MODELLING IN CLAY.
Modelling in clay may be recommended to the amateur, anxious to try his or her hand at art, on many accounts. The materials are cheap and easily procured. The work may be made not merely decorative but useful, and it teaches one much of drawing. Indeed, this fact is recognized now in many of the primary schools in teaching drawing. The children are first taught to make the forms, such as cubes, spheres, etc., and then made to draw them. And the remembrance of mud-pies suggests another advantage in clay modelling over the other minor arts—the taste is born in us. Every child makes mud-pies; all children, too, delight in that other plastic material, dough, and will keep quiet and amused for a long time if allowed to mould it according to fancy.
For beginning this fascinating work but little expenditure is required. Modelling clay can be procured for from three to five cents a pound. In some localities it can be had for the digging, but for a beginner there is an advantage in getting it at a pottery, because it is then ready for manipulation. It should be kept in a water proof box, as it is necessary to keep it damp as long as you are using it. If, however, the clay becomes dry and hard, it can easily be moistened and kneaded up like dough to the proper consistency. Sometimes the clay will have air bubbles in it. This is remedied by what is called wedging—that is, cutting the lump in two with a wire and then striking the two piles hard together, and
