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| Squatty separator. Pawley Kiln site, Baltimore, MD. Courtesy, Maryland Archaeology and Conservation Lab. |
I am getting ready for a presentation on my kiln furniture research this weekend in Virginia. In doing so, I have been thinking a lot about how to visualize how the furniture was made. It helps having access to clay! One of the most fascinating pieces of kiln furniture is a separator, often called many things, but in following the most commonly used term, and Georgeanna Greer's terminology, we're going to call the shape a spool.
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| My hand around a separator, showing my fingers over the hand print on the separator. Webster kiln site, Fayetteville, NC. Courtesy, The Museum of the Cape Fear |
This piece of kiln furniture was likely made as the kiln was being loaded as the sizes and lengths often vary, and the nature of its use would make it necessary to be made while loading. As seen in the image below, the spool separators were likely used in the context of stacking jugs (seen in yellow and red below) and were also used to separate straight-sided vessels which were stacked on top of one another.
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| Conjectural drawing of kiln furniture in use. Drawing by Mike Heindl. |
I made a few photos of how I am pretty sure this piece of kiln furniture was made. First, a bit of clay was rolled out. This rolling is evidenced by broken examples which show the spiraled pattern of the clay on the interior.
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| Rolling out the clay |
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| Rolling |
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| Rolled clay |
Then the rolled section was grasped in the palm of the hand. A fascinating aspect of this project has been to see the various finger and hand prints left behind by the workers making the kiln furniture. Some of the fingerprints have been very tiny, like children's, and some of them are very, very large.
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| Grasping the rolled clay |
Then the ends were smashed flat. These flattened areas would then fit to the edge or side of whatever vessel this piece was applied to.
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| Flattening one side |
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| Flattened end |
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| Flattening the other side |
Ta-da! Quickly made kiln furniture, with the same impressions as found on the archaeological materials.
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| Kiln furniture, ready for use! |
If you are in the Alexandria, Virginia area, be sure to come by the
Alexandria Archaeology Museum this Saturday, January 28th, at 10:00 for my presentation. Should be informal, and hopefully informative!
