Santa Clara and San Ildefenso pots are perhaps the most iconic of Pueblo ceramics with their striking black-on-black designs, achieved by smoking the pots in a heavily reduced atmosphere, burnishing the resulting blackware, and then overglazing designs in matte black. These sophisticated pieces were produced starting in the 1800s and predominantly by women: Maria Martinez’sContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Santa Clara Ware”
Tag Archives: ceramics
Ceramics Saturdays: Taos Ware
There are a few Puebloan pottery styles that eschew glazing in favor of simply burnishing the dried clay with a curved potsherd to a gloss. In the case of Taos ware, this technique allows the glittering mica flecks embedded in the local red clay to shine–as they do in this gorgeous bean pot by PamContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Taos Ware”
Ceramics Saturdays: Ácoma pottery
I’m starting a series on Pueblo pottery: while I won’t be able to do all 19 pueblos here, I’ll highlight my favorite styles, starting with Ácoma. I love the monochromatic color scheme and the geometric decorations. The rounded shapes also feel either very old (cf. Mimbres) or very modern to me as well. Ácoma isContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Ácoma pottery”
Ceramics Saturdays: The Poem Jars of David Drake
Boy, I would kill to be in NYC right now: there’s an exhibit on at the Met of the poem jars of David Drake, an enslaved ceramicist from South Carolina. Unusually, he signed his large-format storage jars, pitchers, and other vessels. Even more unusually, he etched short poems into many: (the one above reads “IContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: The Poem Jars of David Drake”
Ceramics Saturdays: Makgeolli Cups from Jeewon Jeong
I’m so excited, you guys. I’m in the process of getting 8 of these little bowls from my friend Jeewon Jeong. I’m going to use them for makgeolli, but Jeewon says they’re a good size for rice, ice cream, etc. as well. Can’t wait! I’m planning on brewing a special batch of fall makgeolli toContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Makgeolli Cups from Jeewon Jeong”
Ceramics Saturdays: Altes Museum
I said this when I visited the Archaelogical Museum in Athens, and I still believe it’s true: if you want to see the finest examples of Attic Greek ceramics, don’t look in Greece.* They were begged, bought, or stolen from the country in the colonial period and now sit in Northern European museums–such as Berlin’sContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Altes Museum”
Ceramics Saturdays: Meissen “Red Porcelain”
Edmund de Waal includes an extended account of the development of “red porcelain” or Meissen red wares in White Road, but the upshot is that on the way to discovering a formula for a European white porcelain, Böttger and his assistants in Augustus the Strong’s kilns in Meissen first discovered a way to reliably produceContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Meissen “Red Porcelain””
Ceramics Saturdays: The Ostrakon and Cancel Culture in Ancient Athens
The Agora Museum in Athens is full of these funny little terracotta disks with a hole in the middle, partially glazed in black, with someone’s name scratched through the black glaze. They’re ostraka, and they were used in special elections called to banish certain citizens from Athens for 10 years. Ostracism was used in casesContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: The Ostrakon and Cancel Culture in Ancient Athens”
Ceramics Saturdays: Mycenean and Cycladean Wares
I’ve learned a lot about these ceramic traditions on my trip to Athens, and they’re really special. A little historical background: these were the two cultures that preceded and most heavily influenced Classical Athenian culture. The Cyclades are a flock of Aegean islands fenced in by Greece, Turkey, and Crete, the mythical home of theContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Mycenean and Cycladean Wares”
Ceramics Saturdays: Charles Voltz
I thought I would go through a few more ceramics and potters in my personal collection after I did John Almeda. Charles Voltz was a French potter who set up shop in the 1950s in the renowned region of Vallauris, famous first for its range of native clays and later for the ceramicists who cameContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Charles Voltz”
The Rookery 