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small but personally important part of a large scale design problem. For Ruth it was an opportunity to do a major piece using a technique she had evolved over a decade of work.

Originally this work had no professional significance. As the mother of six children she was always interested in ways to keep small hands busy. One of the more successful of these was making things with a kind of inedible dough she later called "baker's clay." The recipe is simple: 4 parts flour, 1 part salt, 1 1/2 parts water. When mixed thoroughly it makes a material like clay but with the important difference that it can be somewhat permanent by baking until hard in a kitchen oven. Real clay has to be fired at high temperatures in a potter's kiln.

Friends came with their children to make things. They took the recipe home with their products. Before long kitchens far and near were centers for this cheerful activity. While mothers rejoiced in this new and constructive way to soak up the energies of their young Ruth began to think of the dough as a serious medium of expression. Its only problem wat that its components, flour and salt, had properties that inevitably made the product self-destructing. Flour has a living germ which, over a long period of time, alters its composition; salt absorbs moisture from the atmosphere which causes the dough to disintegrate. If

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Transcription Notes:
numbered page 3 [[image]] is photo of Ruth Asawa