Graham Taylor

Middens.

Middens that you find at Bronze Age, Neolithic, whatever sites, that sort of look as if they haven't just formed in one nice even layer.

They look as if they've been churned up.

But the reason they're churned up is because I think prehistoric people viewed middens as recycling centres.

You put stuff there until you need some of it again.

And I'm sure that was the case with pottery bits, pottery fragments.

They get put there, they get dragged out, they get crushed down, they get added into the clay.

Of course, there are cultures in the world which add granny's pots back into your pots for the heritage continuation, for that idea that you are bringing the spirit of granny's pots into your pots.

And

I'm saying granny's pots because actually sub-Saharan Africa, it's almost entirely women that make pots.

And north of the Sahara, it tended to move more towards men.

And it's sort of, I think it's as soon as machines start to be involved, boys and their toys and they want to play with it.

This is where Claire comes in.

I mean, one of the things, we're definitely not going to run out of clay.

The earth is fairly abundant in clay.

We've got lots of the stuff.

I suppose for me, I've become more and more conscious every time I pack a kiln of getting as much stuff as I possibly can into each firing because I know I'm using energy and I know I'm using

quite a lot of energy in a single fire.

So it has become a sort of thing of trying to make sure that we're as low impact as we possibly can be.

I mean, clay is wonderful because basically, as you've pointed out, it can be turned into grog even once it's been fired.