Potted History On Screen

In terms of media work, it's been a busy couple of years and I'll be linking to a few of the resulting videos in the coming months, this one was made for English Heritage, Stonehenge, for whom you may recall from earlier posts, I made the replica Grooved Ware and Beaker pottery displayed in the Stonehenge Visitor Centre Museum and in the replica Neolithic Houses. This obviously shows a very much speeded-up version of the creation of a Neolithic Grooved Ware pot, but it does give an idea of the processes involved. Early in 2019 I'll be starting a subscription Vlog in which I'll produce monthly lecture/demo videos taking you through all aspects of Prehistoric Pottery making. I'll go into detail on everything from the selection and preparation of materials, the making and use of authentic tools, forming and decorating many different types of Neolithic, Bronze-Age and Iron Age pottery and the firing process. If you'd be interested to hear more about this, or keep informed about forthcoming workshops and replicas, sign up to my Mailing List. Or to book onto one of my one day workshops have a look at our website Potted-History.co.uk  

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Skara Brae Neolithic Pottery Demonstrations

At Easter 2017 you'd have found me absolutely in my element, working for Historic Environment Scotland, at Skara Brae, the amazingly well preserved Neolithic Village on the Bay of Skaill, Orkney Mainland not far from the Ness of Brodgar, the Ring of Brodgar, The Stones of Stenness and Maeshow. Built about 5000 years ago, that's before the stones were erected at Stonehenge and before the first Egyptian pyramids were constructed, Skara Brae is a truly remarkable survival. Occupied for about 500 years it was abandoned around 4500 years ago and as relatively quickly covered with sand, preserving not only the structure of the buildings and some wonderful artefacts, but the flagstone furniture as well; beds, storage tanks and display shelving know as "the dresser".  Several of these houses are preserved almost to level of the roof, the exact structure of which is not known.  For conservation reasons it's not possible to enter the original houses, so Historic Environment Scotland have created a replica of house seven and it was here that I was stationed, inhabiting the space, making replicas and filling up the dresser with my pots.

During the five days that I was there, using tools that were based on finds from the site, I made several large Grooved Ware vessels and a few Unstan Ware Bowls. This was a great experience for me and it seemed to be much appreciated by the visitors, many of whom stayed for some considerable time, talking to me about the houses, life in Neolithic Orkney, but mostly the pottery. Two guides who brought several groups round the site during my time there, were most emphatic that I must stay permanently and that the dresser should remain filled with my pots. Unfortunately that's not going to be possible at present but i am hoping that Historic Environment Scotland will invite me back again.

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Replicating The Aldbourne Cup

I always enjoy what I do, but lately I've had some amazing commissions, here's the story of one of them: Towards the end of 2015 I was contacted by John Dymond and Alan Heasman, from the Aldbourne Heritage Centre in Wiltshire, asking if I would be able to replicate the Aldbourne Cup for display in their museum. I knew the pot well or at least I thought I did: It was excavated by Cannon Greenwell, in October 1878, from a Bronze Age barrow near the village. Normally my replicas recreate a pot as it looked on the day it was first made, however after some discussion and various meetings of members of the Aldbourne Heritage

I had replicated it on numerous occasions based on drawings and photographs but I decided to make an appointment to visit the British Museum, the cup's current home, and have a close look at it. I'm really glad that I did, because what hadn't been obvious from the images, was the fact that the perforations that formed the decoration, were circular rather than square. Many Bronze-Age beakers, food vessels and the like, are decorated by impressing a shallow toothed comb into the wet clay, forming dotted lines. These combs are almost invariably made by cutting grooves across the edge of a flat piece of bone or antler, this results in a row square or rectangular teeth. The Aldbourne cup on the other hand, had been decorated with a comb composed of round pins, probably three 2mm pins placed in a row and sharpened at the tips to produce 1mm holes spaced 1mm apart. As luck would have it the same burial produced 2 bronze pins pretty much fitting this description, which previous investigators had suggested may have been tattooing tools. A little research yielded images of Polynesian tattooing combs, that informed my reconstruction of a tool suitable for decorating the pot.

Another peculiarity of the decoration was that, while I knew that there were two holes passing through the wall of the pot, as there are with quite a few examples of accessory vessels, in this case some of the impressed decoration actually appeared to go right through the wall of the pot. I believe that this was accidental and occurred where impressions on the outside and inside, exactly coincided with one another.

One reason why such deep decoration might be desirable is if it was intended to be filled with some contrasting coloured material for decorative effect. When looking at the original, it did appear to me that this might be the case ad I thought that in some of the holes I could detect evidence of a lighter material. For this reason I went back to the Heritage Centre members asking the question “to inlay or not to inlay”. Warwick Hood, who had done considerable research, and presented a paper to the Aldbourne Heritage Group on the subject of the cup, kindly pointed out the following reference in Canon Greenwell's 1890 Archaeolgia article, entitled “Recent Researches in Barrows in Yorkshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, etc.”:

"There is one particular in which it is of much interest, and which has not hitherto, I believe, been observed in pottery from a British barrow. The impressions forming the pattern, and which have been made by a sharp-pointed tool, probably a bronze pricker, have been filled in with some white material like finely powdered chalk applied when in a semi-liquid state. This white material was certainly not the result of the vessel being in contact with chalk, for the surrounding earth was very dark coloured and without any admixture of chalk whatever."

The Aldbourne IV barrow had in fact contained two Aldbourne Cups and in this case Greenwell is referring to the second. Nevertheless the evidence suggested that this had been the case with both the cups and the decision was made, that in the case of the cup in original state, white chalk paste would be applied. This was done by crushing chalk to a paste with a little water, rubbing it into the decoration of the fired pot, polishing off the excess and sealing it into place with a layer of beeswax. I knew it would dramatically change the appearance of the pot, but I probably wasn't prepared for just how stunning it would look. I learned so much more but watch out for a paper later.

Although the Aldbourne Heritage Centre has been open during it's development, I was delighted to be invited to attend the official opening, along with Phil Harding of Time Team fame and Neil Wilkin, Curator, British and European Bronze Age Collection at the British Museum, where the replicas were officially handed over to the Centre.

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It's been a busy time just recently, to start with I've moved premises, I'm still in Rothbury, Northumberland, and only a few hundred metres away from my old workshop, but with much more space. In addition I now have an assistant, my daughter Sarah Lord, who will not only be expanding the range of replica pottery that we can offer but be bringing her expertise as a costume maker to the business.  Sarah holds a degree in performance costume design from Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) and worked for several years as a costume maker with Scottish Opera. She also has a Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE), and has worked as a Key Stage 3 & 4 (KS 3 & 4) Design Technology Teacher, so is perfectly equipped to deliver school workshops.

Sarah has also been working on our range of retail goods for museum shops, in particular small Neolithic and Bronze Age pots for the Stonehenge Gift Shop.

In the meantime I've been all over the country from Caithness to Wiltshire, from Glasgow to Lincoln delivering workshops and demonstrating, as well as running workshops right here in Rothbury.

I've also been entering the world of Academia by uploading my CBA paper "Mud and Fire" to Academia.edu and having had the honour of being asked by Dr Neil Wilkin to co-present a paper at the European Association of Archaeologists conference in Glasgow.

And last but by no means least, I've been inundated with requests for replicas which I'm now working on, sorry if you've been waiting for yours, it will be with you soon.

 Visit my website at www.pottedhistory.co.uk

Neolithic Carinated Bowl: complex simplicity

At first glance a Neolithic carinated bowl, the earliest type of pottery in Britain, looks like a very simple pot. Certainly they were hand formed often from very coarse natural clay, to function as humble cooking pots. In fact when making an average sized bowl, up to about 20cm in diameter, its form flows almost naturally from the process itself. The curve of the bowl nestles nicely in the hand, the concave form of the upper body conforms to the curve of the thumb, while the fingers stretch down inside to push out the carnation.  All well and good, but when one comes to make a bowl as big as the one I made for Stonehenge, it's a different matter.  For a start there's the weight; at over thirty centimetres in diameter it requires nearly five kilos of coarse clay in its construction. This makes it virtually impossible to hold the soft vessel in one hand.  If I start building on a base (flat stone, grass mat whatever is handy) this gives it a flat base, which can only be expanded out once the clay has stiffened.  Alternatively working into the base of an old broken pot does allow one to make a round bottomed piece but only to a predetermined form and, as clay shrinks on drying it will easily release from its "mould" but will also be considerably smaller than the former.  Once the pot becomes firm enough to support itself it can be picked up and worked on but this brings with it its own problems, the stiffened clay becomes brittle, the least deformation of the rim and the pot will crack, a flaw which, in the firing, could result in total failure.  One possible solution to this is to add organic fibrous material which will act as reinforcement in the unfired pot and one of the most suitable sources of this is animal dung. Finally, once the pot has reached a leather hard stage, the entire inner and outer surfaces need to me slip coated by rubbing with a wet hand and finally burnished all over, again without putting undue stress on the rim.

Firing small pots in an open fire is a relatively simple matter provided a strict set of rules are adhered to, a large pot on the other hand is quite a different matter. That pot needs to be absolutely dry before it comes anywhere near to a flame. In a Neolithic hut it would undoubtedly have spent several days on the outer edges of the hearth, occasionally being turned to present a new face to the warmth of the fire.  Only once the potter was certain that all moisture had left the clay would the firing process begin: The pot would be moved a little closer to the fire, inverted, and with its rim supported on three stones a few embers from the fire would have been pushed underneath its dome, their rising smoke and heat filling the vessel. Replenishing and increasing this small glowing fire over the next couple of hours the potter would have carefully and steadily raised the temperature until, at around about 400 degrees C the organic matter in the clay would have begun to burn, turning the outer surface of the pot dark brown or black.  This would also be an indication that it was ready to move to the next stage of firing, surrounding the pot with embers and eventually immersing the pot into the fire, bringing up its temperature until at seven or eight hundred degrees, in the darkness of the hut interior it could be seen to glow deep red. The firing complete, the fire would have been allowed to burn down and go out and the pot would have been cooled while protecting it from sudden cold draughts that might cause it to crack.

Simple as that!

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Pots for Stonehenge and Wiltshire

I take delight in every project that I undertake but being asked by English Heritage, to make all the replica pottery fro the new Stonehenge Visitor Centre and by the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes, to make replicas for the Gold from the time of Stonehenge have been a particular highlights of the past year. In each case making the pots not as they look now, after several millennia in the ground, but as they would have looked when new. The first part of the project was to produce a selection of large Neolithic Grooved Ware vessels, to be used in the prototype Neolithic Houses which English Heritage built at Old Sarum, as a precursor to building a group at Stonehenge. These pots were based on originals excavated at Durrington Walls. 

Grooved Ware pots based on finds from Durrington Walls

Next came a film role, at least for my hands. I was filmed making a replica grooved ware pot, from crushing and preparing the raw clay and grog, through building and decorating the vessel, to firing it on an open hearth and finally removing the finished pot from the fire. This video will be showing on a loop in the visitor centre, alongside one of Phil Harding making a flint axe and Neil Burridge casting bronze.

Grooved Ware pot glowing in an open fire

At this point I was invited to join archaeologist and curator Sarah Lunt at Fort Cumberland and at Salisbury Museum, to look at the originals pots that I would be replicating for the Stonehenge Museum display, and the education rooms. It is a huge privelage to have had the opportunity to see and handle such iconic pots as: The Wilsford collared urn, grape cup and Stonehenge cup, excavated by William Cunnington during his excavation campaign 1802 – 1810, along with beakers, carinalted bowls and the small grooved ware pot from Durrington Walls.

Back in my studio I began replicating these masterpieces of Neolithic and Bronze-Age ceramic art, for both Stonehenge and the Devizes Museum, here are some of the results.

Wilsford Collared Urn and Grape Cup along with "The Ceramic Object"

The beautiful collared urn here from the Wilsford G7 burial is one of the finest examples from the whole of the UK, here's the original . I'm not the first to attempt to replicate it, Josiah Wedgwood had a go, although in terracotta and over industrialised for my liking. The refinement of this pot and the care with which the decoration has been applied make it a real challenge to replicate. To a lesser degree the same is true of the grape cup with over 150 individually applied pellets and between each pair, a hole bored through to the interior, at only 6cm tall, that's a lot of detail packed into a very small pot. The third item here is the "Ceramic Object", found in the fill of Aubrey Hole number 29 and so called because no one knows exactly what it is.  

My replicas on display at Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes

The pots below are in the education rooms at Stonehenge

Early Neolithic Carinated Bowl, Grooved Ware Pot, Wilsford Beaker and Ceramic Object

My final job is to make the pots for the Neolithic houses so watch this space.


Visit my website at www.pottedhistory.co.uk