Hiway16 Magazine... about people and places in north-central British Columbia, Canada

PAGE ONE
OF THREE

Keith's Houston Clay

by Debi Osborne

At work, he's perched high-up in a glass cage, shifting gears in a front-end loader for eight hours a day. When Keith Merkley goes home, he prefers working with his hands shoved deep into the earth in search of the perfect clay.

Keith is a potter and his clay becomes flower and herb pots, birdhouses or gargoyles.

How does Keith differ from most other potters? For a start, he is one of the few Bulkley Valley potters that makes his creations literally from scratch.

Finished bird feeders and houses from Keith's shop

It was 1989 when Keith first bought a potter's wheel. With the help of books, he began to experiment by digging clay samples from his property. Other local artists sent for clay supplies from Vancouver, claiming Houston's natural clay beds are unsuitable to work with... not Keith.

He soon discovered the local clay was indeed very "tight-bodied". Keith opened the "body up" making it pliable and able to withstand the high temperatures of heat needed to bake it into a useful piece. He accomplished this by adding grog, a prefired clay that has been ground to a powder. Keith has his own miniature crusher that he uses to make the grog.

The Good (pots displayed on top of the wall), The Bad and The Ugly (potted inside the wall)

As with anything, perfection comes from trial-and-error. I asked Keith what he does with any mistakes and he pointed to his beautiful three-foot-high rock wall that surrounds his home. "Sometimes things come out ugly or with cracks (called dunts)," he tells me.

He hammers them down, mixes them with mortar and builds the rock wall a little longer or higher. He showed me his growing pile of condemned "wall candidates," any of which I would like to have to take home with me!






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