2023-08-21 06:00:25
Switzerland is a hub for commodity trading. Did you know that this activity represents 4% of Swiss GDP, and even 22% of tax revenue for the canton of Geneva. This week, we tackle the topic of clay. We will see that clay is a natural and ancestral remedy. Then, we will examine the work of clay in the Neolithic
This gives us the opportunity to admire above a Clay Horseman created in Tyre, Lebanon, between 500 and 400 BC. J.-C. and preserved in the British Museum of the Hong Kong.
Clay, a natural and ancestral remedy
Used as an essential remedy for human health since the dawn of time, the history of clay goes hand in hand with that of humanity: our ancestors certainly discovered its therapeutic properties by observing that injured or sick animals sought to roll in the mud. Practically all ancient people knew regarding its properties and used it as a remedy.
Clay is elastic, thanks to its malleability, in contact with water and therefore easily manipulated. As it dries, it loses its ductility to become solid and compact. This characteristic and many others have made it a timeless material.
In ancient times
The Sumerians were among the first to understand the possibilities of working with this remedy. With clay man has always made everything from bricks to build houses to tools and sculpture.
Pliny the Elder devotes an entire chapter to it in his “Naturalis Historia”: Galen, the famous Greek physician, is full of praise for its many properties.
The Greek Dioscorides emphasized its extraordinary healing power. He also showed how to use this substance to make the complexion of the face and the skin of the body smooth and radiant.
In medicine
But it was only in the last century that clay regained a prominent place among natural therapies with the famous Reverend Sebastian Kneipp, who pointed out that for many ailments there was no medicine that worked as well. efficiently and easily than clay.
Professor Stumpf of the University of Berlin did not hesitate to prescribe clay as a remedy for Asian cholera patients, as did the Russian doctors who advised Tsar Nicholas Iis to ingest white clay to soldiers engaged in the Crimean War and decimated by cholera and dysentery.
Adolf Just, a German bookseller who later became famous as a healer, impressed by the results obtained by Professor Stumpf, even opened a sanatorium.
He used clay in the form of tablets, compresses, baths, poultices, to cure an infinity of ailments.
More recently, many doctors, pharmacists, herbalists and naturopaths have made intensive therapeutic use of this “extraordinary earth”, obtaining often surprising results and giving rise to a real health practice, clay therapy.
The work of clay in the Neolithic: a millennial history
With the advent of agriculture, man learned that uneaten produce might be stored. And it is precisely the need to preserve food that has led man to build suitable containers and containers.
The first containers used by Neolithic men were shells, animal horns and tree bark. Then, men began to use clay, a material already known and found near waterways.
How were the vessels constructed?
The women kneaded this earth with water, which made it possible to model it.
They then made many thin rolls and placed them on top of each other. Then they used their hands or scrapers to smooth the container inside and out. Finally, they put the container to dry in the sun or near the fire.
This type of treatment is called the coil technique.
Over time, various techniques have been refined to make these vessels by placing the still wet clay on a spinning disc.
You might give it the shape you wanted using your hands, so the potter’s wheel was born.
Men discovered that by firing clay in crude ovens at higher temperatures, it became tough and impermeable, and therefore useful for carrying water and milk and cooking food in it.
This new material is what we know as pottery or terracotta.
Later, man thought of embellishing these containers by directly incising the walls before cooking them using an awl or shells or by coloring them with natural dyes. These decorations were intended to identify the owner but also the contents.
In the same series, “Raw materials and art”:
- Cereals and Van Gogh
- Coffee and culture
- Cotton and Edgar Degas
- Cocoa and Luis Meléndez
- Sugar and Sartre
- Copper and Chardin
- Steel and Gayle Hermick
- Corn and Jean Mortel
- Biogas and Victor Hugo
- Hydrogen and the aerostatic globe
- The wind, Da Vinci and Monnet
- The Sun and Firedrich
- L’or et Klimt
- Barley and antiquity
- Le soja et Seikei Zusetsu
- L’aluminium et Jule Verne
- Le riz and Morimura Gitō
- Money and the Elblag Museum
- Tin and Jean Trek
- Oats and Géricault
- Milk and Vermeer
- Water and Renoir
- Potato and Millet
- Lapis lazuli and the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua
- Honey and Cosimo’s Stone
- The Sorbet and the Ottoman Sorbet Vendor
- Spices and the Moluccas
- Marble and the Venus de Milo
- The Olive Tree and the Painter of Antimenes
- The paper and a woodblock print of the Tiangong Kaiwu
- La laine et Jakob Jordaens
- Vanilla and the Florentine Codex
- Tea and its legends
- Salt and Saline de Bex
- The slate and the Duvivier medallion
- Iron and warrior figure with spear and shield
- Straw and Van Gogh
- Wood and Renoir
Sources :
Clay: a millenary history | Bio City (biocitynatura.it)
Neolithic 4 – Clay working – YouTube
Photo credit : Gary ToddCC0, via Wikimedia Commons
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#Raw #materials #art #Clay #horseman
