Natural Materials

A natural material is any product or physical matter that comes from plants, animals, or the ground. Minerals and the metals that can be extracted from them (without further modification) are also considered to belong into this category. Types include:

  • Biotic materials
    • Wood (rattan, bamboo, bark etc.)
    • Natural fibers (wool, cotton, flax, hemp, jute, kapok, kenaf, moss, etc.)
  • Inorganic material
    • Stone (flint, granite, obsidian, sandstone, sand, gems, glass, etc.)
    • Native metal (copper, bronze, iron, gold, silver, etc.)
    • Composites (clay, porcelain, plasticine, etc.)
  • Other natural materials.
    • Soil

Famous quotes containing the words natural and/or materials:

    Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.... The small landowners are the most precious part of a state.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work
    C. John Sommerville (20th century)