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Clay Reclaiming Services

Note Sept 2025: I have to suspend clay reclaiming until I construct additional pylons storage. But once I do! Community reclaim will be back on!


I'll recycle your clay for you! Bring me that dried block in the corner or those concerningly heavy reclaim buckets
- just let me keep 25% of the clay.


My offer:


You receive: rehydrated and partially wedged clay in fresh bags
I receive: 25% of the recycled clay


Just drop me your details below! 

You are responsible for delivery and pickup in North Seattle.

One exception - if you are looking just to get rid of your excess clay, I'm happy to pick it up!


Submit

Early thank you for the clay! Maybe?

I'll get back to you. Unless my spam filter eats it. In which case, hit up the forum to post sassy comments about how I can't build a functioning website.

Frequently asked questions

I mean kind of! I'm asking to keep 25% of the reclaimed clay, so it's not, like, totally free. And we can negotiate if this is like a really rare clay or some such. (ach, New Zealand Porcelain, one day!)

But otherwise yeah, I'm not charging other fees. If you WANT to donate money towards materials costs I'll take it though!

Most of it will be used to fuel free studio days I run. Once I have enough of any one clay, I offer it to people for use!

The rest will be offered up for clay exchange or used for my own fun and experiments. I'm looking at how clays behave when soaked, dried, and used; their consistency vs plasticity; correlations with material content, and creating the method and reasoning for clay reclamation. I aim to publish all these findings here as I go.

It costs about $2 per ~25lbs in consumable materials, water, and electricity. I think I can make my system more efficient, but that'll be a matter of scale. So I need more clay...

The cost for the mixing tools, furniture, and dear goodness the time spent... yeah if I factor that in I would need a LOT of clay to come through before it averages to something reasonable. So I don't. I just try to use it as my source of exercise. Maybe it's the same as a gym membership?

(my doctor: "it's not")

Because it's fun?

okay FINE. You caught me. The villain. Hear my dastardly plan!!

I'm trying to help people, me included. 

Here's the sitch:

There are people who would benefit from playing with pottery clay (if you haven't yet I recommend it!!) but the price of access can be eye-watering. And let's be real, when places are charging $100s to sit in front of a spinning plate and slap it with mud... guys wtf? I mean I GET the economics of Seattle real estate. But damn, we've gentrified literal dirt. 

So what are we going to DO about it?

My solution is to offer free studio time. I'm lucky to be able to. But I'm also stuck in the same economics. And clay is kind of a critical expense, you know?

Meanwhile, I know the trope of pottery people accumulating clay that dries out before it can get used. I also know how much time and mess is involved in reclaiming it- and even when you finally do, you lose so many fines you end up with something... off. Or the salt blooms out because they used shitty substitute feldspar.... And so it sits, people lose valuable space, they stress about it, and eventually throw it out and buy more. (and clog their apartment's plumbing in the process).

So what if... I could connect that excess clay to the people who would benefit from playing with it?

And now you see The IdeaTM.

Helping other people also means I'll be more engaged in pottery. I'm pathologically unable to sustain hobbies for my own benefit, but once other people are involved suddenly it matters??.

I need to do this for other people. I need other people's clay. I need your clay. Well, 25% of it. Pretty please?