American Ceramic Circle Meeting

The 'wings' of the Milwaukee Art Museum opened

This past weekend wasthe annual meeting of the American Ceramic Circle. This year's meeting was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is a really nice city! (Not that I'm surprised by that fact, I had just never been there!) The lectures and presentations were at the Milwaukee Art Museum(MAM), which is a wonderful feat of architecture! I had the opportunity to watch the "wings" open twice! The lectures were all very insightful and interesting. I was really excited that there were quite a few archaeological presentations too! I was also excited that there was quite a contingent of North Carolinians there! Archaeologist Linda Carnes-McNaughton, potter Mary Farrell from Westmoore Pottery, and Hal and Eleanor Pugh from New Salem Pottery were there. Mary, Hal, and Eleanor did a pottery demonstration at the museum on Sunday. Potter Michelle Erikson also did a demonstration on how she learned to recreate North Carolina Moravian bottles, such as the faience ring bottle, and the eagle flask (check out the Ceramics in America publications mentioned below for images of the originals).

Michelle trimming the ring bottle

The eagle flask after Michelle popped it out of the mold and assembled the various parts

The exhibit Art In Clay has a lot of the objects which were reassessed in the 2009 and 2010 Ceramics in America publications. It was really great to see them all in one place, and to see archaeological fragments with intact pieces. Unfortunately, I was unable to take any photos! However, I can show you photos of the innovative ceramic displays as a part of the Chipstone Foundation's galleries at the MAM.
The decorative arts galleries have a series of exhibition spaces and thematic arrangements. Each space invites the visitor to get close to the objects, see them at eye level, and perhaps, think about them in a different way. As curator John Prown said, the "awakening of wonder, surprise, and curiosity should always be the goal."

This desk and bookcase is filled with minerals, fossils, and shells in order to have the visitor think about the influences nature had on the carvings and design of the piece in the 18th century

One of the most fascinating displays was called Loca Miraculi or Rooms of Wonder which offered interactive drawers in cases to pull out and see natural materials, botanical prints, and other art which historically influenced ceramic and furniture design. Curator Ethan Lasser did a presentation on the galleries, and explained that they worked to show "aspects of an object which connect it to its cultural and historical background."

The cases were beautifully designed and artfully arranged. For an example of how this exhibit worked, the teapots below were made in the second half of the 18th century. They look very Art Deco, don't they?

The teapot on the left is earthenware (creamware) and the pot on the right is salt-glazed stoneware

These pieces were influenced by a fervor for geological formations in the eighteenth-century. Prints and drawings were widely distributed, and the excitement for the shapes and textures were transferred to ceramic.



The reproduced image pages in the drawer came from A General Natural History authored by John Hill ca. 1748

The same series of cases also put geologic stones such as agate paired with a piece of agate earthenware produced in the third quarter of the 18th-century. I thought this was especially fascinating and beautiful to see the pairs together.  

Agate earthenware compared with geologic agate stone

The lectures wrapped up on Saturday, and I ended my Saturday evening with a lovely dish of sausage, bratwurst, cheese, and sauerkraut at Mader's. Mader's has been around since 1909, and it was wonderful. The Franciskaner Weissbier Dunkel beer was also very good.

It Takes All Kinds

        This summer I have been working as an intern at Stratford Hall Plantation on the Northern Neck of Virginia. I am wrapping up a project to create a furnishing and interpretation plan for their 18th-century kitchen outbuilding. I have enjoyed all of the research and it made me think more about the breadth of materials used in one space. You'll come to find that I adore utilitarian objects, and kitchens are one of my favorite spaces.
          Monticello's 2005 book entitled Dining at Monticello: in Good Taste and Abundance implies that copper was used primarily for French-style cooking in the 18th-century, and that copper was a rare material because of cost. But I disagree. After comparing 100 probate inventories from Maryland and Virginia, it seems that copper was commonplace in most kitchens, even those who had a few vessels to cook with. The materials of choice for the kitchen were determined by the recipe, as Marc Meltonville from Hampton Court Palace pointed out in a presentation at Winterthur this past spring (the video I've linked with Hampton Court is wonderful, and I wish I could do such a thing here!). Similar to my blog post on particular crocks for preserving and pickling, here's an example for the differences in metals. Hannah Glasse notes in her publication The Art of Cookery (1747) that “If you boil turnips for sauce, don’t boil it all in the pot, it makes the broth too strong of them, but boil them in a sauce-pan.” A pot (likely iron) would have cooked the turnips very quickly, and made a strong, heavy boil. However, a sauce pan would have simmered or cooked the turnips slower. This implies that the pot was used over direct flame, hanging from the crane in the hearth, while the sauce pan was used over coals on a trivet.

William Rogers Mug 2nd Quarter 18th-century

          You're probably saying, "Brenda, you're off on a tangent," and I am, but it is going somewhere. The ceramics in the kitchen were just as variable as the metal objects. We often go to historic house museums and do not see the variety of ceramics which would have been present. This is not because there were not a variety of ceramics in the kitchen, it is more likely due to the limited amount of potters making good reproductions for use and interpretation. It also has more to do with the limited survival rate of ceramic objects which were used in kitchens. Thus, we need to look below ground. I love sherds. Part of my research for Stratford Hall has involved looking at the archaeological material from Stratford, as well as comparing it to other kitchen sites. Below ground there are innumerable amounts of coarse red earthenware, "Buckley" ware, brown and gray salt-glazed stoneware, as well as refined wares such as creamware, pearlware, white salt-glazed stoneware, and even porcelain. The coarse wares go hand in hand with the everyday functions of the kitchen from storing materials, foodstuffs, preserving, and cooking. Earthenware has the advantage of being able to withstand localized heat, therefore, earthenware dishes may be found charred on one side, or on the bottom. Stoneware unfortunately (yes, I've experienced this), does not enjoy localized heat as it cannot evenly distribute the heat because it is vitrified. So, the coarse wares had their own particular uses like the metals. "Buckley" ware which I have developed a fondness for, is a wonderfully thick, coarsely-thrown ware which shows up archaeologically primarily in bowl and dish form. Even the imported wares could be brought in cheaply enough that local producers were not creating identical forms. For example, Kelly Ladd at the Colonial Williamsburg archaeology lab told me that the "Poor Potter" of Yorktown (William Rogers) was not creating the forms similar to "Buckley" ware, which implies that the "Buckley" ware could be made and imported cheaply. Rogers chose to challenge the English brown stoneware market as well as producing local red earthenware. The presence of refined wares, especially in the yard between the kitchen and the main house (at least where there are kitchen outbuildings such as at Stratford), exemplifies the use of the kitchen not only as a place for the preparation of the food, but also the plating. In short, a good kitchen setting should have a variety of materials which reflect the local foodways and trade, but also the archaeological evidence below ground.