Made of clay, shell-like article held up by knight (7)
I believe the answer is:
earthen
'made of clay' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'article held up by knight' is the wordplay.
'article' becomes 'the' (the 'definite article' part of speech).
'held up' becomes 'ear' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'by' says to put letters next to each other.
'knight' becomes 'n' (chess).
'the' after 'ear' is 'earthe'.
'earthe'+'n'='EARTHEN'
'shell-like' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. It may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for earthen that I've seen before include "of the soil" , "(Of pot) made of baked clay" , "Made of baked clay, perhaps ware" , "Made of baked or fired clay" , "that's thrown in clay" .)