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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