From Clay to Car
As published in American Craft Magazine, March 24, 2020
If you tour the design studios of a major car company, you might expect to see lots of glowing screens and high-tech equipment giving shape to the vehicles of tomorrow. What you might not expect, however, is to come across a large curved form with the unmistakable craggy surface of clay being smoothed over by a pair of hands and a smoothing tool. But even in 2020, that’s just what you’ll find: sculptors working on precisely formed life-sized models of new cars – in clay.
You’re not alone if this isn’t how you’d expect the design stage in the automotive industry to look. When we see images or news footage of workers in an auto factory – the robotic arms, heavy machinery, and sparks flying from welding torches – we’re seeing skilled assembly, not design. Still, wouldn’t a piece of 21st- century equipment require 21st-century technology like digital scanners or CAD [computer-aided design]? Indeed they do, but the first step in the design process today, as it was more than a century ago, is building a clay model.
Reshaping the Auto Industry
If you don’t yet know the name Harley Earl, you should. Earl (1893 – 1969) was the son of a Hollywood, California, coach builder who, in the early 1900s, transitioned from crafting horse-drawn carriages to making parts for the nascent auto industry. As a teenager, Earl started sculpting model cars from raw clay whenever it rained in the muddy canyon near his home, and as a young man, he worked as the director of a Cadillac dealership’s custom body shop. There, a visiting Cadillac executive was impressed by examples of the clay models he continued to build and his original designs. Soon afer, Earl was hired to work for Cadillac’s parent company, General Motors.
In an era when cars looked like motorized buggies, Earl reimagined automobile aesthetics, jettisoning the boxiness of early designs and smoothing out their surfaces. But that’s not the only way he influenced the auto industry: He’s also credited with introducing the practice of clay modeling to the design process.
Earl was made director of the Art and Color Section of General Motors by company president Alfred P. Sloan, and there he pioneered the concept of annual styling (or “dynamic obsolescence,” a term coined by Earl and Sloan), the practice of refashioning vehicles each season to elicit consumer demand. In 1937, GM renamed its Art and Color Section the Styling Section, and in 1940, Earl was promoted to vice president, the first time a designer reached that level of prestige in the industry. He capped his career in 1953 with the introduction of the iconic Chevrolet Corvette before retiring five years later at the mandatory age of 65.
By that time, clay modeling had become a widespread technique. This was partly for practical reasons: Physical clay models allow designers to walk around them, see them as a fully realized 3D objects in light and shadow, and make immediate changes. But it’s also because the smooth curves of the midcentury automotive ideal could be achieved in clay so precisely. (It’s far trickier work in wood or metal. Wood is unforgiving of mistakes, while metal is difficult to smooth by hand.)
Car Designers Go to Art School
Knowing this, it’s not surprising that clay was such an invaluable medium in the middle of the 20th century. What might be surprising is that in 2020, it still is.
Today, auto design is actually a dialogue between digital tech and a craf as old as humanity. Brandon Faurote, head of Precision Studio and Partner Programs at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ (FCA) Product Design Office, explains why: “The creative process is helped by working with clay,” he says. “You can see things happen immediately and react to changes. You can touch it, feel it, and walk around it. In the digital field, it takes more time. There’s still nothing like seeing a clay surface developing.”
Like Harley Earl, Brandon Faurote has an automotive lineage. His grandfather, uncle, and cousin worked at the FCA’s Toledo Machining Plant in Ohio, and his father worked for Goodyear before finding employment with Northern Engraving, a fabricator of automotive interior trims and nameplates. As a high school student, Faurote knew that he loved art and cars, but it wasn’t until college that he realized he could combine the two.
At FCA and companies like it, there are designers like Faurote, and there are clay sculptors. Training is offered in schools across the country, which tend to be challenging to get into. Two examples are in California: the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. But Faurote’s alma mater, the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, is one of the best known in the country and perhaps the most prestigious. Its transportation design program offers specialization in the design of airplanes, cars, bikes, boats, motorcycles, and mass transit. The school’s alumni make up 60 percent of the Fiat Chrysler design team, and General Motors has about 175 alumni on staff.
The Right Formula
Potters and sculptors wouldn’t recognize the clay in automotive design studios (which is also called industrial plasticine) from its working properties. FCA uses a product formulated by a company called American Art Clay. The raw clay is mined in Georgia, and as it’s processed, wax and oil are added to it. As a result, the clay is solid at room temperature and needs to be heated in order to be worked. Once it cools, the model is difficult to scuff or damage with an accidental bump. It’s never fired or glazed.
According to Faurote, the clay arrives at FCA on pallets in large cylinders, and these are placed in a machine called a Bulldog, which is roughly equivalent to the pug mills that potters use. (The shared canine reference is probably a coincidence.) One key difference is that the Bulldog mixes the clay and heats it to the temperature at which sculptors can easily work it.
In his 27 years at FCA, Faurote says the electronic design team – which was small when he started – has grown into the hundreds. But despite how much can be accomplished in CAD, the hands-on sculpting team remains: There’s no substitute for the immediate response of clay to the touch. Faurote doesn’t foresee that changing. “One of the most exciting moments of the whole design process is when a 2D idea comes to life,” he says. Turns out that in our high-tech world, clay is still the most effective medium for translating the first flicker of an idea into a tactile – and ultimately drivable – reality.
Earl and Damsels photos: Courtesy of General Motors LLC