Thursday, August 25, 2011

Day 120... The Money Box

It is finally done! After 120 days, I have the final project ready! The reason I started this blog was to save my home from the tax man.  Now I need help from all of you to get caught up on my taxes.  I just wanted to make something special that people would want to buy and share.

 Yesterday, I wrote about the history of the Money Box and the story of the Rose Theatre in London. In 1981, an old art deco theater in my hometown closed due to years of damage and neglect and was slated to be torn down for a parking lot... the Warner.

A group of citizens got together and saved it. Finally, it has been restored and attracts people from all over Connecticut and nearby states for its entertainment.

http://www.warnertheatre.org/

It would have been a shame to see this beautiful theater lost. When I was younger, I spent many Saturdays at the Warner. Movies and cartoons and a drug store next door with a soda fountain. No movies are shown here any more, but I have been part of the group as a volunteer as usher for many of the entertainments and shows.

A Money Box. Piggy banks have very little value these days. You can't save money for anything important. My new little money box would hold about enough for a Starbucks coffee. If you use quarters, maybe you could get a donut with the coffee.

But the whole charm of hand made pottery is the way it is formed and the imperfections that occur when each piece is made under the guidance of a pair of hands and fingers.  I have store bought china. I set a place setting for company dinners. The plate matches the bowl and cup. All is uniform and perfect. It looks nice. But everyday I reach into my old cupboard and pull out a hand thrown pot, mine or another potters.  I pour in coffee and cradle it in my hand. I know what has gone into the piece. I know where it came from. I know how the clay was formed and dug. I know the wedging and spinning and the force it took to form it. I can feel the potter's mind connecting with the clay.

It is that way with all the things we make. Quilts, wooden bowls, photographs and an orange marmalade cake.  We pass on a bit of ourselves when we make things by hand. I look around my house and I see wood work and floor boards that were cut and planed by the hands of men in old fashioned clothes. I can see them placing the finished pieces in place and standing back with pride at their accomplishment.  Nothing in this house is perfect... or straight. One post on my living room fireplace is 2 inches higher than the other side. I can see the men putting it in. Maybe Nathaniel, and his wife Olive walked by and said... "It's shorter on this side!"  Nathaniel just shakes his head. "Well, maybe so, it is not perfect."

And so, my little Money pots are not perfect. None of my pottery is. For perfection, you would have to buy a pot from Walmart made in China by a machine run by people who are into production.  In the late 1700's, our New England population was growing.  The demand for goods led to the invention and use of steam, water and electric power. Hundreds of workers flocked to mills and factories to mass produce textiles, nails and pottery.  The age of small town potters as a necessary trade was over. In the early pottery factories, things were still made by hand, but at a faster rate. They were now more concerned with producing large quantities.  It has its place.

If only we could learn to buy less. That quality and craftsmanship is more important than how many objects you have in your house. Ever have a tag sale? Where the heck did you accumulate all this stuff? Those little froggies from Aunt Millie, the plastic spoon rests from the last convention. Throw it all out at a tag sale, and we start accumulating more the next day.

So here are my Money pots. Buy one and put it on a shelf, give it away to someone else, put it in your tag sale.

If you would like to order one, go to http://www.eastknollpottery.com/.  They are available in random shades of yellow and copper green and manganese browns. If you would like to pick out your own, I will be up at the Big E in West Springfield MA. Sept 16 through Oct 2.  For only $15 you could help me to keep making pots instead of applying for a job at Home Depot this winter!









Money Box set up for Collection!
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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Day 199... Collecting Money

In looking up the earliest yellow ware in England, the roots of my present yellow ware, for the upcoming exhibition at UCONN. I found hundreds of medieval pots on the London Museums web site. I also found many "money boxes".  Money.We all need money. I am trying to find a piece of pottery that I can market as a one-of-a-kind historical item, and here it is.  I had been working on a "money bank" already. I had made a model of my house, a copy of the one I want to save from the tax man. The model was finished, fired and I had made a plaster mold. I wanted to use red clay for the finished casting, seeing that my house is red brick. But the finished castings kept sticking to my new plaster mold.  I was using up too much of the red clay slip and was getting poor results.

Casting is not my expertise.  I cast some small statues and over the years, have mixed my own throwing clay scraps into a casting slip with good results. But I realized that the process of casting a bank and waste of slip was going to be prohibitive in producing many of the banks.

Then I saw these money boxes.  Hundreds were found at the Rose Theatre in London. The Rose Theatre was built in 1587. Pretty old stuff over the pond, my "old" house seems new by comparison.  By 1606, the theatre was abandoned, eventually torn down and years upon years of development covered over the theatre's foundation.
http://www.rosetheatre.org.uk/about/history.php

Artist drawing of the Rose Theatre
In 1988, a 1950s office block was torn down revealing the foundation of The Rose and a team of archaeologists moved in to uncover the past.  Among the objects uncovered were Money Boxes.

Now the mystery of how and why they were used. I still haven't figured it all out, but the shape and size of these boxes indicate that that they were small so they could be tied onto a wooden pole and passed among the threatre audience for collection fees. Most of the money boxes (which are not money boxes at all, but small round clay pots) had knobs on the top and a large slanted slit in the side. The shape of the slit may have prevented money from being shaken out by the audience or the ushers and the pot had to be broken to get the coins out. If they were larger, the heavy coins of the day would have weighed down the pot on the pole.


Excavation of the Rose Theatre

How perfect that these fit into my current situation. I am to present these reproduction charming little pots from Elizabethan England to collect money for my old building! 

And what will you and I use these "boxes" for? Well, we can tie them on a pole and collect money at our own events. We can set them on a shelf for loose change. We can give them to the parents of new babes for college savings. We can use them to remember a time in history when no paper money existed and a coin was all that was needed to see a Shakespearean play.



Coins found at the Rose Threatre
 
In Middle English, "pygg" referred to a type of clay used for making various household objects such as jars. People often saved money in kitchen pots and jars made of pygg, called "pygg jars". By the 18th century, the spelling of "pygg" had changed and the term "pygg jar" had evolved to "pig bank."

Of course, you will have to break them to get your money out. Old clay banks were very common.  Makers of Yellow Ware in the USA and England, did not put an cork in their banks. This is one of the reasons the antique, quaint banks are so pricey today.


 


Antique yellow ware banks

My first Money Pots came out of the glaze fire this morning. Tomorrow, Day 120, I will post photos of my money pots.

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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Day 118... Time Passes

Where does the time go? I am giving up, or rather changing the special project I was working on, which wasn't working out right, and am hot on the trail of a new and better project. 

I have been asked by the University of Connecticut, Torrington branch, to put up an exhibit and do a talk on Yellow Ware. I have titled the exhibit: "Yellow Ware, the other Historical Pottery".  It's interesting how one thing leads to another and how time goes buy sometimes too slowly and sometimes way too fast.  The invite for the exhibit has sent me down another path than where I was going with my special project to help make money to save my house from the tax man. 

Where do I start with Yellow Ware?  I have done talks before on the history of New England clays and potters, but this one will be about Yellow Ware specifically.  I attended the ALHFAM conference this year in West Virginia.  I thought I could introduce my pottery to The Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums and they would buy my pots and I could pay back the tax man. There was a lot of interest in my pots and in Yellow Ware, but most history folks still are attached to the Red Ware, and mostly the Pennsylvania style of slip and sgraffito designs.

These are some of my Sgraffito I did while demonstrating pottery at Dollywood land in TN.

However, Red Ware potters in New England were not into the sgraffito or much of the slip trailing. Early potters were simple folks. They knew people needed pots to cook and store food, they dug the nearly free clay out of the ground and with skill of their ancesters, spun it into servicable pots.  Some got creative, the dabbed on copper glaze or black with manganese and sometimes yellow, a reaction of iron in the clay and lead in the glaze. 

Yellow Ware came later to New England. Or rather, was later made in New England.  The 1600s colonists from England, my ancestors and some of yours, brought the simple yellow clay bowls and mugs with them on the boat. Once they got here, they found out we had no yellow clay.  Yellow clays can be fired higher and therefore made a tighter and stronger pot. They settled with buying their yellow ware from merchants.  Early merchant ads offered "Just in from Liverpool... earthen ware, cream ware and all manner of serviceable earthen vessels".  I doubt they meant red ware. Red ware was so common and cheap, that the English didn't care how much we made. They wanted us to buy from them. This probably meant buff clay items in the form of yellow ware (a lower fired but harder ware than red ware), stoneware and salt glazed pots which were what we needed from England.

Yellow ware and stone ware was not made in New England until the early 1800s.




So what are the English roots?  I found that the English were making common, simple pots from their yellow and buff clays in Elizibethan England.  Archeological digs have uncovered lots of really kool pots...check this out....


Saxo- Norman-Early Medieval Jug 10th-13th century


Surrey/Hampshire border ware

(1480 - 1900)...

Browse through the London Museum of 674 post Medieval clay pots. The museum also has pots from the Bronze and Iron Age... 3500 BC to 500 AD. And yes, some were made with buff and yellow clay. 

Bronze age

So where do we draw a line? I don't think we can.

Tomorrow... Day 119... where the London Museum has led me and my pottery. I have my new project, a better one than before, in the kiln as I type, and hopefully I will post a photo tomorrow... If time allows.






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Thursday, June 23, 2011

Day 57.... Waiting.

It took me 55 days before I got around to making  the mold for my special pot!

It seems like everyday is just a time for waiting. We wait for our paychecks so we can pay our bills, buy some food, go on vacation.  We wait for pottery to dry before we can fire it. We have hopes that tomorrow, next week, next fall, things will get done on the house, we will call or visit old friends, we will pay off our bills or we can fire a pot.

It is hard to relax. It is hard to just rest in today.


So I got the mold done, now I am waiting for it to dry before I can cast the piece in clay. Designs jump into my mind when I try to sit and relax and be still.  Colors, vines, shapes pop into my head.  How to cast that special piece... how to decorate it... what colors should I use.  It is a work in progress and we will see what comes out in the end.

In the meantime, I plan for sales trips, try to keep in touch with my friends and help strangers with pottery questions.


Steve Earp's Rabbit
 And this is what we all do.  I came across a potters blog the other day. I was wandering on the web looking for gigs. There is a high end heritage craft fair about an hour from my home. I ran across a redware potter on their site who has a blog too. So I checked it out and there was Steve Earp. I admire his work, and then I realized I met him at a show last year and we exchanged pottery pieces. I chose a bell shaped piece with a giant rabbit on the top. I like rabbits.
http://thisdayinpotteryhistory.wordpress.com/

It seems he is a kindred spirit and shares my love of history and life of the craftsmen. I am so fortunate to meet other craftspeople. Especially craftspeople who have given up a lot of stuff to follow the difficult path of the self employed craftsmen!



In 1927, my grampa Frank, had been born and working in Brooklyn NY growing plants.  His families greenhouse was doing well, and they came to Torringford to buy a vacation home. It was not this house, but up the street in the Burrville section.  He saw this lovely old brick farm house and barns on a quiet dirt road. The soil was good old farm soil, enriched with horse, chicken and cow poop over the past 100 years. There were sunny fields and a high water table. He bought the property and dug at least 3 wells I know of to water his new greenhouse plants.

Some Albrechts in Brooklyn NY 1925ish


He wanted to go out on his own. To start a business, to be his own boss. I don't know much of his early years, but his business grew and he was able to expand and in 1960, bought his first new car, the blue Rambler.

East Knoll 1945ish... Grampa's 1st Greenhouse on Albrecht Rd



He had bought the property, set up and ran a business everyday and waited.


And that is what we all continue to do. In the meantime, I plan to share the gift I have of meeting new, interesting people. Visit Steve Earps' blog! Read about him and his pots. Support the craftsmen here in the USA. We put our hearts and souls into our work and we are very interesting people!


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Monday, June 20, 2011

Day 54... The People we Live Near To

No casting yet. Today, Today is the day I get it done.






Torringford street... Walmart now on the right

I met my neighbor a few days ago mowing his lawn. We finally stopped to chat and I found out he is the one who has our missing cat, Rascal. Rascal has been living happily in their house for 5 or so years under the name of Cleo. Ernie and his wife have lived out back for 16 years.  Has it been that long?  22 years ago, I moved back to this house and property. Our 14 acres of woods and fields were sold by then to a developer. My grampa was old and someone made him an offer around 20K.  Twenty years ago there was still a stone wall out back. It would be running through this man's house. Where his back deck is, there was an excellent pear tree, still giving us pears in 1978.  My grandfathers horse was burried somewhere near this man's tool shed.  A spring bubbled up in front of his house. My dad would put fish he caught in it to keep them fresh I guess before we ate them. The spring is now contained in a culvert and a tar road splits over it to form a loop for the other 20 houses back there.

It is quite a change.  I know most of my neighbors by sight. Over the years we have had two neighborhood parties. I know the folks surrounding me by name. I know a few up the street that lived here since I was a child. I know some of the parents of my girls' friends. I know some from my old church. I know some from tag sales. One I know because his dog has attacted me a couple of times. I know others because their dog was lost and wandered in my yard. I know some who attend my open house in November.

There are teenagers who walk by from the school bus or on there way to Walmart or McDonalds. They don't usually say hello. They look at the ground or in front of them. They are an isolated lot. I feel for teenagers. They are trapped in these developing bodies full of hormones in a world where adults tell them what to do and when. I say hello to them. I would like to invite them over to sit on the big step and talk or give them some clay to play with. But they usually walk on by.  Little kids over the years wander into the yard and want to stay and play. My neighbors have sterile, well mowed half acre lots. Some have basketball hoops and pools are a big thing for the younger set.


Albrecht Road... 1945ish
 Forty five years ago, my brother and I played out back in the woods. We had trails and forts out there. Blueberry bushes were still there. We went fishing in "Crockett's Pond", fed the cows at Connecticut Livestock, went sliding on the roads and took our bicyles everywhere. We had twenty houses of neighbors on our street.

Seventy years ago, my mom picked blueberries, apples and strawberries, played around the cows and chickens, rode her bike up the dirt road that ran by our house and took lots of photos of her pets, plants and friends with her Brownie camera. There were no other houses or neighbors on the street.

One hundred years ago, there were twin boys living here. Reginald and Winthrop played with their dog, picked blueberries, walked these fields and woods. Climbed these trees. The road ran to our house and from their up was a dirt trail. No neighbors.
Reginald and Wintrop with family blueberry pickers 1910




The Torringford school where Taco Bell is now (1910)

One hundred and fifty years ago, Jennette, Maryette and Martha lived here. The little girls only had cousins to play with. Cousins lived down on the "other" road. I am not sure what they did for fun. I suppose they picked blueberries. Back then, they went to church on Sunday. A mile and a half up the road was the old white church where neighbors gathered to share food and faith. One quarter of a mile up the road was the one-room school where the girls would meet up with neighbors a mile away. There were a couple of stores where neighbors gathered for news and gossip and to exchange goods.
A Torringford Street... Albrecht Road? 1910

I wish we had a local store or cafe where the neighbors would meet each other once and a while.  We have a quicky mart, owned by an old neighbor family. I meet some neighbors there, but there are many travelers stopping in for Dunkin' Donut coffee or a coke. They hurry in and hurry out.  Where the school house was is a Taco Bell, but I haven't been in there yet.  I meet neighbors at Walmart and Price
Chopper on the other corner.  There is where the neighbors meet. In the food isles. Amid strangers from "down town" and strangers from out of town.

I wish there was a cafe on the corner. Somewhere I could walk up for breakfast, sit with my feet near a wood stove or slide into a booth with my neighbors and talk about the gas prices and what is going on down town.  We could have local musicians come in on Saturday Morning and jam. The friendly owner of the cafe would make home made soup and pie, and you would put it on a tab.

There is a Panera bread 1/2 mile up the street, but it has sterile isolated booths and predictable food and coffee. I want to meet the neighbors. I want a place to socialize. I want the neighbors to have a place to go for a cheap real breakfast or to unwind after a work day instead of watching TV at home.

On the other hand, I think I could be happy living like a hermit most of the time. I enjoy just staying home with my yard and work, my dog, cat and family.

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Monday, June 13, 2011

Day 47... Where is this all leading to?

No, I did not cast my special project yesterday. It was cold and rainy. Sixty degrees in the barn is not warm enough for me!  Instead, I cleaned the attic.


The attic of this old house is filled with almost 200 years of stuff.  There was the tape loom, that I took down to reproduce and is now one of my favorite hobbies... weaving tapes like the old days. Before zippers and velcro, folks used buttons and ties for their clothing.

Then I met Eleanor Bittle. She is from Pennsylvania and a wonderful person to talk to with a knowledge of tape looms. I met her at the Mercer Museum in PA. She got me going on the loom business.

Above the one I found in the attic. It is a flat pine board. Crude holes and slats that are now warped. I made a replica below and painted it with milk based paint and a imaginary sketch of my great grandparents, George and Elizabeth Jeppe.

There was also a walking wheel in the attic. I thought my sister may like to take that home as she spins.  Somewhere I have a photo of my daughter Erin using it.

There is a knitting basket that was my grandmothers, a wood block stamp set that was my uncles. Lots of stuff.

There is way too much stuff. Me and my girls are savers, and it was to the point I couldn't walk through to open the windows. It sure is hot up there in August.

The attic is like strolling through the lives of all the folks who have lived here. You can imagine them putting cherished stuff up there, saving it for next generations to share.

We started a tradition in 1982 of putting hand prints on the wall opposite the attic stairs.  We now have Erin, Emily, Isobel and Meta's hand prints. The new generation to enjoy this old house.

A list of all the people who walked these floors and slept between these walls:
Simeon, Experience, Hamlin, Experience, Ransley, Clarissa, Betsey, Sally, Roswell, Luther, William, Nathaniel, Olive, Jenette, Mariette, Martha, Alice, Nellie, Louise, Alpha, Jennie, Reginald, Winthrop, Walter, Corabelle, Paul, Helen, Charles, Frank, Julia, Irene, Phyllis, Newell, Isabel, Richard, David, Regina, Donna, Barbara, David, Alan, Erin, Emily, Josh, Isobel and two little babies, unnamed because they died way too young.

And then there were all the visitors! Hundreds! I have friends whose house has been in their family since 1786!  Their house is really cool. It is brick too. Their stairs are so worn that they have turned into bowls!  Our house has been in just two families. It was also rented out twice. There were two sets of twins here. Babies were born here, people died here.

Someone once asked me if it was scary living in such an old house where so many people have died. In an old house, most of the occupants died at home.  I am more afraid of the living.  We had a family funeral just the other day. A very nice man died way too young. We all have a 100% chance of dying.  What is important, is how we live why we are here and how we treat each other.  There will always be hard and sad times, but somehow we persevere.  I have a slide show on my computer when it is in down time. All my photos flash randomly in front of my eyes as I pass by the computer. Photos are always of good times, people we have lost make me cry, people laughing make me laugh, places I have been, and I think, Life is good. Home, friends, family. Life is good.

And today, while I am still well and getting around, I will go out and make some pottery, pack my students work to take back to school, cast my special pot... maybe.




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Saturday, June 11, 2011

Day 45... Time Spent Traveling

I am back! I just spent 6 days in West Virginia. at a Living History conference. What a beautiful place!  It is so nice to travel around and see different parts of the country.  If only our world wasn't so big, then you could go to West Virginia for a weekend, or San Francisco for supper, or Minneapolis for the Monday night square dance, and be home the next day to weed the garden and feed the dog!

And, be home to make pottery. In an effort to save my house from the tax man, I have signed up for 16 more "vacations" this summer and fall!  So where the heck is my special project? I am trying to find time to work on it. Tomorrow I will make the first plaster mold.

In the 1600s, many of my ancestors on both sides packed up their belongings and left their homes in England to travel many miles across the sea.  They could not go back to weed the gardens or feed the dog. They traveled so far that most never went back to their homeland again.

The folks that built this house, their ancestors also came from England in the 1600s.  First to Boston, then to Windsor CT and then just a days journey to Torringford. 

The history of pottery in New England is very fascinating. It had a lot to do with traveling constraints too.  English coming to the Boston area started making pots right away. My favorite quote is...

In Salem MA in 1629. Rev Higginson wrote in a letter home,
It is thought here is good clay to make bricke, and Tyles and Earthen pots, as need be. At this instant, we are setting a brick-kill on worke to make Brickes and Tyles for the building of our houses.”

Potters had to be in one place to do pottery.  Clay is not very portable. Back then, you used the clay you had, built your shop usually within walking distance to your clay pit, and found other odd jobs to do in the winter when the clay froze and was unworkable. And then there were those hugh kilns! They were not portable at all and took a lot of time to build and maintain. Small pottery shops had to get all the potting done in the spring, summer and fall. Most potters had other things to do too. They weeded the garden, pruned trees, mucked stalls, chopped wood. 

Eventually, the apprentices, sons and nephews, moved to new locations to start their own pottery businesses.  The inland roads were in terrible condition till the middle 1800s.  Yellow clay had to be hauled up by ship from New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. We do not have yellow clay here in New England. The feldspar that makes up clay, is contaminated with lots and lots of iron, making the finished pottery red, soft and porous. 

The earliest attempt to make a harder yellow stoneware clay was by Isaac and Grace Parker in the suburbs of Boston in 1742.  They had been making red ware. Isaac knew the importance of the harder yellow clays and took out a loan for 125 pounds to ship clay up from Martha's Vineyard. Forty year old Isaac built a kiln of the clay, hundreds of pots and fired it up with cords and cords of wood.  The kiln collapsed from the high heat and all the pots were broken. They hired an experienced stoneware potter, James Duche,  from PA and he came to live with the Parker's and their 10 children. Another attempt failed and in the fall of 1742 Isaac died!  Yikes. Grace was left with 10 children, the Duche family and the 125 pound loan to pay back. They did not give up. They shipped clay up from Pennsylvania and had a good firing. However, with the onset of the French and Indian war in the middle 1700s, ships were needed elsewhere, the cost of shipping was not feasible and Grace started selling off her property and goods.  In 1776, Grace died and the attempt to make stoneware here in New England was put off for another 100 years when the roads improved and shipping costs went down.

As you can see, history does not change. It cycles. I am finding more and more difficult to do pottery in the winter. Heating the 200 year old barn with all its drafts is not feasible. What with the cutbacks in every ones pay checks, my wholesale orders are almost non-existent, everyday folks are buying pots made in China at Walmart and gas prices are cutting out our tourist business.

I have had to change my lifestyle to a traveling demonstrator.  Hence the 16 more trips that I will go on this summer. I can pack all my pots, wheel, tents and supplies into my tiny Nissan Sentra. Some refer it to a "Clown Car" when it is packed and tables and poles sometimes on the roof!  But, it gets about 32 miles per gallon of gas. 

My dream is a New Ford Transit, painted yellow with blue holding bands and blue feathering....

 But for now, its back to the barn to make some pots, work on that special project and see if I can pay off my taxes first!

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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Day 34... Things keep getting in My Way... Jobs

I have not cast the special pottery piece yet... maybe next week.  I think it would be great to have no job, no outside job that is.  I would stay home and weed the gardens, pick off and put asparagus beetles into the "Jar of Death", visit with friends, take naps, cook out on the fire pit, weave, read and watch the grass grow.

The only job my grandfather ever had was here on the farm. Farming is busy and hard work, long hours and dirty. But it is also rewarding. Grampa liked Sunday drives. On Sunday, in the afternoons, when we didn't go fishing with Dad, we would go on  joy rides.  My grampa had bought a brand new Rambler station wagon in 1960. He paid about $2,000 for this beautiful blue wagon with white top. He kept plastic seat covers on it.  It still smelled new in 1971 when he died and left the car to my mom. We drove it for awhile before it died and Stewards Auto Parts in New Hartford CT has it now. It is still on his lot. 

My dad was an automobile mechanic, so we had used cars. Only once got a new car. In 1961 we bought a new Corvair!

Grampa would take us all to Brooklyn NY once in a while to visit the relatives. He was born in Brooklyn in 1889 to German immigrant parents.  He raised chickens, cows, grew flowers and vegetables. He bought the new Rambler to cart around plants, and us kids.

Before him, Alpha Davis, a renter, worked as machinist at the Torrington Brass Company. Back when a family man could have a job, a house, raise children on a factory salary and his wife could stay home and take care of the kids and house. They had a set of twins. Reginald and Winthop were born in 1904.  Ten years later, Alpha moved to Fairfield CT where he was still a machinist at a factory and his wife was still unemployed.

Not to say factory work was great. It's not for me. I packaged syringes at a factor at 19 and though I would die of boredom.

In 1880, Martha Birge, the surviving daughter of Nathaniel, was keeping house for her father here. He was 71, and I don't know how much farming he was doing. He was the first recorded owner of the house and was a "joiner" on the 1850 and 1860 census. A joiner was a man who made mortise and tendon joints for boxes, drawers and such. My property then was valued at $1,500. Ten years later, the census had Nat down as a farmer and the property had jumped to $2,000.

Before Nat was his father, Simeon.  I don't know what Simeon did for a living. In the 1850 census, Nat was the only person on this side of the highway who was listed as anything other than Joiner.  The rest were farmers. Simeon had fought with his brother in the Revolutionary War. I assume he was farming in between wandering around fighting the British.

Through all this, the women would be "keeping house". I would have like to be my "house keeper". As it is, I have to run around doing odd jobs to fill in gaps in the pottery business. I hope to get the special pot done this coming month if I am not pulled into too many directions. I do hope so.




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Thursday, May 26, 2011

Day 29.... In the Busyness Business

 I have not made a cast of my special project... yet.  Seems like there is always too much to do. Taught a bunch of great kids from age 4 to 16 at White Memorial Nature Center yesterday. After what, 12 days of clouds and rain, I did not realize is would be sunny and hot so I got my first sunburn working with the kids on the potters wheel on the lawn.  Then went to water a friends greenhouse plants till 7:30... there is never enough time in 24 hours. Each day should have 48 hours. You could work, take a nap, have fun around the house and yard, take a nap, visit friends and then go to sleep for another 8 hours... or would that really work?


Phyllis 1938

I remember momma. She was a busy person. My mom lived here from 3 days old till she was 37 years old. Thirty seven seems so young to me now.  Her parents, Frank and Irene, were married in the living room here. They were both in their late 30s, Frank had been in WWI and never married and Irene's first husband had died in his 20s. Frank and Irenes tumulus marriage did not last long, and somehow, grampa Frank got custody of little Phyllis. My momma Phyllis, grew up here with housekeepers and helped with the cows, chickens and greenhouses.  She loved plants and animals. She wanted to be a professional ice skater. She rode horses, went swimming a lot, skated and went skiing. She had pen pals, a favorite in New Zealand. She collected movie star photographs. She got a Brownie camera and took lots of photos of her cats and her favorite dog, Tippy.  So I now have photos of this house, Tippy, vacations she went on, her friends and lots of  letters.  In the "old" days before computers, people wrote more letters. They sent postcards. I have a hugh collection of her postcards, ones she received and ones she bought as souvenirs.

She met my dad in 1946. She was sixteen and wrote to her mom in New Hampshire, how she had met "Richie". He gave her a box of candy in a yellow and lilac flocked container that she kept all her life. Richie was an automobile mechanic. They moved here to the farm for a couple of years and my brother was born, then they moved out and I was born, then they moved back four years later. Richie and grampa re-muddled the barn then. Dad wanted to repair cars and so they gutted the old barn throwing out the cow stanchions and probably a lot of good old stuff. Mom helped in the greenhouses and the garden. We had a hugh garden. Mom did a lot of canning. We rarely bought vegetables from the store.  I am a little embarrassed to say I still have a couple of her canned beans down in the cellar. In an old house, things get pushed back into cupboards and priorities shift. Someday I may throw those beans out.

My sister came along six years after me. Mom took us all on day trips. My brother was a Cub Scout and Mom was the leader. I went along as the team mascot. We took trips to the Hershey's Peter Paul candy factory, http://naugatuck.patch.com/articles/the-demolition-of-peter-paul#photo-5022211 the Pez factory, http://www.pez.com/, Mount Tom, Mohawk Mountain. So many day trips.

My dad loved fishing. We would go all over CT, MA and NY fishing and mom would bring her embroidery or knitting. She was still working on embroidering quilt squares... "The State Flowers" when she died.  She kept the embrodery floss in a woven sweet grass basket from Maine. Now I have to try, or perhaps my daughters will, to finish it... someday. She also knitted tiny Barbie clothes for our dollies.

She was a very good cook. We came home from school everyday to homemade cake and cookie snacks. Stuffed peppers, Rabbit Cacciatore, Beef tongue, Beef roasts and Tuna-noodle casseroles for supper. We ate really well. She made us fresh squeezed lemon aid and our homemade cider. We also drank a lot of Kool aid.  Running a house, taking care of three children and two men, weeding, canning, day trips and cooking, kept her very busy.

I have tried to follow in her footsteps. Only instead of the greenhouse, I work in the pottery barn. It is a very busy lifestyle. Running a house, taking care of children, weeding, day trips and cooking have kept me busy too. I would have liked to do more at home stuff. I would have liked to stay home and cook and clean.
I think my mom enjoyed it all.  Keeping busy and puttering around at a variety of things, meeting new people and hanging out with friends and relatives is what makes our lives so good.

And so, I am off to the barn. Like my mom, I get to work by walking out our back door onto the old stone steps across the driveway and lawn. Her to the greenhouses which are gone now, and me to the barn... re muddled but still standing.


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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Day 27... Diversify and Adapt...

The special pot is out of the kiln and I have sprayed it with a can of varnish to fill in the porous clay. In the old days, I would have used soap, Murphy's oil soap works good. This would be absorbed into the fine holes of the fired clay. If I do not seal the pin holes, when I pour plaster over the mold, the plaster will also soak into the fine holes of the model and I will not be able to separate the model from the mold. So I use a "release" such as spray varnish or oil soap.


Norwich CT pottery and beehive kiln
 I have been making pottery since 1970. In 1986, I was inspired by my moms old yellow ware bowls to try to make some myself.  I had grown up in this house making cookie and cake batter in these bowls. My girls were 1 and 3 years old when my sister and I went on a road trip to Ohio to research the production and lives of potters in the 1800s. Liverpool, Ohio was the center of yellow ware production in the 1800s.  Thousands of pots were cranked out for years. Every home had a yellow ware bowl.  Many people also used the pie pans, blanc mange molds and colanders that were very necessary in the kitchen. Yellow ware was not widely used for dinner ware. Paupers used simple red ware porringers and mugs and ate off of wood tureens... http://www.rogerabrahamson.com/... Tradesmen, shop owners and the wealthy used fine china.. earthen ware and porcelain imported from Europe. Yellow ware was mostly a kitchen tool.

Potters have secrets. Like most tradesmen, they were in competition with others to make money to survive. When they stumbled upon a good decorating or firing method, they tried to keep it to themselves. Very few notes were made on clays, glaze recipes and firing procedures.  There were no books on "Yellow ware for dummies". I had to experiment.  My first pots were quite ugly, but I had to start somewhere. The clays came out too pinkish or too tan. Glazes were cloudy or crazed. The wonderful feathering disappeared when fired. Colored bands fell off the pots as they dried.

I persisted and finally found out the best clays for the yellow color, temperatures to fire, and glazes to fit properly. It is still an uncertain task.  The clay I get now is from Missouri.  It is shaft mined, and as they mine out deeper and deeper into the earth, each 2000 pound batch I get every year has changed a little. I have to readjust my temperatures. The recent batch has much more grit to it and I find that extremely annoying as I had to adjust the glaze thickness to cover the roughness of the fired pots.

Back in the later 1980s, I went to trade shows and sold my reproductions to museum gift shops or antique and country stores. Places were folks that wanted the country look could buy yellow ware that was much less expensive than the antiques.  Old yellow ware was the Tupperware of the day, it was carelessly used and tossed around. Earthen ware is not as durable as stoneware and many pieces cracked and broke. So today, though thousands were cranked out by those early factories in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York.. ok, most of New England and Midwest were making some form of yellow ware by the 1880s, many of the pots were broken, chipped and thrown out. The market in the 1980s also wanted lead free pots they could use and save their antiques for posterity, which is a good thing.

I cranked out thousands of pieces of pots for a few years before the market started slipping away. Shop owners were not selling and they wanted to see the pots to buy rather than place the large orders I depended on.  Traveling expenses went up.. gas, hotels, food.. I stopped traveling and started camping out.

Then a friend set me up with the Goshen Fair.  This was my first paying demonstration. I have set up for ten years now in the Antique Barn near the entrance every Labor Day weekend. I get to talk to people about pottery, show them how it is made, talk about Hervey Brooks the famous potter that had an 1800s shop two miles down from the fair grounds, hang out with farmers and craftspeople and make money doing it.

Next came the Big E. Another friend suggested I call Dennis Piccard at Storrowton Village in Springfield MA. Now, every year, I demonstrate with my wooden treadle wheel, in 1800s clothing at this great little spot of Heaven at the Big E every September.  http://www.thebige.com/sv/

I now demonstrate all over New England and this will be my first year at the South Carolina State Fair. Great! However, fairs are only running for four or five months in the summer and fall.  In the off months, I teach after school classes, museum workshops and at my home.  My pottery list has moved into some red ware, stoneware face jugs and casting figure bottles and sundries.  I make clay marbles and tiles too. Diversify. 

I also fill in with working at greenhouses. I have woven some planters, birdhouses and little red cardinals for garden color into my stock of pots. 

I still love yellow ware though. I am making more one-of-a-kind special pitchers and steins that show off the beauty of this style of pottery. But I also have to change with the times to accommodate more customers.

When my grampa came from Brooklyn to start his own greenhouse here, he built one greenhouse to grow chrysanthemums and ship them back down to New York by train.  Originally he and his brother raised homing pigeons, chickens and a few dairy cows. Times may have changed for him, because he gave up on chickens and cows, expanded and started growing geraniums and petunias for cemetery boxes, which seemed to be a thriving business in the 60s. He also grew strawberry, tomato and pepper plants for gardeners. He stopped shipping flowers to New York.

Our local Indians once populated and hunted game on this ground. There was a wigwam 1/4 mile from this house when the first English settlers moved in from Windsor CT in 1744.  They cut down all the trees where the Indians had hunted. Killed or scared away a lot of the wild critters. Moved in cows and chickens. Plowed up the land and piled rocks for stone wall barriers. Then mills moved in and roads improved so locals started buying goods from farther away instead of from each other. Growing flax was not profitable when large mills in Massachusetts started turning out yards of cheap cotton. A few of our large dairy farms survived into the 1960s. Then car dealerships sprawled across the east-west highway as horses and oxen became a thing of the past.  McDonalds put the small hot-dog stand out of business. The old Applehouse has been replaced by a conveince mart. Walmart, Petco and Price Chopper moved on top of the cemetery in the middle of a cow pasture.

All along the way, people had to change and diversify. They had to adapt to changes and life styles in order to make a living. That is what I am trying to do too. So this special pot I am making will be mold cast. I am setting aside my love for turning yellow ware to try to pay off my tax bill!

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Monday, May 23, 2011

Day 26... Surprising developments


The special project did not explode in the kiln! Ok, so after 30 years of runing kilns, I know enough to avoid explosions, but with pottery, you just never know.  Once, I had a load of pots, over $1000 worth of yellow ware, and the tiny cone bar in my sitter was too close to the tube assembly and when the cone started to melt it attached itself to the assembly resulting in the switch not flipping off. Well, the kiln was on way too long, you can tell by the color of the heat after a while. You know that it is taking too long to fire, so you check the peephole and say... "Oh my God!", (and that is a prayer),  its overfiring!  There is nothing you can do except shut off the kiln, pray and wait another 8 hours or so to see what the damage is.



In this instance, the clay color had darkened to a lovely Guilden's mustard brown with little iron flecks. I use a clear glaze on my yellow ware and it is applied unusually thin, so none of the glaze ran down and stuck the pot to the kiln shelves. (Thank you God), but in over firing, my mocha tobacco tea designs, the pretty feathering patterns, the fine cobalt lines start to disappear and the white clay background melts into the pot. What you get is not Yellow ware, but some mutant form of pottery that would be ok in the art world of pots, but not ok in the authentic reproduction world of true yellow ware.

I threw most of them in the garbage can. Therapists say it is good to throw things when you are holding inner anger and need to get it out. I took a deep sigh, and threw each one into a metal trash can. The shattering and thuds were somehow satisfying and I went over to the wheel and started replacing the ones in the garbage can by making new ones.


My frog houses... two upset to take photos of theirs.
 Recently, I over fired in the same way, my 2nd time in 30 years, a load of kids pots. I especially hate ruining students pottery. Twenty two kids had made lovely frog houses. We coiled clay on the outside of upturned bowls, added house decorations, windows, doors, chimneys, vines, and 21 grammar school children made frog sculptures on top of their houses. I was impressed. Children are so uninhibited when it comes to art.  You show them what to do and let them go with it. Each frog house was an individual masterpiece!  Here is a photo of mine, that I had previously fired correctly. They were to be a lovely shade of bright green as kids like bright colors. The over firing caused the glaze to run down the pots onto the shelves and darken the glaze to olive green. I had to chip them off with a hammer and chisel and then spent hours filing down sharp edges. Glaze is just a coating of glass, so I had to be careful to get sharp fragments off or the children would cut their fingers.  Six broke. I glued 4 back together. Two had stilts stuck to the bottoms permanently. Two were in small fragments.

I was so disappointed. I wrapped them all up and returned them to the school. I anxiously awaited the children and got them together to tell them what happened. I had brought two coupons for the students whose pottery could not be fixed, "Is it mine?" Hunter asked. "Did mine break?" asked Rachel. When the two were notified, the little boy said. "Cool."

Kids are so resilient and take the outcome of there pottery projects in stride. Just like me they are excited to see how it turned out or like me, they give a sigh and say, "Well, that's not what I expected.". 

Pottery is like that. You make something and it looks one way, then you have to glaze it and you are never sure how it will turn out. Most of the time you are pleasantly surprised... but you just never know.

Fixing an old house is like that.  When I first moved back here at age 24, my kitchen was still a 1960s kitchen. My parents had remodeled it to the times. The cast iron sink was replaced with a new metal York sink with overhead cupboard. Lots of drawers and shelves, something my mom had lived without for 30 years. They put white linoleum with green and brown speckles on the floor. In 1960, linoleum came in sheets about 6 foot wide, so there was a metal strip down the center of the 15x12 kitchen to hold two pieces of linoleum together.  My dad put it directly on top of the floorboards, so by 1978, the linoleum had wear spots corresponding to the uneven edges of the floor.  The woodwork was painted white, I counted 15 layers of paint, Walls had a once white speckled paper, but my dad was a smoker so it looked a little... smoky.  As soon as I moved back I removed the linoleum. My mom said I will get slivers from the wood boards. This was true for a while.

The boards are not original. Sometime around 1900, someone removed the 7 foot fireplace that stood out into the kitchen. The kitchen took up half the downstairs. The base of the chimney and the hearth stone where once inside the room. When they removed the chimney and fireplace, they covered the old wide oak planks with diagonal four inch tongue and groove pine planks. They nailed them in with many, many three inch nails.  I experimented taking off a couple in the corner and also where the hearth had been. If I remove the diagonal planks there will be many nail holes to fill in. But also, what is under the hearth and chimney is a mystery that I have hesitated to find out. I have been here 30 years and the diagonal floor is still there. Someday... I will remove it, but not today.

A good surprise was under the white 4"verticle wainscoting boards that ran around the base of the kitchen. Also put on with many large nails, were two 15 inch horizontal planks that ran along each wall. One small section has a 16" x 28" plank. If anyone knows about our trees today, planks do not come this wide. These came from massive oak trees.  You may look around all our woods today and think, "These are old trees", but not so.  Most of our old growth, primeval trees were cut down by 1900 to use for houses, barns, fences and firewood. The planked walls, newly uncovered, where still coated with a blue and then grey milk based paint. 

I scraped the woodwork and painted it all a sage green. It is on the east, south and west end of the house and is perfect for light. with four large drafty windows, the kitchen is filled with warm light.  I replaced the metal York sink and cupboard, with the 1930 cast iron sink, (my family does not throw things out, the cast iron sink my grampa had replaced the stone sink with in 1930 was in the cellar. The legs are still there.. I couldn't throw them out either!) This time the sink is back without the legs. A friend made a wood cupboard underneath and an old wood cupboard hangs above the cast iron.

The Kitchen 2010...still not done...
with Emily and Rusty dog

The ceiling. Sadly, my dad had knocked down the plaster ceiling, which from photos  I have, does not look too bad. But they wanted a modern house and put up white cardboard squares that had also turned dingy and ugly. Down they came one day with bushels of mouse droppings, nests, fibers, wood shavings and spiders. The exposed beams were not meant to be exposed. They are cross cut. 2 1/2" by 6 1/2" rough beams. The sub flooring above was also rough cut, so I dealt with falling splitters of old wood for the next 10 years while I debated what to do with it. 

The beams were unevenly spaced and rough cut. I could pay an exorbitant amount or get This Old House TV show to re lath and re plaster it like it should be. I could put up plaster board, but that would be uneven. I could put up wood strips and place plaster board between each row of beams. But they would be so irregular.  Finally, I saw a magazine with a planked 1800s ceiling. That was it. I could even do this myself. So now, I have white, five inch planks that look like they were always there. They are tongue and groove keep out the wood chips, mice and dust and I think it looks great.

But there are still wide oak planks hiding under the diagonal floor boards waiting to be exposed. Like a load of pots that you put in the kiln, will I be pleasantly surprised to open it all up or not?

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