Saving my house... day 600 or so....

Update!

Well, making a money box did not get me anywhere.  I had received a notice from the town tax collector that my families 1820 brick farmhouse would go up for back tax auction in about 30 days.

I made an attempt to sell a special pot, the money box, to pay off some of the debt. 

Thank all of you who bought one! But I didn't make it.  Not even close.  A credit card appeased Mr. Cordova, and I went back to making more pots.

I did have a good year, 2012, got lots more demonstration gigs at fairs, and a nice part time job helping out some florists and their girls.

So I am still here in the house. Not quite like my dream...the imaginary painting I did above, but I am still here! Yeh!

Now though, I have a new project. I have printed a book.  Tape Loom Weaving... Simplified.

This is going quite well and with 6 new gigs coming up this year, I plan to be debt free by December.. God willing and if the Creeks don't rise*.

I also updated my web site.  It has a totally new look and a totally new outreach.

www.eastknollpottery.com

And thanks to all!

Reggie

As a side note, I have been using this phrase and never looked up the origins till now....

*Benjamin Hawkins, and the phrase would be correctly written as 'God willing and the Creek don't rise'. Hawkins, college-educated and a well-written man would never have made a grammatical error, the capitalization of the word Creek, which is a reference to the Creek Indians. If the Creek "rose", Hawkins would have to be present to quell the rebellion.

Hawkins wrote the words in response to a request from President Thomas Jefferson to return to  Washington D.C.I believe that the phrase is somewhere in Hawkins preserved writings at the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah.

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!

Want me to send you an email notice of my next post?  Sign up right here:
Subscribe to I saved a homestead by Email



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.

Want me to send you an email notice of my next post?  Sign up right here:
Subscribe to I saved a homestead by Email

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



http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/pages/subcategory.asp?subcat_id=706&subcat_name=Surrey%2FHampshire+border+ware

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.



Want me to send you an email notice of my next post?  Sign up right here:
Subscribe to I saved a homestead by Email

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!

Want me to send you an email notice of my next post?  Sign up right here:
Subscribe to I saved a homestead by Email

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.

Want me to send you an email notice of my next post?  Sign up right here:
Subscribe to I saved a homestead by Email

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.

Want me to send you an email notice of my next post?  Sign up right here:
Subscribe to I saved a homestead by Email