HYPOCAUST HITS THE STREETS OF SKIPTON

The hypocaust under construction

It’s amazing what you can end up making as an historical potter: Children from several Skipton schools had some fun recently, when they assisted me in the rather unusual task of constructing a half scale Roman Hypocaust, or central heating system, on the pavement outside the Craven Museum on Skipton High Street. I had made and fired all the necessary parts; nearly over two hundred pilaster bricks, seventy tubular box tiles and innumerable tessarae for the floor mosaic, over the preceding few weeks and the children helped with tasks such as brick laying the pillars which support the floor, setting the floor slabs in place, constructing the walls from tubular box tiles and creating the mosaic to surface the floor. By Friday afternoon the construction phase was complete the mosaic had been set in place and all was ready for the final phase, lighting the fire and making it work. The weather obliged with a steady downpour which made the task more difficult but set the wintry atmosphere in which a centrally heated villa might seem right at home.

As the small charcoal fire beneath the floor crackled into life, the box flues drew the warm air up into the walls and modern temperature sensors recorded the steady rise in temperature above the floor seeing it soar to 120 degrees F, almost 50 degrees C. The model was so successful it has now been moved into the museum where it takes pride of place next to the architectural ceramic finds from the Kirk Sink Villa at Gargrave where it is helping to explain the function of the various artefacts.



Visit my website at www.pottedhistory.co.uk

SUPERSIZERS FIND ROMAN POTS IN NORTHUMBERLAND

It's a bit of a cheat but I'm simply going to post the essence of the article that was published in the local paper regarding this topic. The pot was well featured in the programme and looked the part:

When the researcher for BBC2’s “Supersizers Eat... Roman” was looking for a specialist piece of Roman pottery to use in the programme, she knew exactly who to contact- historic potter and experimental archaeologist Graham Taylor.

Stepping into Graham Taylor’s Rothbury workshop is like a form of time travel. Neolithic urns, Bronze Age beakers, Roman amphorae and orange samian ware, sit next to jackal eared Egyptian canopic jars and medieval jugs. It’s like a cross between a museum store room and a bizarre film set. But this is the home of “Potted History”, where national museums, film makers, theatrical companies and TV production companies are coming to commission historically accurate replicas of pots.

“Most of the time I recreate items for museum handling collections- so that members of the public and schoolchildren can handle items exactly like the ones they can see in the museum display cases. But I also make pieces for archaeologists to “test to destruction” by cooking in them- using authentic historical recipes.”

“I was delighted to be able to supply ”Supersizers” a mortarium- the Roman equivalent of the food processor, as I’d enjoyed watching food critic Giles Coran and presenter Sue Perkins eat their way through various eras in the earlier series of the programme. When I heard that they were doing Roman food, I realised that it would be a big challenge for them. The Romans ate some things that we would recognise today- like bread and various meat dishes, but they also loved a fermented fish sauce known as garum or liquamen, which they exported right round the Empire in specially labelled amphorae and even added to sweet dishes. The mortarium was a vital piece of equipment in a Roman kitchen as it was used to do everything from making pesto type sauces from herbs, to grinding up meat for sausages and pates.

There’s something very special about sending a Roman replica pot off to Rome itself to be filmed in use. Apparently the Roman chef on “Supersizers” enjoyed using it so much that she became quite attached to it. But I don’t think that Sue Perkins was quite as keen! On being asked what her least favourite dish had been for the entire series she said that the Roman meal had featured three of the most awful things she’d ever eaten: a cow’s udder pâté, duck’s tongue and a pig’s womb stir-fry. So we may not be getting any delicious recipe tips from the programme, but it does sound like excellent viewing.”

Supersizers Eat Roman is scheduled to be the final episode of the new series of 6 programmes on Mondays, on BBC2 at 9pm.
In the meantime you can see examples of mortaria, liquamen amphorae and other Roman style pottery online at http://www.pottedhistory.co.uk/ or on display and for sale at Crown Studio Gallery, Bridge Street Rothbury.

Visit my website at www.pottedhistory.co.uk

Canopic Jars and Standing Stones

Wednesday is our day off so I only unpacked a kiln before setting of on an archaeological visit, a set of canopic jars that I've made for Leicester Museum and need to be sent soon.

The visit was to the fabulous stone circle ar Duddo in Northumberland, if you haven't been there go, if you have been there go again. We absolutely loved the place, set on a small rise in the gently undulating landscape of north Northumberland this circle commands fantastic views of the Cheviots and across into Scotland to the Eildon Hills, both important prehistoric landscapes in their own right. The stones themselves are deeply grooved by millenia of water erosion a feature the has, in the past moved me to create sculptural pots (see below) but they don't even come close to the beauty of the real thing.

Visit my website at www.pottedhistory.co.uk

Back to the Wheel

Ok so I started in January with the enthusiasm of the newly converted and then............................ well I guess that the work got in the way!! Since me last entry I have been delivering Roman, Saxon and Greek pottery workshops in schools, making all manner of pots for handling collections, demonstrating Roman Pottery at Vindolanda, running a Prehistoric Pottery Workshop for adults at the Yorkshire Museum and desperately trying to get my workshop tidied up and sorted out!

The greatest highlight of the last few weeks though, has been the marriage, last week of my eldest daughter Ali and her man Charlie................Hurraaahhhh!!!!

Anyway that said, let's stick to pottery matters here with a few pictures of what I've been doing:

The Saxon Urn got fired and finished

.............As did the Gefrin pots.

and the Roman pots for Nottingham. More updates soon.

Visit my website at www.pottedhistory.co.uk

The job isn't finished till the paperwork's done!

I have just finished putting together my accounts for the Tax Man, I have great empathy with Vimes from Terry Pratchett's novel "Thud!"; "Vimes fretted through the afternoon. There was, of course, the paperwork. There was always the paperwork. The trays were only the start. .................... Vimes had got around to a Clean Desk policy. It was a clean floor that eluded him at the moment."

Anyway, the paperwork is clearing a little and it means that I can get on with the pots and the first has been the large Anglo-Saxon pot from Gefrin. So here's one I made earlier!















Visit my website at http://www.pottedhistory.co.uk/

Conversations With Pots

When I handle an ancient pot it’s a little like shaking hands with the original potter; a handshake across thousands of years. I can feel the impressions made by their thumbs, the pressure of their fingers pushing the wet clay into the palm of the hand to swell out the belly of the pot, the sweep of a tool to decorate the surface. All of these movements are like frozen, or possibly more correctly, fired moments in time, preserved and waiting for me to decode. When I come to emulate their actions and re-create one of these prehistoric masterpieces, I get to know the potter a little better. A conversation takes place … “Oh I see why you did that” ….”What did you use to make that mark?”.........”Now that’s clever, decorating it like that”. The conversation may seem a little one sided but the answers come back to me from the clay. Above all the act of making a piece gives me a deep sense of respect for a fellow craftsperson.

Learning how the pots were made, how they were fired and how they were used, also tells me a little about the way these people live. People very much like us; some with time to lavish on the careful decoration of a prized possession; some making a utilitarian vessel which will fill the needs of the next few days while in a seasonal hunting camp; some making a final gift for a loved one to take into the “After Life”. I am moved by the simple rustic beauty of these pieces, but they connect me with the ancient inhabitants of this valley and these hills in a way that transcends mere aesthetics.

Visit my website at http://www.pottedhistory.co.uk/

This month I'll be mostly making Saxon Pots

OK it's New Year and I have a mountain of Pots to make . To add to the Nottingham Pots and Samian Ware for another museum The Gefrin Trust have commissioned me to make replicas of pots from Brian Hope-Taylor's excavations at the Anglian Royal Palace of Gefrin and the Iron Age Hill fort of Yeavering. This will also include earlier pots from the site including a rather fine early Neolithic Carinated Bowl. These pots will form part of an exhibition "AD GEFRIN: PALACE OF THE KINGS OF NORTHUMBRIA" which opens on 14 February and runs till 29 March 2009 at the Old Fulling Mill Museum of Archaeology, The Banks, Durham. Further Enquiries 0191 334 1823 Archaeology.Museum@durham.ac.uk

And last but by no means least, I am really touched and honoured to say that I have been commissioned to make a replica Saxon urn as the final resting place of the cremated remains of an archaeologist.

Visit my website at www.pottedhistory.co.uk

Replica Pots for Christmas....what else?

I am guessing that all the people who ordered from me, replica pots for their loved ones, will by now have given them so that I can now reveal a couple of my favourites. Firstly I there's this replica of a Bronze Age food vessel excavated from the Bawearie Cairns at Old Bewick, Northumberland, by Canon William Greenwell in 1866, which I made for one of the Archaeologists involved in the More recent excavations of the same cairns. The original pot is in the British Museum.



Then there is this replica of a Neolithic, Mortlake Bowl made for another Archaeologist:

This one is decorated using a whipped cord tool to produce what are known as "maggot marks". Both have been open fired in a "bonfire" firing just as their archetypes would have been.

Visit my website at www.pottedhistory.co.uk

Mediaeval Pottery Kiln at Shotton

A few days ago I was invited to visit the archaeological excavation of a pottery production site at Shotton, to the north of Newcastle upon Tyne. This site is sceduled for surface coal extraction by Banks Development and has been excaveted in advance of this by Tyne and Wear Museums. What they have found is a small medieval settlement with evidence of pottery production including a kiln and clay extraction pits. The whole site is on solid clay a fact that has made the conditions in the trenches less than pleasant. As you can see in this photograph of the kiln mud and ice were the order of the day but they were kind enough to remove the ice and pump out the water so that I could inspect it. These conditions suggest that some of the post holes around the kiln must surely have been supports for a roof, otherwise the kiln would have been inoperable during most of the year.

I have taken clay samples from the site with the intention of firing them under an assortment of different firing conditions so that they can be compared with the potsherds from the excavation.

Roman Replicas for Nottingham University

Over the next few weeks I will be making a collection of Replica Roman Pottery for the Archaeology Museum at the University of Nottingham. Most of the pieces will be from the Margidunum site Excavated by Felix Oswald. This will include head pots, mortaria, goddess figures, cooking pots, Samian ware and much more. Various different types of firing will be involved from fully oxidised red wares through greyware to heavy reduction for the blackwares.

A great little head pot from Margidunum.

One of the things that I love about working on a project like this is the opportunity to handle the original aretefacts and in doing so to place my hands in the impressions left by a fellow potter thousands of years ago. In the picture below you can actually see his/her fingerprints.

Watch this blog for more information on this project.

Roman Pottery at Newcastle YAC

I spent today working with a great group of young people at the Newcastle branch of the Young Archaeologists' Club (YAC). The theme for todays meeting was the Romans, so we looked at various pieces from my handling collection of replicas and then I gave them a demonstration of throwing on a stick wheel. These youngsters showed a great deal of enthusiasm and posed some very intelligent questions. The participants then each made a small moulded Roman figure to take home before indulging in a fantastic Roman Feast (Great food!). Dr Jane Webster of Newcastle University and Dr Rob Young of English Heritage who run this YAC group along with a few helpers are obviousl doing a great job, long may it continue. Thanks for inviting me and I hope that you'll invite me back sometime soon.
Throwing on the stick wheel (photo by Ken Lister)

Prehistoric firing

Last week you'd have found me bent over a small fire in the corner of a Northumbrian field, replicating the firing techniques of the Neolithic in order to complete several commissions before Christmas. I've had several orders this year from the partners of archaeologists wanting replicas of pieces that their loved ones had been instrumental in excavating or that had come from Archaeological site in which they had an interest. So several new beakers, food vessels, Mortlake and Fengate bowls have come into existence thousands of years after the originals upon which they were based.