CLAY: The History and Evolution
of Humankind's Relationship with Earth's Most Primal Element
By Suzanne Staubach
Penguin (NYP)
CLAY: The History and
Evolution of Humankind's Relationship with Earth's Most Primal Element follows in
the footsteps on such successful quirky popular histories as Longitude by Dava Sobel, Cod by Mark Kurlansky, The Potato by Larry Zuckerman and Tobacco by Iain Gately. Author Suzanne Staubach is
not only a long-time potter, but – even more important from a marketing perspective
– also a veteran bookstore manager who counts many of the nation’s leading
booksellers among her personal friends. Her book is sure to be featured in independent
booksellers across the country. Manager of general books at the Uconn bookstore, she is a
member of the Board of Directors of the ABA and is a past president of the New England Booksellers
Association. And for 11 years, she has written a regular column for the College Store Journal.
The story of mud is the story of civilization itself.
Innovative individuals and entire cultures made clay into the most useful substance on
earth. This humble material is also the most common. (If you scooped all the clay on earth
up and spread it evenly over the surface like peanut butter, you would create a mud layer
a mile in thickness.)
Clay has been crucial to human progress. Surprisingly
often, far-flung peoples, with no contact, came to use mud in the same or similar ways.
Thirty thousand years ago, our ancestors modeled small clay figures, animals, fertility
goddesses, and amulets, and baked them in campfires until they were hard as stone. Ten thousand years later, Neolithic peoples
worldwide were making clay pots for cooking and storing their food. As a result, the human
diet changed dramatically. Storage jars also led to a bustling trade between peoples. Wine
and oils could be packed in large clay amphorae and shipped to distant ports to be traded
for other goods or sold for currency. With surplus crops and the advent of trade, record
keeping became essential. Again, clay was the
answer. The first accounting ledgers were created with wedge shaped marks, cuneiform,
impressed on clay tablets leading to the invention of writing. Then, the potter’s
wheel – the first machine -- was invented around 4000 B.C.E.
Clay’s role
as a building material has been even more profound. Mud has been used to build houses and
cities for thousands of years and continues to be a dominant building material. A third of
the world’s population still lives in houses made of unfired clay. Even the Great Wall of
China was made
largely of baked clay bricks. Of course, with
their smooth, hard surface, clay tiles are perfect for bathrooms and kitchens. But clay
has been even more critical in household sanitation: Flush toilets – one of the
greatest life-saving inventions of the nineteenth century -- are made of clay. Even today
clay is essential to the work of scientists, artists, architects, and cooks. It is the
most fundamental component of many aspects of twenty first century daily life.
Suzy Staubach has been a potter for nearly 30 years. She is a
member American Craft Council, Clay Arts East, Centered, and the American Ceramic Society.
She has been published in Ceramics Monthly, and
has written on pottery for Garden Way and Mother Earth News as well as articles and essays on
various subjects for magazines such as Fine
Gardening, Old Farmer’s Almanac, Bookselling This Week, and Parents.
E-Mail us at nepa@nepa.com if you are interested in
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