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.
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....
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| 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.
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| 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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Thanks reggie for the compliment concerning my Yellow Ware post. Isn't it beautiful stuff? I, like you, am enamored with the history of something; it truly makes it special!
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