ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with the problems clay poses and, more precisely, with its demands. Clay makes plenty of demands. When it is fired, for example, it demands extreme care. If it cools too quickly, it is prone to dunt. If its naturally occurring carbon does not burn in just the right way, the object's core might blacken or bloat. The chapter describes three 'clay ecologies' where children and educators worked together with clay: in an atrium studio in an early childhood center, at a river, and in a forest. In these three ecologies, clay is encountered as 'a site of invention' where the pragmatics of questions were much more alive, more vivid, more difficult to forget than any truth about clay. Working with clay at the river draws people's attention to how clay feels in their hands when they touch it, when they drape it over stones and smooth it, when it's cold and when it's wet.
