushed by ice, and finally returned to use.

As with everything we gather, it’s collected simply and carefully:

• No mining
• No freight
• No distant suppliers

Just us, a spade, and the slow work of the land.

This material is still in its testing phase, but we’re excited about its potential. In time, Driftstone will likely become another quiet signature of our work, a small collaboration with the ancient geology of the Highlands.