potter's clay

American  

noun

1. a clay, suitably plastic and free of iron and other impurities, for use by potters.

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Etymology

Origin of potter's clay

First recorded in 1610–20

Example Sentences

Nietzsche was the Marx of the right, the original culture warrior who believed that the future belongs to those with the courage to face the nihilism of the present and mold it like potter’s clay.

From New York Times • Nov. 20, 2018

Fresh masa has a thicker consistency, more like potter’s clay, and it smells like slightly fermented corn syrup, especially if it sits out for 24 hours before you use it.

From Washington Post • Jul. 13, 2015

It was, probably, at times, obtained from recent alluvial deposits of the bayous—the sediment of overflows—as was the potter's clay of the Nile.

From Ancient Pottery of the Mississippi Valley Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 361-436 by Holmes, William Henry

Argil, �r′jil, n. potter's clay: pure clay or alumina.—adjs.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 1 of 4: A-D) by Various

The first of these I shall call generally, henceforward, the school of crystal; the other that of clay: potter's clay, or human, are too sorrowfully the same, as far as art is concerned.

From Lectures on Art Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 by Ruskin, John