Primitive pottery

[Stanleythecat]

Anyone had a go at making their own primitive pots and firing them in the woods?

I do love working with wood but I really fancy having a go when it gets a bit warmer again but could certainly get prepared in the mean time! Plus it involves a period of hanging around a fire so I'm sure a bit of woodwork could be combined too!

Leo

 

[Toddy]

I have
The biggest problem is getting the pieces dried out enough so that they don't crack when they're fired.

Campfires really only get up to 600oC at their hottest, but with care pots can be fired that way.

Anthonio Akkermans did a beautiful tutorial, it should be back up when the site upgrade is finished.

There's a type of pottery called Barvas Ware.
Basically it's moulded from local clay with crushed shell or shell sand added as a temper. It's then dried out beside the domestic hearth. Finally it's put into the peat fire and filled with hot peat ashes.
When the pot is sufficiently fired ( the sound of it changes when tapped ) it is lifted out, emptied, and warm milk is poured all over it.
The milk lipids seal the pot and make it soundly waterproof.

It's fun to do, practical as well

Well worth making grass or rush mats first so that you can lift the pot around while it's being made and drying out. The mat can just go into the fire with the pot on it when it's ready.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Wayland]

I've fired clay beads on a wire under a cauldron stuffed with straw. The trick is to keep the camp fire burning well overnight.

For reference it was under the right hand of these cauldrons.

It works well and you get a really nice black surface.

The pot in this picture was fired the same way and then the tin decoration was added later.

 

[Glosfisher]

I've spent a lot of time studying prehistoric pottery as part of the daytime job and a bit of time making it.

A few pointers:

Just about any local clay will do as long as it is prepared (weathered) properly. I must confess I don't fully understand all the processes that clay was subjected to prior to firing but it certainly wasn't used straight from the ground.

The most important element with crude pottery is to make sure you use a temper. Tempering the pottery allows super-heated steam to escape from the fabric during the firing without spalling. It also appears to greatly assist the vessel minimise the effects of differential thermal shock when firing. It is very, very difficult to achieve an even temperature across a bonfire kiln and a high percentage of pottery cracks whilst being fired.

Shell tempering is not an easy material to incorporate. Some students of mine spent ages trying to reproduce shell-tempered Late Neolithic Grooved Ware; the shell temper fell out of the clay every time it was worked. A far more successful temper to start with would be sand. Some Iron Age pottery under the magnifying glass appears to largely composed of sand joined by the occasional bit of clay!

Clay needs to be fired to around 600 degrees C if it is to become ceramic. This is perfectly possible using basic techniques such as a clamp kiln and stoke hole. Dig a small pit with a stoke hole pointing in the direction of the prevailing wind, fill the pit with fuel and the green-hard pottery, construct a dome over the pit from the surplus turfs and soil and light the fuel via the stokehole. The clamp kiln should reach 600C and should be left for 24 hours.

It's important to make sure that the pottery is green-hard i.e. the clay should be as dry as possible before firing. Leave the pots next to a fire, boiler or other source of heat for several days prior to firing.

Start with small pots; thumb pots were very popular throughout prehistory although graced by archaeologists with titles such as "accessory vessel".

Hope this helps and I'm sure I'll get lots of flak from people who regularly pot but my observations are based on 30 years of archaeological experience.

 

[Stanleythecat]

Thanks for the responses.

Really interested in the different firing methods. Fascinating.

I also didn't realise that most clays would be useful that's really good to know. Be useful to know what proportions of sand/shell might be needed.

Leo

 

[Toddy]

I think the quality of the clay impacts on the weathering tbh.
Where I stay we have layers of puddle clay. It's absolutely perfect for pot making, and for fancy glazed tiles.
Dug straight from the ground I can add crushed shell and make pots with it within days.
One of the ceramics lecturers at Glasgow School of Art organised a project to recreate the local Bronze Age pottery using clay from the river Avon gorge at Chatelherault near Hamilton.
He said he couldn't imagine a better clay for that style of pot.

I'm not naysaying your information Glosfisher, but I do think it depends on the clay and that's ultimately up to the area it comes from.

It kind of makes it easier for some of us, doesn't it ? Harder for others too.
I'll be more aware of the differences now. I just take it for granted that clay is clay; obviously not.

Neat idea using the cauldrons Wayland

I watched a huge open field firing in Latvia at an experimental archaeology conference.
The potters had made and enormous pile of bowls, piled up there were enough to cover at least a metre square by maybe two thirds high.
They built a ring of logs around the pile, maybe a metre and a half away from the pile, and set them alight. As the fire burned they moved the timbers closer while the pots dried out thoroughly, and heated up to biscuit stage. The they covered the pile with the still burning timbers and ashes and added more fuel. (in the middle east potters add shovelfulls of sorghum winnowing debris to their open kiln to raise the final temperature at this stage)
It was left alone to burn out over several hours. Even a downpour didn't put it out or was protected against.
When they finally pulled the pile apart, not one single pot was broken
and all that was left that would be found in the archaeological record was that at some point there had been a fire on that site.
Fascinating to watch

cheers,
M

 

[robin wood]

I have a friend who combines potting with charcoal burning, pots in the charcoal kiln come out nicely.

 

[jon r]

I made some pottery for the first time during the summer. I made more than is shown in this picture, the others shattered during the fireing process, i think i may have heated them too fast or something or maybe this one survived because the shape is more 'stable' if you see what i mean, the others were bowl shaped.

I collected my clay from the bank of a small stream, i disolved the clay into a bucket of water and then left it so that all the larger impurities sank to the bottom. After a while the clay and the water separates so that you can ladle the water off the top, but it does take a long time! Took my clay a few weeks to separate... Good job i was in no rush. You can then ladle off the pure clay which will be rather sloppy buy i spread this out on boards to dry off untill it was the correct consistency.

I added about 15% temper into the clay, for this i used sandstone which i heated on the fire until red hot. Then i smashed and ground it up into a fine powder. It is necisarry to heat the sandstone to stabelize it, i think this stops the particles from expanding so vigerously the second time it is heated.

I used a 'coil' construction, i think the key with this method is to not do too many coils in one go, otherwise the clay will sag and you wont be able to get the exact shape you wanted. Do a few coils and then leave the clay for a while to let it dry very slighty and harden up. Then when adding on new coils, rough up the joining surfaces and apply some very wet and sloppy clay known as 'slip' to help join coils together.

I then fired the pots in a large 'camp fire' it took a lot of wood and got very hot. The pots have to glow red for them to be fired.

After it was fired i even cooked my lunch inside this. I boiled up some reedmace stem. It worked great

 

[stuart f]

Nice one John.

Cheers Stuart.

 

[Night Phoenix]

I really need to have a go at this, sounds great though there is not too much clay around here

 

[Cobweb]

I would love to have a go at this, we use to fire little pots in the barbecue when I was younger, we had a lovely red clay deposit right at the bottom of the garden (Wellington, Telford) and use to grab a handful and make some during the summer - when we had a barbecue, after the food was cooked we used to put them on the barbecue and cover then in new charcoal, sometimes it worked other times, well let's just say, the fun was watching the adults legging it for the kitchen

I am hoping to have a go this summer, if I can get enough fuel together. We have a very gritty reddish clay in Ludlow and a smoother, denser white/creamy grey clay up the woods which seems better...

I was wondering if there is any special preparations that need to be done before making, drying and firing the clay?