Reference point
A piece of pottery just out of the kiln and still warm, smelled on its unglazed surface.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Mineral, dry, warm, with a note of stone dust and a little smoke. Nothing organic at all.
This is the end point of clay: firing at high temperature destroys every organic component and transforms the mineral structure, giving a new material with a new smell. Set it beside wet clay and you see the whole journey.
The smell exists only while the pottery is still warm and only on unglazed surfaces. Glaze vitrifies, seals the surface and blocks it completely.
How to smell it
Smell the base of a bowl or pot where it is unglazed. If you pass a pottery kiln, smell a piece just out of the kiln while it is still warm — the smell is many times stronger.
Why this one is hard
Because most pottery at home is cold and glazed — both routes are sealed.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Fresh-fired ceramic
Earthy family
The same clay, one kiln apart. Wet clay is still fishy and cold; fired pottery is dry, warm and only mineral.
Scientific note
Freshly fired pottery stays highly porous as it cools, so it absorbs moisture from the air very quickly. What you smell is the product of water re-adsorbing onto a mineral surface that firing has cleaned of every organic substance. It is almost a pure version of the smell of wet earth, with no biological component.
In Vietnamese life
Bat Trang, Phu Lang, Thanh Ha — each pottery village uses a different clay and fires at a different temperature, giving three slightly different smells that people in the trade can tell apart.