Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Scraps of Quotes


I am one of those individuals, guilty as charged, who writes things on scraps of paper and (usually) inevitably misplaces those scraps unless put on or near my desk. I was sorting through random things on a bookshelf this morning and came across the scrap in the photo above with a quote scrawled out in my quick chicken scratch. The quote is as follows:

                                                            "Behind us in our path we cast
                                                             The broken potsherds of the past
                                                             And all are ground to dust at last,
                                                             And trodden into clay!"

It comes from Flora Haines Loughead's A Keramic Study: A Chapter in the History of Half a Dozen Dinner Plates. The quote reminds me that ceramic does not break down archaeologically like other materials, so while various piles and middens in the future may fragments of my pots (or the mountain of things collecting around my kiln), eventually they may end up so broken down and lost to dust. I don't think the pots would actually be able to be clay again because of the firing temperatures, but it's kind of romantic to think about it in that way!

1 comment:

Ron Deaver said...

With enough time and abrasion and water activity, it could make it back to clay.