Clay + Sand + Straw = Cob

Yesterday I spent a full day at a hands-on (and feet-on) workshop learning about making cob structures.


Photo credit: Anaïs

It was a fantastic day. Some random thoughts—James Weldon Johnson's poem, "The Creation."

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty [80]
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby, [85]
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;

The clay ant hill down at the river at school, where we would scoop out clay to make crude bowls. Going through my Ancient Near East reference books looking for information about ancient building materials and techniques. The biblical Pharaoh who made the Israelites work even harder by making them gather their own straw for making bricks.