Catching Up

 Oh, dear readers, I have neglected you. My deepest apologies. It seems to be faster for me to upload images to Facebook and keep a running commentary there than it is to blog. I will try to right this. Where have I been you might ask? I will tell you of my ventures in photographs.

Anniversary Firing loaded up

The anniversary firing was not a fantastic firing. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but essentially five of my shelves melted, slumped, and broke. The result looked like this:

After the firing

Wonky shelves

I started a blog after this happened, but could not bring myself to put words to my thoughts on what happened. Here are a few detail shots on the breakage:

Breakage

Foaming and breakage

For the most part, many of the pots were salvageable other than the wine cups which held up the entire stack and some dishes which got mushed.

Dinner at the Reynolda House- Old Salem Landscape Conference

Liberty Stoneware vases as centerpieces!

My biggest worry in the firing was a group of vases I made specifically for Old Salem to put on the tables at the Landscape Conference at the end of September. The vases were for sale, with a small card on the table, and it was funny to be sitting at a table and have someone realize I was the person who made the vase!

Pickling crocks with weights

I presented at the Landscape Conference on historical methods of pickling and preserving and the ceramics used. There were such great presentations and a great crowd of people.

Wild horses on Corolla Beach

View from the top of the lighthouse

 The Farmer and I escaped for a few days to Corolla Beach. It was our first vacation in about three years!

Stuffing the deboned chicken

Cooked chickens!

 I learned how to de-bone a whole chicken, which was quite a fascinating experience. What made the experience even more exciting was watching this video with the speaker's fantastic French accent.

View from conference lunch in Edenton

Many of you may know I work part-time with an historic preservation organization which leaves me with a somewhat erratic schedule for pottery (and this blog, consequently!). I had the opportunity to attend Preservation North Carolina's conference in Edenton, NC.

Inside NC's oldest house

It thrilled me to no end to get to go in North Carolina's "newest oldest house"- a 1718/1719 house recently discovered in Edenton.

  I also had the chance to see archaeological material from several houses. The image above is German stoneware excavated from the original courthouse in Edenton.

The oldest section of Blandwood Mansion in Greensboro

 I thoroughly enjoy working with the interns I have recruited for this semester. I am constantly reminded how much I enjoy teaching, counseling, and working with students or just those who love to learn. I recently had the chance to take the interns on a field trip to Greensboro in order to see the Greensboro Historical Museum,

Among all of the chaos and travel there have been brief pauses, like watching the orb spiders at the farm.

Exploring Kiln Shelves

Another exciting part of attending the Society for Historical Archaeology conference in Austin, was to finally meet up with a group of archaeologists who are planning to excavate a stoneware kiln in Edgefield, South Carolina this summer. I am happy to report that if all plans go well I will get to go down and help for several weeks! The Edgefield district is known largely for the pots made by Dave, who was an enslaved potter. While this is a fascinating aspect of the pottery, I am much more interested in the production aspects of the alkaline glazing and the design of kilns used. This is particularly interesting after a visit to Edgefield last fall where I got to see some interesting materials which were surface collected near a kiln site. If any of these things show up in the kiln excavated this summer, it will be very exciting.
Now, about those interesting materials in South Carolina:
Perhaps this should be titled "Eating My Words Part 2" for I found myself perplexed after this trip. Somewhere (I'm still hunting) I had heard or read that prior to the second quarter of the nineteenth century kiln shelves were not used in American stoneware kilns. I visited Edgefield, South Carolina and saw the following:

Kiln Shelf

It may look like a big piece of rock, but it is purported to be a kiln shelf dating from around the second quarter of the nineteenth century, from one of the early producers of alkaline glazed stoneware in the area.
It measures almost 1.5 inches thick. I cannot imagine having to lift an entire kiln shelf that thick! Much less an entire kiln full!

Measuring the thickness of the kiln shelf

Then there were the arched bricks from the kiln:

Arched bricks from the kiln

Arched bricks may not seem like much, but it gives an idea of the likely arch that made the ceiling of kiln.
And there were these pieces of kiln furniture which just baffled me:

Look closely at the fine either wire-cut marks or the scraping to shape the sides

Each piece had concave sides, similar to the shelf supports you see today!

The materials above are said to be shelf supports, which is likely, but the way they are designed is fascinating, and the workmanship on the furniture alone is fantastic! And it will be even more amazing when and if all of these kinds of materials are found this summer at the archaeological excavation in situ at the kiln site.
One of my favorite parts of the weekend was stopping for a cup of coffee in a small shop in Edgefield. The owners had taken their niece camping recently and upon returning she made the following signs:


"NO CAMPING A LAWD"[No camping allowed]

"P CUS BEARS ARE IN THE WOODS"[Because bears are in the woods]