Pod Insights Ologies Ceramology (POTTERY) with Potted History’s Graham Taylor & Sarah Lord Taylor About this episode Porcelain. Earthenware. China. Archaeology. Stoneware. Anthropology. Amphora. Throwing wheels. We got it all. Master potters, history aficionados and Potted History’s icons Sarah Lord Taylor and Graham Taylor are here for our 8th anniversary episode. We get the dirt on ceramics versus pottery, where clay comes from, if there’s enough in the world, how can you spot clay in the wild, how long have humans being making pots, what were the first ceramics, what is glaze exactly, why did your pots explode, what excavations of stoneware have revealed about our ancient ancestors, the Venus figurines of history, the hidden ingredients that might surprise you, and how to feel about thrift store finds. Also: how to bond with a potter instantly.
Transcript 14,475 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Alie Ward? Oh, hey, it's yesterday's pants, also known as today's pants. Ally Ward, let's ruin a manicure in the best way possible. It's Ologies eighth year this week, eighth anniversary, rather. This is episode 467. It is our anniversary, so I checked on the traditional gift guide for an eighth anniversary. And it's pottery, folks, finally. Also, you can enjoy our fifth anniversary episode on wood, which we did about reclaimed lumber. Loved it. But ceramology, it comes from the Greek ceramos for pottery, which was easy. Not only is this an anniversary episode, but it's also a twofer because we've got two guests and they're both equally the best. It's a parent-child duo of accomplished ceramic artists.
0:45 Alie Ward? Plus, there is another sibling who helps run the business, and there's Jess in the studio, although they're not on this interview. But many of you are freaking out, freaking out, wigging, just seeing their names in the title. But if you don't know their work, they run the studio Potted History, as well as its educational and very cool YouTube channel. And for decades, they've been making museum-quality replicas of these ancient ceramics for institutions and museums and heritage sites and private collectors and TV. And on top of that, they are very pro-accessibility and they've run workshops on ancient craftsmanship for universities and laypeople alike, and they give advice for research projects. They are so into the craft and the history of pottery, there was no one else I would
1:28 Alie Ward? have rather sat down with via a video chat from Northumberland, England. Love them. And before we get to it, just a quick thanks to all the potters and the non-potters via patreon.com/ologies who submitted questions for this episode. Thanks to everyone in Ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com. Thank you to the folks who help out the show now going into its ninth year, which is the longest I've ever held a job, by leaving reviews, which help the show so much. I read all of them, including this recent one from Dr. Tess West, who wrote, "Smells like sharpened pencils. Each episode of Ologies has a slightly giddy sensation of your favorite teacher pulling out a fresh transparency sheet for the overhead projector and captivating the imagination of every kid in the class." Also, thank you to Bunny who left the review.
2:12 Alie Ward? Minus some stars because we have swears in the show. Bunny, we made you a whole show. It's called Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. They are linked right in the show notes. They're in their own filth-free feed of classroom-safe, kid-friendly episodes. They're called Smologies. We made them for you. I hope you enjoy them. No swears, Smologies. Also, thanks to sponsors of the show who make it possible to donate to a cause of the ologist choosing each week. Being safer on the road starts with the person behind the wheel. That's Mazda's philosophy when designing every vehicle. Their proactive safety features help keep you more aware, connected, and engaged during every drive, which means your car does more than help protect you.
2:54 Alie Ward? It makes you a safer driver, which helps protect everyone. That's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. To learn more, visit MazdaUSA.com. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Father Ward, you say, there's no way you would need a career coach? You have it all together. That's a lie, and you know it. I actually hired a career coach, and without them, I wouldn't have started Ologies. It was one of the best investments I've ever made. And if you're like, I don't know where to find a career coach, I can help you. You need an experienced pro who asks the right questions, sets you down a path where you're most likely to succeed. And that's what you can expect from a coach at today's sponsor, strawberry.me. This is so cool.
3:37 Alie Ward? They match you with a certified coach who's been vetted to work closely with company founders. And yeah, sometimes I'm like, oh, wait, that's right, I am one. And if you're founding a business, even if you're along the way and you're maybe stuck in a rut, or you have to make a decision about expansion, or what direction you want to take your company, that's what I did. I went to strawberry.me and I was like, okay, can you help me pare down some stuff? I think I have too much on my plate. I'm not sure what to say yes to and what to say no to. And they were super helpful in helping me streamline, and now I get to sleep more, and I enjoy that. So get the help every entrepreneur needs. Go to strawberry.me/ologies. That's strawberry.me/ologies. You're the boss. This podcast is brought to you by Aura.
4:21 Alie Ward? Your body has a lot going on. Sleep, stress, recovery. You would be surprised how connected it all is. Aura Ring tracks more than 50 metrics from your finger. And the Aura app brings that information together to help you see patterns across your sleep and stress, activity and more. So you can start connecting the dots and figure out what works for you. Learn more at aura ring.com. Wear your best life with Aura. Okay, grab grandpa's old dress shirt. Reverse it as a smock. Let's get into an art project on the difference between ceramics and pottery. Where clay comes from? If there's enough in the world? How you can spot clay in the wild? How long have humans been making pots? What were the first ceramics?
5:06 Alie Ward? What is glaze exactly? Why did your pots explode? What's porcelain? When was the wheel invented? Not that wheel, but the other wheel? What excavations of stoneware have revealed about our ancient ancestors? The Venus figurines of history? The hidden ingredients that might surprise you? How to feel about thrift store finds? And how to bond with a potter? With master potters, artists, history aficionados and icons of pottery. Sarah Lord Taylor and Graham Taylor. You will love.
5:55 Alie Ward? Know something or if you cut something, we edit a lot. Trust me, I couldn't do it without edits. But the first thing I'll have you say is if you could tell me your first and last name and also the pronouns you use, just to make sure we say everything right.
6:09 Speaker 01 Graham Taylor, he/him.
6:11 Speaker 02 Sarah Lord and she/her. I forgot, it's been a long day.
6:16 Alie Ward? Thank you so much for talking to me. I know it's evening over there. And now y'all are a father-daughter duo.
6:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:24 Speaker 01 We are.
6:24 Alie Ward? Potters and also in the archaeology realm.
6:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, ceramics brings together all sorts of different bits and pieces and it's sort of the merging of the four ancient elements, you know, earth, air, fire and water. And that's sort of appropriate because when you make clay things at a microscopic scale, you're joining platelets together, et cetera. So we sort of merged archaeology, experimental archaeology and geology because of course we're using the raw materials of the earth. So you've sort of got an overlap of ologies going on. And while I don't think there is a specific ology for making ceramic objects, it's on the cusp there of all sorts of things.
7:07 Alie Ward? Also, side note, we do have a fabulous episode on experimental archaeology, all about something called atlattles. I'll link it in the show notes. You use one at the dog park. You don't even know it. Your work definitely involves a lot of archaeology. That's one reason I wanted to talk to you both is because I was really torn between having an episode just about the making of pottery versus the history of it. And like, that's what you do, which is so amazing. But I understand, Graham, you have been a potter in ceramics for a long time. And Sarah, you grew up around the studio. Graham, how did you get started?
7:43 Speaker 01 How long you got? Um, basically, I grew up where we are now in Northumberland. And there's lots of archaeology everywhere. And I was always fascinated living in this landscape of the history of it. Yeah, I was one of these weird kids who would spend his time wandering around ancient monuments rather than going and playing football, you know. But I also was artistic, but interested in science, but I didn't want my science too sciency, I suppose. So I ended up doing an arts foundation course, largely with the intention of doing graphics, because that was sort of what I knew. Went into a ceramics studio and went.
8:29 Speaker 01 Hey, this is it. I don't really believe in any sort of spiritual stuff going on, but it was like I'd done it before. It was like, you know, you sort of got that feeling of, yeah, yeah, this just feels right. Just feels like the right thing. And yeah, ceramics took me as an undergraduate student. I became interested in the idea that what I was doing had this heritage that went back thousands of years. And in that, there were bits of technology which weren't really used anymore. And I went in search of that in order to bring it into sort of contemporary practice. So I was making teapots, cups, saucers, jugs, all the things. I'm talking to American noise, pitchers, pitchers.
9:13 Alie Ward? Okay, Ologites, you're all over the globe. But yes, as an American, I did not know that pitchers were called jugs by the rest of the English speaking world. Honestly, when someone says jugs around me, it's usually not even about a vessel of any sort. Now, another word we don't use enough, uer, which is like a vase or vase shaped jug or pitcher in America, usually quite fancy. And apparently, if you look up uer, the most prominent example will be this tall ornate silver affair with spirals and these floral motifs. And it's the trophy for the international racing competition with yachts from all over the world, which is called the America's Cup, even though America may not even be competing. Also, branding wise, an America's Cup would just be called a pitcher. But no one who owns a yacht wants
9:57 Alie Ward? to compete for the pitcher, unless perhaps it's pitcher of beer, which is the only time the Brits call their jugs a pitcher. But let's get back to the clay at hand.
10:08 Speaker 01 And in that, that developed into a hunt for ancient technology. When I graduated, my wife and I both worked in the pottery at that stage, Sarah's mom, and we ended up at a pottery in Scotland, where we worked for three years, and then got offered a job out in Lesotho in Southern Africa, where I found myself among people who were still making pots in the way people would have done here in the Neolithic. They were digging their own clays, hand forming the pots, firing them in open fires. And it was just wonderful to see that that. Technology was still alive and still being used and it sort of grew out of that. And eventually, when I came back to the UK in the end, we set up a pottery workshop. And yeah, that became the sort of thrust of the workshop.
10:51 Speaker 01 As for Sarah joining in, well, yeah, I mean, she'll no doubt tell you as a kid, they enjoyed the pottery workshop as somewhere to play and run around and jump into the piles of shredded paper that we had to pack the pots in and stuff like that. But.
11:06 Speaker 02 I'm not sure the people at work for you enjoyed us.
11:12 Speaker 01 No, no, no.
11:13 Speaker 02 We were a bit of a nuisance, but no, it was good fun to kind of just, yeah, to see all this production. It was lovely.
11:21 Speaker 01 And Sarah will tell you herself, she went off on a completely different route and came back to the pottery. Basically, what happened was we had a Christmas dinner one year when I'd been ridiculously busy running all over the country, doing demos and workshops and things like that. And the kids said to me, Dad, you need an apprentice. And I said, well, who'd want to work with me? And Sarah very foolishly said she would. So, yeah.
11:47 Speaker 02 So did my middle sister Claire, but yeah. And I know Claire is also in midwifery and does more of the tech and admin. But Sarah, did you feel like when you first started working with Clay, did it feel familiar to you? Or did you feel like there was a learning curve to getting the hang of it? No, it definitely did feel familiar. So my background was actually textile. So I studied costume design and I worked for many years at Scottish Opera doing men's suits. So I'd always done stuff with my hands. When I started throwing, Dad tried to teach us to throw when we were kids and we just weren't interested. You know, when you're like, oh, boring dad stuff, we've got other things to do.
12:28 Speaker 02 And I regret that now, but, but when I came to start throwing, it did feel like I understood what I was doing. It didn't feel entirely alien to me and I love being in the workshop. Yeah, sitting kind of making things and the history I find so fascinating. I think I'd never enjoyed. Dates and things like that. So wars and guns and all of that stuff, not interested. But when you've got like, these people were here and they were eating this and they were, you know, clothing themselves in this and you've got objects with fingerprints on and you can start to think about stories. It's the real people doing real everyday things, not the kings or the queens and all of that. That's what I love so much about what we do
13:12 Speaker 02 is because we're looking into that everyday life of real people. And I love that.
13:18 Alie Ward? That's such a good point. I feel like most of, yeah, history that we're taught does focus on monarchies, wealth or killing. And that's such a great point. I'm wondering too, we're talking about ceramics and throwing and pots. And this is a very stupid question, but that's like what I'm here for, but.
13:38 Speaker 01 There's no such thing. No such thing as stupid question.
13:42 Alie Ward? We'll say not smart. But like, what is the difference between pottery and ceramics and porcelain? What are they different clays? Are they different techniques? What is it?
13:55 Speaker 01 Well, it all starts with clay, I suppose, except that glass also sort of falls into the category of ceramic as well. So it's a little bit blurred at the edges.
14:06 Alie Ward? Yes, glass is a ceramic. And according to chapter three of the textbook, biomaterials, artificial origins and tissue engineering, a ceramic is something hard that's inorganic, not metal, and molded and set at a high temperature. And they can be crystalline or not. Now, major characteristics of ceramics are their high hardness, their insulating properties of heat and electricity, and corrosion resistance. Also, they're brittle and they fracture. Brick is a ceramic. Cement is a ceramic. A pumpkin's a berry.
14:41 Speaker 01 But basically, clay is an aluminum hydro silica.
14:46 Speaker 02 Your pardon?
14:47 Speaker 01 So, um, what does that mean? Basically, it means that you've got this very strange material, which is composed of little flat platelets. And those little flat platelets, when you add water to them, will glide over one another because their little chemical bonds are weak enough to let you shape them. So it's this wonderful material that you can manipulate around and you can shape into things. When you've dried it out and you have to thoroughly dry it out, and we might talk about firing things later. What you've got is a pot which still has some chemically combined moisture in there. And when you start to heat it up, the first few hundred degrees are really quite dangerous because it can turn to super steam in there and blow the whole thing apart.
15:29 Speaker 01 And anybody who did pottery at school probably had their teacher tell them that they'd left air bubbles in the clay because and their pot blew up and ruined everybody else's work. And in actual fact, it's just the teacher was firing the kiln too darn fast. That's all it is.
15:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, so no guilt, no guilt to anyone who blew up something in the kiln.
15:49 Speaker 01 No guilt, no guilt. But as you reach about five hundred and fifty degrees Celsius, those platelets start to melt together on the edges. They start to fuse together at the edges. And it's once you cross that boundary that you end up with ceramic, you end up with pottery, which basically means that if you wet it again, it's not going to turn soft and mouldable again.
16:10 Speaker 03 This is the point of no return.
16:12 Speaker 01 And that takes you up to five hundred and fifty Celsius. Once you get higher, depending on the type of clay, those bonds start to fuse more and more and more until you get up into really high temperatures like twelve, thirteen hundred Celsius. And that demands special clays, fairly pure clays, what we'd call kaolinite, which is the stuff they dig up in Cornwall here. But originates with the Chinese porcelain in a place called Jingdezhen, where they were digging up this wonderful material, which you could heat up to these extremely high temperatures. And it basically fuses the whole clay together, so much so, and you probably know with porcelain, if you hold it up to the light, you can see light through it. It's just this wonderful material which allows you to create things.
16:56 Speaker 01 Which are so remarkably hard.
16:58 Alie Ward? So at thirteen hundred degrees Celsius, or nearly twenty four hundred degrees Fahrenheit, those bonds really start to fuse. And yeah, when people say, let's use the good china, dear, that is china with a lowercase c. Even though this type of pottery was developed a few thousand years ago in China, it's also called porcelain. And that's from the French word for a type of shell due to this glassification and this translucent property owing to the really tiny or fine particle clay, which is called kaolin, K A O L I N. Now, kaolin occurs in nature when minerals like feldspar decompose out of granite. And if you're horny for rock info, we have a great geology two parter that will link for
17:43 Alie Ward? you. To make fine china, you need this kaolin and some minerals like the soft stone alabaster, which was later swapped out for feldspar because you could fire it at lower temperatures. Now, other things you could add to this fine white clay kaolin are bones, straight up ground up bones that have been set on fire and then mashed around. Some bone china contains nearly half ground up bone. And why was this? Oh, well, one porcelain maker had a shop right near a bunch of slaughterhouses and was like, holy smokes, boy howdy, why not add some frickin' bone to this stuff? Looks great. What do we call it? Bone china? No notes. Moving on. Love it.
18:25 Speaker 01 And of course, here in Europe, sort of fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth century, people went berserk for it. I mean, to the extent they were paying huge sums of money for this stuff coming from China. And I have a couple of little pieces from a shipwreck, which are very precious. They're lovely little, so thin, so thinly made, so beautifully made. And this, you know, takes me back to sort of what it is that makes us do this. Because most times when you're working on a piece, it ends up giving you this remarkable respect for these craftsperson of the past, that they were producing this super fine, wonderful stuff, or really elaborate pieces of work, or they'd worked out special ways of making things. Often when we're demonstrating at public venues and things like that,
19:10 Speaker 01 you will get somebody who comes along who in their question imply that, how did these quite stupid people in the past manage to do this sort of thing? You know, and you go, no, no, no, no, recalibrate.
19:24 Speaker 01 They understood things we don't understand anymore and they knew about materials. Yeah, they probably couldn't operate an iPhone, but at the same time, they could create these wonderful things. And they would probably be able to learn how to operate the iPhone quicker than you'd be able to work out how to make this. It's hot, you know, so, um, yeah.
19:44 Alie Ward? And what about the types of clay? I mean, I, I think about like terracotta clay and I think about red clay and white clays. Are there different types that are regional? And do you have to purify them before you make something with them? Is that why there might be bubbles that explode or?
20:05 Alie Ward? I love these people.
20:06 Speaker 01 Well, here in Britain, the far south, we have the China clays, which drove the sort of industrial revolution, white and blue China that went all over the world. This is not the only place you get China clays. I mean, they're called China clays because originally they came from China. But they are extremely pure clays in that what kaolin is, this wonderful chemical that makes clay possible, is, is decomposed floor spar from granite. So it's a volcanic rock which over millions of years has decomposed through other gases being forced up through it.
20:42 Alie Ward? And I went down a hole looking up abandoned kaolin quarries where the clay is washed out from the decomposing granite. And when I say I went down a hole, it's because I found one video where a guy's on a day hike and is walking around the rim of a quarry lake. And what he thinks is the earth is really just a thin crust over a slurry of like quicksand texture.
21:10 Alie Ward? Mineral slop and he gets sucked in with one foot and then he scrambles up the granite. He almost dies, but he lives to tell the tale. And he posted this video to be like, heads up, be careful when you're in an abandoned clay quarry, lest you be suctioned into Mother Earth's wet grasp once again. But yeah, this clay can be moved around the earth's surface by water flows or even ice sheets over time. And it can get finer or it can pick up like the rock equivalent of lint as it goes, sort of.
21:45 Speaker 01 So in the north of Britain, you have what we call boulder clays, which tell you a lot about what the clay is like. It's full of rocks. But people have exploited that clay for thousands of years because if you wash it, if you mix it with lots of water and you settle it out, you can get a perfectly good clay. But now it's got other stuff mixed with it, mostly iron. And the iron oxide is what makes terra cotta, it makes it red. So the red clay comes out of the ground looking mucky brown is what it comes out of the ground looking, sometimes yellow, but it'll fire to a beautiful red color. And depending on the amount of iron oxide in there and things, it'll fire red. Primary clays where they've been deposited at or near to where the granite decomposed
22:28 Speaker 01 will often be white or light colors and light cream.
22:31 Alie Ward? So the pure clay picks up other stuff. So it may vary in mineral or metal content and strength and have different color or texture. So the rougher clays may be used for like earthenware, which is fired at a lowish temperature. It's a bit porous, not usually glazed. It is certainly not coffee mug material, but it's good for planters or roof tiles. Now, stone ware is kind of a step up and it's fired a little hotter, making it less porous. And it's better for dishes and things, but weird to think. Whenever you handle ceramics, not only are you using a product of just innumerable
23:10 Alie Ward? generations passing down techniques one by one, but also from the very terra of a place you maybe have never been, or never will be, with minerals gathered through the eons, I plan to sit outside tomorrow morning over a cup of something hot and cry about it.
23:29 Speaker 01 So, yes, over the whole world, you will get different kinds of clay that have formed in different places.
23:36 Alie Ward? Are there places that are clayless? Are there regions that just were not blessed with stashes of clay?
23:43 Speaker 01 Well, Scandinavia is not blessed with lots of clay.
23:46 Alie Ward? Oh, really?
23:46 Speaker 01 Largely because of the mountainous nature of it. It hasn't sort of yielded that. As a result, when you look at, say, Viking pots, they're often made of soapstone. They're often steatite or something like that. So they're carving them rather than forming them from clay.
24:02 Alie Ward? So gossiping about clay types. Do you have, you can, you can admit it here, but do you have favorite clays to work with? Or any that you don't? Yes.
24:14 Speaker 01 Yes, I do. And I mean, what we often do is, a lot of the time, we are making pots that are going to be used for handling collections and for displays in museums, or just for collectors around the world who want to put them on their shelves. And we need to be certain of how they're going to behave. So what we generally do in those cases is we are taking commercially prepared clays and messing them up. The people who went to all the effort of getting these clays nice and clean would be horrified by what we do to the clays sometimes. But I like working with quite gritty clays because I tend to make big...
24:54 Speaker 01 Sort of amphora and sort of larger pots and things. But Sarah, of course, does very fine modeling and very fine sculpting. So she does a lot of the figurines and stuff like that. So she obviously works with a lot finer clay. So I think we would debate what was the best clay. Definitely it was.
25:11 Speaker 02 Yes, definitely. But I do also have clays that I hate to work with, but they're really functional. I made dad a gift of a little figure of a of a horse and rider. And I put lots of paper into it because the paper sort of sits inside the clay and almost creates a skeleton that means it holds together more easily and isn't going to snap. Because when clay is dried out, it's so brittle and it's very, very fine. So it's absolutely horrible to work with. It's a bit like, you know, when bluetack gets hot and it gets kind of like that sort of stretchy, kind of sticky.
25:47 Alie Ward? I had never heard of bluetack. And in fact, checking this aside, I spelled it a number of different ways, thinking it was some kind of clay or maybe a medical substance. And then realized that bluetack is this sticky putty that you can use to adhere posters on walls because it kind of heats up when it's in your hands and then it peels off when you need it to. Do we lack this bluetack in America like we do healthcare? I don't know. Anyway, imagine trying to sculpt gum fresh from a mouth.
26:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's like that to work with. So it's horrible and also brilliant to work with. So yes, I sort of I hate to and love it at the same time.
26:25 Speaker 01 This is a piece, the original of which is in what's called the Willetts collection in Brighton Museum. There was just this wonderful, wonderful horse, which Sarah managed to make in our quite small workshop and fire in our single kiln without me knowing, which
26:42 Speaker 02 The secret.
26:43 Speaker 01 Remarkable achievement. I mean, it really was.
26:47 Speaker 02 And there was a horrible moment where he came into the workshop very quickly. So I very quickly threw some bubble wrap over the top of it. And then when he left, I lifted the bubble wrap off and it was almost dry. It caught on the lady's hat and pulled her head off. And I was absolutely horrified. But thankfully, because I'd used the paper clay, I could get it back on there. But I thought, I've spent hours on this and I've ruined it in like a second. It was just the most horrible moment. But yes, it did survive.
27:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, the idea of putting paper and clay might sound really weird. But when you go back to Neolithic Bronze Age Anglo-Saxon Viking pottery, they're using clays from the surface, from muddy puddles, et cetera. That already has a lot of organic material in. You know, I always say with a Bronze Age or a Neolithic potter, they wouldn't have had to look far for clay. A lot of these people were driving animals in and out of fields or whatever every day. Here in Britain, where it rains a lot, you're going to be driving them through muddy puddles. You're going to spot where the clay is. And of course, the animals are also helping you by adding organic material to the clay as they go. So, and in fact, I mean, some pottery traditions,
27:57 Speaker 01 you do add animal dung to the clay to make it more workable, more plastic. Not one of my favourite things to do, but you know, it works well.
28:06 Alie Ward? And yes, this is well documented, such as the 2022 study, An Experimental Approach to Assessing the Tempering and Firing of Local Pottery Production in Nubia During the New Kingdom Period, which notes that the addition of organics, for example, plant fibres and animal dung, and I'm assuming the plant fibres in animal dung, increases the plasticity of the clay and that these organic tempered vessels, if you will, were often lighter in weight and more portable. Now, what about murricata, you ask? Oh, you haven't heard of it. You must not have visited the Italian Museum of Shit, known as the Museo della Murda, which in 2016 presented ceramics made from cow dung,
28:47 Alie Ward? Tuscan clay, straw and other farm waste in variable quantities, they say. But from the creations of a horse to the creation of a horse. Well, a technical question. If it's sculptured, is it still pottery? Or is pottery only something that's thrown on a wheel or like a pinch pot?
29:08 Speaker 01 I think you'd get a different answer from all sorts of different people. For me, pottery and ceramics are almost synonymous with one another. There are blurred edges. And of course, we have high-power engines made of ceramic now. We have jet engines made of ceramic. So it would be difficult to sort of define those as pottery. Yeah, yeah, I've just done a pottery project. I've built a jet engine, you know. But I sort of classify it all. I have a fascination with it all.
29:33 Alie Ward? One thing I love about what you do is just how much history you put into your pieces with making so many replicas too. And can you tell me a little bit about why that began as a passion for you of keeping museum objects for museums, but also having, being able to make replicas where other people and other can see things in three dimension across the world? Like, how did that begin?
29:55 Speaker 01 It began, really, I was, the first thing that happened, really, when I got back to the UK with the family, I like that mug, that's, that's a nice, sorry.
30:08 Alie Ward? So just as a reminder, we were chatting by video and I have a few mugs I'm quite partial to. Quattro Ceramics made me a custom, "Art Thou a Spirit of Health or a Goblin Damned" mug from the Vampirology episode. And I also love Corey from Belfast Clay Studio in Maine's work. And this morning, I casually lifted a Whitefish Pottery 24 Ounce Clay Stein to my lips, filled to the brim with hot green tea. And on video calls, I take for granted that this thing is shockingly large and it looks like a medieval tankard. And to my delight and my shock, I had impressed these new friends that I adore. This is my, this is my daily driver. This is like a-
30:51 Speaker 01 Your listeners can't see that, but that is one heck of a, heck of a, heck of a mug.
30:56 Speaker 02 That is a good one.
30:57 Alie Ward? It is a good one.
30:58 Speaker 01 I, to my shame, am sitting here with an industrial mug sitting next to me.
31:04 Alie Ward? I was gonna ask, you guys must have your daily driver mugs that you use.
31:08 Speaker 02 We've got lovely ones at home, but in the workshop, I have to say.
31:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, they get broken, they get broken. Sorry. In answer to your original question, we came back to the UK and I'd sort of had all these influences, including living in the Sutu for years and seeing ancient pottery made. Came back and I started researching a little bit, really with the intention of doing more sculptural stuff. And I got talking to the archaeologists at the Northumberland National Park, Rob Young and Paul Frogsom, who were at that stage busy digging and a Bronze Age site in a valley just really- Close by. They came to talk to me because they'd found within these hots some clay lined pits and of course various bits of Bronze Age pottery and then some burial mounds in which
31:55 Speaker 01 grave goods in the form of pottery had been placed, including a rather beautiful Bronze Age urn, which very sadly had the cremated remains of a small child with enough skull fragments to know that it probably died of meningitis.
32:12 Alie Ward? Oh, wow.
32:12 Speaker 01 And even after four and a half thousand years, it's still poignant. It still makes you go, wow, that's amazing.
32:18 Alie Ward? So I looked it up and I found a BBC article furnishing photos of these 4,000 year old terracotta hued food vessels that look like planters with almost a cable knit texture and fluted cuffs at the top. And Graham describes a request he got for a contemporary piece of pottery that was heavily influenced by these excavated vessels and their textures. And it was to be used as a centerpiece in the visitor's center. And as an experienced potter, could he make a replica of a precious artifact to serve as an educational tool?
32:53 Speaker 01 And I said, yeah, I can. Word got to the head of the National Park and he came and he said, look, Prince Charles is visiting fairly soon. Could you make a set of these to give to Prince Charles as a gift? So our King Charles owns one of our sets.
33:10 Alie Ward? Graham's replicas held such attention to detail and reverence for Potter's past that they have landed in the hands of various leaders and dignitaries globally, which years later still seems to baffle and amuse him.
33:25 Speaker 01 So the Pope ended up with some of our pottery, um, Deng Xiaoping, who was then the leader of China. And I think Fidel Castro actually ended up with a piece as well. These are our claims to fame.
33:42 Alie Ward? Was that something that you ever kind of thought would be a trajectory for you? Is that?
33:47 Speaker 01 No.
33:48 Alie Ward? That's gotta be a bit surreal.
33:50 Speaker 01 Well, it was. There were interesting bits and bits that were maybe more interesting than we would have liked at times.
33:57 Alie Ward? When it comes to the way that you use pottery to educate in history, like, how far back do you go when it comes to teaching? Do you ever have to inform people and like, when did pottery start? Is that the Venus of Willendorf?
34:11 Speaker 01 No.
34:11 Alie Ward? No. Graham held a small figurine up to his webcam for me. And before this interview, I tried to study a few historical pieces. And I thought, maybe this was the famous squat and very curvy Venus of Willendorf. Turns out, I don't know shit about pottery history, and that is why we're all here.
34:27 Speaker 02 She's a Dolny Vestanyeta. But yeah, she's from the Czech Republic. She's lovely.
34:32 Alie Ward? Tell me more.
34:33 Speaker 01 So I just put it here because I knew that would come up at some stage.
34:36 Alie Ward? So the figure he's holding is roughly a four inch tall, rich brown ceramic sculpture of a woman with wide hips, a very deep navel, a smooth head and pendulous breasts. And it's noteworthy because of its age. What age are we talking? Remember, fine china is about 2,000 years old. Ancient Grecian pottery, about 3,000 years old. So when was this figure made in what is now the Czech Republic?
35:05 Speaker 01 28,000 years ago. 28,000 years ago.
35:09 Alie Ward? 28,000 years.
35:10 Speaker 01 That's a long time, but it's very late in human development. It's really late in human development. This is the first time we know of that anybody has taken a piece of clay, deliberately formed it and then fired it. There are bits of clay in caves that may be earlier, but they've not been fired. And that was the key. And a lot of the ones in the fire were broken, exploded in the fire. And the debate was whether they were being made as some sort of sacrifice to the fire or whether they were being made to distribute.
35:43 Alie Ward? And that Venus of Willendorf I mistook it for is actually carved out of stone. So not ceramic at all. Again, what do I know about historic ceramic figurines? Not much, which is why I'm making an expert 3,000 miles away talk to me. Two of them, actually.
35:57 Speaker 02 One of the facts I love about the Dolny Vesnitsa is on the bottom, there is a child's fingerprint. Now, we could say that it was made by a child, but I've got a son and I know that he comes into the workshop and goes, "What's that, mum?" and gives it a prod. And this is what I love, like, having been made, it's lying, drying, and a child just comes up and pokes it in the bottom. And I can completely see it now as well. So yeah, it's a wonderful little detail that clay gives you, because other things, when they're carved, the fingerprints are not there anymore. But clay preserves that human touch in a way that I don't think anything else does. And it's amazing.
36:38 Alie Ward? How long before you start seeing pots, or pinch pots, or throne pots? When do they think maybe it went from figurines to vessels?
36:46 Speaker 01 Well, there are huge gaps, is the problem. Basically, we see these figurines, an odd one's been produced, sort of, around Europe. The next real leap forward is in China and Japan. And it's around about 19,000 years ago, you start to see the first pots that we know of. One of the issues is, and the ones from China come from fairly deep in a cave. Now, although people will still refer to Paleolithic people as cavemen, not many of them lived in caves. So pots being found in a cave is quite special. But pottery that has been fired as pottery before, sort of, prehistoric pottery, is mostly fired in open
37:27 Speaker 01 fires, not in kilns, which means it only gets up to about 800 degrees C, 900 degrees C on a windy day. It means it's not very firmly fired, it's not very strongly fired. Rain, frost, ice will destroy it, completely destroy it. So the likelihood of finding anything from that sort of deep time is quite Unlikely.
37:52 Alie Ward? So figurines came first and maybe they were made to be beautiful and then tossed in the fire like you would throw a coin into a well or maybe like a wedding ring into the ocean. But then dang, these clay creations, like a horror villain, they only got stronger, forged in fire. So, once your ancestors realized, holy shit, this works actually, they were like, well, let's start the container store, but with more hair and mud. So about 19,000 years ago, as far as we know, we start seeing pots and such. And indigenous people in the Americas have been making clay pots for millennia. And many first forms involved a big, long clay noodle coiled on top of itself to make
38:36 Alie Ward? the sides of the pot and then smoothed over. And in some places, you can see the impressions left by leaves or mats they were created on in the bottom of the pot. But from those first figurines, it'll be a while before the potter's wheel, like 14 or so thousand years.
38:55 Speaker 01 I mean, the potter's wheel, southern Iraq, probably about 3,000 B.C. You know, whenever I demonstrate, I demonstrate on a stick wheel, spun with a stick, it's a momentum wheel. Because we know that the Romans used it, we know the ancient Greeks used it, we know medieval potters used it. And it's the same sort of thing that would have been in use in southern Iraq about 3,000 B.C. Gets to Britain with the Romans in 43 A.D. So, you know, we were a little bit behind the game. You don't rush into these things though, do you? You know, you've got to be sure it's right for you.
39:32 Alie Ward? Right, just give it a couple thousand years.
39:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
39:37 Alie Ward? And, you know, we were talking about in forest too, those huge vessels, I've always wondered, you know, Roman and Greek, huge vessels like that.
39:48 Alie Ward? Why were they pointed at the bottom? It seems like it would be difficult to set it down.
39:53 Speaker 02 This is a question we always get.
39:55 Speaker 01 I'm only laughing because it is the question that everybody asks. Why is it pointed? What do you want a pointed vessel for? That's crazy.
40:02 Speaker 01 They're pointed because their main function is to go into a ship. They are vessels for carrying liquid products, mostly wine, olive oil, fish sauce. But they also ship things like sort of dates and figs and things packed in honey. And they're there to be shipped in an ancient Roman or Greek ship. And the hull of that ship is, you know, hull shaped. It's sort of V shaped. There would be little in the way of flat surfaces. And even if there were, this ship is going to be rolling around. So what you need is something that allows you to fix those things into place. And when you've got the timbers of the ship and other lats of wood nailed across those, you can leave gaps into which the pegs of the amphora go.
40:47 Speaker 01 And the amphora are then stabilised and you tie across all the tops with rope. And there have been finds, I think in the Mediterranean of ships where there is evidence still of weaving of rope or pieces of wood or whatever through the handles and you ship them. But there are other reasons. From a potter's point of view, when you fire huge pots with big, flat bottoms to them in what is an updraft kiln. Now, in a Roman or Greek kiln, the fire is at the bottom of the kiln. And then at the top, you close it off because you normally pack in from the top of the top of the kiln. So the fire's at the bottom. If you've got your pots packed in there with the flat bottoms on the bottom of the kiln, that bottom of that pot heats first.
41:32 Speaker 01 And what it does first, before it shrinks, it expands because it's been heated. But the flames are heating the bottom faster than they're heating the sides. So the sides don't expand as fast. The danger of cracking is huge. If your pot has a nice pointy base and is sort of aerodynamic, the flames pass up past it and they heat the whole pot and they heat it nice and evenly. And they do so without the risk of cracking. It's also the case that in the workshop that you can get pots crack in the bottom just because they dry too fast or whatever. But a peg peg makes sure that that won't happen.
42:06 Alie Ward? And this peg he's talking about is that kind of pointed end of the amphora. So imagine a pitcher, if you will, or imagine a jug, depending on where you are. And rather than having that flared, wide, flat base, instead, this jug comes to a dull point at the bottom. And this can be wedged in between the amphoras below it, kind of like stacking chairs in the hull of a ship.
42:31 Speaker 01 And when they get to the other end, when they get to wherever they're going, they can be picked up. You pick up one handle, you pick up the peg at the bottom, off you go with it. You can pour it, a single person can pour it, although i- in fairness, the biggest ones were thirteen and a half gallons in a single vessel. Thirteen and a half gallons of wine. I always reckon that's half a hen party, isn't it?
42:55 Alie Ward? Ready to party with the.
43:03 Speaker 01 In one vessel.
43:05 Speaker 01 But you say you can pick it up, you can pour it. And it has so many advantages. We have, um, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has some wonderful little statuettes of camels with amphora on the side of them. And they are tied on by being tied across the handles at the top and round pegs at the bottom and held on to the camel. They have so many advantages that they remain the shape for carrying liquids for several thousand years. And even in medieval Britain, you would still have wine from Europe that was coming in amphora that was still being produced even as late as that.
43:44 Alie Ward? Do you get so excited when you hear of like shipwrecks being discovered with?
43:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
43:49 Alie Ward? Amphora, you know.
43:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:51 Alie Ward? Of course, always cracking it open to see what's inside is always exciting.
43:55 Speaker 01 Salty water.
43:56 Alie Ward? Yeah, yeah.
43:59 Alie Ward? Well, can I ask you some questions from listeners who know that you're coming on? Yeah, yeah. Wonderful. And before we get to those questions, patrons, we will donate. To not one but two charities for this eighth anniversary episode and Graham selected cancerresearchuk.org, which funds scientists, doctors and nurses to help beat cancer sooner. They also provide cancer information to the public and they carry out world-class research. Now for Sarah, we're donating to littlelifts.org.com. That's a charity she chose that provides the most thoughtfully handpicked gift boxes to people affected by breast cancer. So we're sending donations to both of those causes in honor of Graham and Sarah, also sending our warmest thoughts and hugs to them both. And thank you to sponsors
44:44 Alie Ward? of the show for making those donations possible.
44:48 Alie Ward? You know, it's fall, it's back to your routines, but just because you're not half naked next to a swimming pool doesn't mean you don't want to look your best when you leave the house. I also don't like to spend time doing these things. So I like minimalist beauty products and I like good stuff and Merit fits the bill. I've been using them recently, love them. So they make a bunch of great stuff and I like to start with the Great Skin Serum. It feels so good and so soft on your face. Also, I have the Flush Balm that I love. It's this little, easy to use blush. They also have something called the Minimalist, which works as a foundation and concealer, which is great for people who love a BOGO. And I also love that Merit's products are clean, they're vegan, they're
45:28 Alie Ward? cruelty-free, and their skincare ingredients do leave your face looking glowy and lovely. And fall, it's a perfect time for a fresh start. You can make it your back to me season with Merit. And right now, Merit Beauty is offering our listeners their signature makeup bag, which if you've seen it, it's not just a makeup bag, but really like an accessory, free with your first order at meritbeauty.com. That is Merit Beauty, M-E-R-I-T, beauty.com. Meritbeauty.com. It's on my face right now. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have, or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need.
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48:10 Alie Ward? Listen, sometimes you get out of your routine. That happened to me recently when I went out of town and I realized I forgot my Ritual Essential for Women 18+. It's a multi that I've been taking for years. And guess who landed in another country without them? Me. Didn't feel right. They contain nine key nutrients, two delayed-release capsules designed for optimal absorption. But Ritual, why do I love them so much? They have a team of scientists. They poured over thousands of studies to figure out what are common gaps that people need in their diet, but they don't actually consume. It's also designed to be gentle on the stomach. You can take it with or without food, which I love. Plus, I like that it looks like a tiny lava lamp. I tell you that every time, but it has just beads and oil. And it tastes like mint, easy down the hatch. I usually take them in the morning.
48:55 Alie Ward? And the reason why I've stuck with Ritual for so many years is because my schedule's all over the place. Sometimes I'm eating breakfast. Sometimes I'm running through an airport with one shoe. So instead of striving for perfect health, aim for supporting foundational health. Save 25% on your first month at ritual.com/ologies. That's ritual.com/ologies for 25% off your first month. Every time I record a Quince ad, I'm like, look at me wearing head-to-toe Quince. I feel like this is enough of an ad. I can just stop here. But if you're like, huh, what is that? Quince sells clothes and shoes and bags, even stuff for your house that are classic, well-made, and priced at 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they cut out the middleman. They work directly with ethical factories.
49:38 Alie Ward? So you have luxury quality pieces without a luxury price tag. Perhaps this holiday season, do you know what it feels like to get a cashmere sweater as a gift? I don't, because I'm the one getting them for people. And so can you, and they're affordable, too. They also have 14 karat gold earrings, high-quality down outerwear, cozy gloves made of cashmere, leather bags. They have great bedding, cookware, luggage. So whether you're giving that to you or to someone else, you can give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or you can go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too.
50:21 Alie Ward? And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, just let them know it was Ologies. It's the best way to support the show.
50:29 Alie Ward? Okay, so let's get to questions from patrons via patreon.com/ologies, which you also can join for as little as a dollar a month. Also, Patreon just rolled out social media posts via Patreon. They're called quips, and so I've had a lot of fun recently making them. So you can check out patreon.com/ologies to see what's new there. Now, patrons Anuya, Joshi, Quinn, Jordan, Anne Hanlon, and New Hampshire Jim asked, in Jim's words, "What's your favorite firing technique? Raku, salt, wood, gas, etc.?" Well, 23skadu said, "I'd love to know the origin story behind raku firing." Okay, questions from listeners. We'll fire them off, if you will. Oh, Deborah Brunner wants to know.
51:11 Speaker 04 Hi, this is Deborah from Placentia, and I was wondering what the backstory is on raku firing.
51:18 Speaker 01 Basically, it originates with the tea ceremony in Japan. It was a technique very tied in with Zen Buddhism, and it was carving your teabowl from a fairly solid lump of clay, hand carved, and then glazed in often quite a thick, dark glaze. But the things go into an extremely hot kiln, which is not what you normally do. Normally with pots, you heat them up gently. You try not to blow them up, like we were talking about before, and then you let the kiln cool down nicely when you're finished. This, you use tongs to get these pots in and out of the kiln.
52:03 Speaker 01 In a matter of minutes, often not more than half an hour, a glazed pot fired in the kiln.
52:08 Alie Ward? So raku, which came to the West around the 1950s and is different depending on the era and the continent, but the broad strokes are much less gentler heating processes. So it's lower temperature, but way less gradual. The heat is turned up really quickly, and pieces are taken out while they're still red hot and glowing. And then sometimes cradled in this little nest of paper, like in a metal bin, and that paper instantly catches on. Fire because it's sixteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And then it results in these unpredictable glaze effects. And this is a feature, not a bug.
52:46 Speaker 01 Now that comes out with all sorts of imperfections. The glaze will bubble or you'll get sometimes cracks in the pot, which would often be fixed with the sort of Kansuki technique where they're adding gold into the lacquer. And it is this sort of concept that nature is heavily involved in the production of this vessel, that it takes a hand in it and it puts its imprint on the pot. And that you will never, ever get two pieces which are exactly the same. When I was a student, raku was the thing. But as a student, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. We used to do raku firing the sort of two or three times a term. And we had a little Italian restaurant we used to go to after we'd raku fired.
53:28 Speaker 01 And they had a little dark corner at the pack where they would put us all because we absolutely stank of smoke. And because, I mean, in the sort of more updated technique, you often take the pots from the hot kiln and then plunge them into sawdust or straw. Or, I mean, I've seen people now adding horsehair on to them and dropping them into water and all sorts of things. So it's a very sort of visceral, sort of natural, powerful way of doing pots and great fun. And Sarah, Sarah's really annoyed because her sister got to do it one time and she didn't. We'll do it again. We'll do it again.
54:05 Alie Ward? Well, you mentioned smells and Maya Catherine asked, why do glazes smell like farts? And do they? Is there sulfur?
54:14 Speaker 02 They do.
54:15 Alie Ward? Could you address?
54:17 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, the clay buckets certainly get like that. It's the decomposition of organic material, essentially, which, yeah, they can be really stinky.
54:26 Speaker 01 You and George, my grandson, you had a little song you used to sing.
54:31 Speaker 02 Yes, we did. When he was very little, he was only five. You're going to make me sing now?
54:37 Alie Ward? Yes.
54:38 Speaker 02 We used to sing, grandad's buckets of grime, grandad's buckets of grime, grandad's buckets, oh, grandad's buckets, oh, grandad's buckets of grime. And he used to sing that every time he would go around because, yes, you'd have these stinky buckets of grime.
54:53 Alie Ward? That even sounds polished, a Brit saying grime.
54:57 Speaker 01 I did say we did terrible things to nicely cleaned clay and things we do.
55:04 Alie Ward? Yeah, yeah. Well, another person did ask about glaze. A few people wanted to know, Kieran H., I like plants more than people, Good Soup, Nikki G., Leona Schuster, Mouse Paxton, all wanted to know about glazes. Nikki G. said, how do glazes work? Is slip just magic clay? What is glaze? What exactly is it?
55:23 Speaker 01 Well, glaze is essentially glass.
55:26 Speaker 05 For real?
55:27 Speaker 01 But there are sort of infinite boundaries between the sort of shiniest, most beautiful sort of fine porcelain glaze and sort of Neolithic pots or the Pueblo Indian pots. There are just beautiful, beautiful pieces that are made by using slips. Now, a slip is basically a liquid clay. But then you can start to add stuff to it. You can add metal oxides to it. So you can color that that slip and make it darker or lighter or in some cases, blue, green. You can get different colors by using things like cobalt oxide and chromium oxide. Then you can start to add fluxes, things that will make them melt.
56:06 Speaker 01 So soda ash, sodium carbonate, burnt seaweed effectively is sort of one of the low temperature ones. And as you sort of move up through doing the bits of chemistry, and this is, I like the idea of the blending of art and science, but I didn't want my science to sciencey. Well, this is very, very much the alchemist. This is, you know, this is taking the ingredients and playing with them. So glaze is effectively rock that has melted because you're melting silica, quartz, alumina, various different additives to those, but those are sort of the foundations of your glaze.
56:41 Alie Ward? So yes, glaze is glass.
56:44 Speaker 01 But the trick with ceramics is you have to make, if you're going to get a glaze which doesn't crackle all over the place, you've got to make a glass that will shrink and expand at the same rate as the clay underneath it. So that's where the clever chemistry comes in. The interesting bit of working with. Ancient pottery is they often didn't worry about that. So it gives you a bit of free license.
57:08 Alie Ward? If you happen to have a career replicating the origins of ceramics, of course.
57:13 Speaker 01 But at the same time, and going back to the Raku, people treasure the sort of crackled effects and things on those glazes. So it basically is you're melting rock. That's what you're doing and people learned to melt rock quite a long time ago, really. Here in Britain, we have Roman pottery called barbetteenware, which is black coated cups, often with hunt scenes on them. And the hunt scenes are done by piping on slip, liquid clay, a bit like you would do cake icing in the form of animals or gladiators or things like that go around the cup. And then they're dipped in a layer of what is probably the slag from an iron furnace that's been crushed back down and added on to the outside of it. Because that's rock that they've already melted, it'll melt again. You apply it on the surface, gets beautiful black coating.
57:58 Speaker 01 So the glaze can be anything. And as a student, we had to make little tiles up with loads of different mixtures on them to test out what could be made as a glaze. And some fool put a teabag onto a tile and put it in the kiln and it made the most beautiful little gem of green glaze.
58:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. So teabag's a good glaze.
58:24 Alie Ward? Try it and report back potters. I want to see it. And you know, getting back to the cup you were drinking from, a few people, Ryan Marlowe, Ella Rafter, Jaws Theme Swimming, Cynthia B and Erin Duberry. And Erin's word said, are the cheap plates and bowls from like, let's say the dollar store made by humans or machines? And if machine, how does a pottery machine work? Like, what is industrial ceramics?
58:49 Speaker 01 Well, Sarah makes lots of molded figures and things. And of course, the molded figures that the Romans and the Greeks made are that sort of beginning of industrial pottery. It's you, you make an archetype, you create a mold from it and you press clay into it. And it means that you just need in your workshop, one person who is talented enough to create that archetype. I've got Sarah. And then you can get any old fool to bash the things out. It's not quite true. I mean, it is more technical than that. Once you move up to the industrial revolutions, people start to develop ways of basically almost throwing on a machine. The first thing really is called a jigger jolly machine and that you have the shape of say an inside of a plate or the inside of a bowl.
59:34 Speaker 01 And you put a slab of clay over the top of it, you spin it round and it pushes it down onto the mold and you've got your plate or bowl.
59:42 Alie Ward? Yes, it is called a jigger and jolly and it was invented in the 1700s and essentially these are plaster molds that you can kind of patty cake a lump of clay onto. And if it's a convex mold, it's a jigger. And if it's a concave mold, it's a jolly. And then these things are spun around and you use the right size wood tool to shape the wet clay to fit the mold and get a uniform size when you're making things like dinnerware. And it dries and then it's fired and it's just as strong as a thrown piece, but it's faster and more reliable in terms of sizing. And I know jigger and jolly sounds like a pair of puppets with like scary old fashioned faces, but it's just a plate mold.
1:00:23 Speaker 01 And the other way that a lot of industrial stuff was made is slip casting. So that's you have a closed mold with a hole at the top into which you can pour liquid and you mix up liquid clay with something called a defloculant. It makes it so the clay doesn't shrink too much. You pour that into the mold, you leave it in there for a few minutes, you pour it back out again and what you've got is a thin skin on the inside of the mold. And as that dries, you can pull the mold apart and you've got your pot. So those are two ways that industrial pots were traditionally made. These days, quite a lot of industrial pots are made with dry powder. Clay has two kinds of moisture. It has the moisture that makes it moldable and it has moisture that's chemically combined.
1:01:05 Speaker 01 And if you press it hard enough, you can get that chemically combined moisture to do some of the work and join it together. So you can take what is perfectly dried powder clay, slam a huge press onto it and come out with a plate or a bowl or whatever. And quite a lot of industrial pottery is made under high power presses. So yeah, machines.
1:01:29 Alie Ward? No idea. So yes, dry clay pressed so hard that the water gets juiced out of it on a molecular level to conform. Form to a mold. Wild. What about the safety of glazes? Some people asked about, are there some that have lead in them? Or I'm sure that they've gotten safer and safer. But can you dispel any myths about unsafe ceramics?
1:01:52 Speaker 01 Basically, nothing that you're buying from a reputable dealer should contain free lead in it in any way. We occasionally use what's called a lead-fritted glaze on the outside of a medieval pot. But we try not to use it on the inside of any vessels. And in fact, the medieval potters generally didn't. They left that out. But a frit is a glass. So people will drink their whiskey out of their lead crystal glass quite happily. Well, that's effectively what you're doing when you frit lead. You mix it up, you melt it into a glass, and then you grind it back down into a powder. And then you use it as the glaze and it'll glaze the outside of the pot.
1:02:37 Speaker 01 We only do that for a few museum replica medieval pots because almost everything we make is unglazed. But yes, lead was commonly used and lead was used in the form of crushed down lead ore. And while in the lead ore form, I am told it's not terribly body soluble. When the potters fired those pots, the fumes coming off the kiln were certainly lead laden. And if the pots weren't fired properly, the residue on the surface of the pots could be lead laden.
1:03:11 Alie Ward? Okay, let's get into this. So there have been a lot of videos where people go to houseware stores and test new stuff for lead and find an alarmingly high percentage of like home goods mugs with lead in them. Although Mercedes was telling me that she just saw one in her algorithm last night and she followed it all the way into this tunnel of sus. Because the guy testing the housewares and posting some of these videos also owns the company that makes the device he was using for testing. And their own legal disclaimer on Amazon, she found out, points out that it's not an EPA approved method. So you can take that leaded Cup with a grain of salt. But it's not unheard of. There is a risk. There have been case reports of families with abnormally high lead.
1:03:55 Alie Ward? And then doctors later discovered that they were using imported traditional ceramics from around the world. The ones with the highest levels of lead were usually from places like Mexico or Ecuador, Turkey, Morocco, Uzbekistan. Those have been found to have the highest levels of lead, according to a New York City Health report from 2021. And the report continued that although individuals with elevated blood levels may not look or feel sick, exposure to lead can cause some serious health problems. Now, in children, lead exposure can cause learning and behavior problems. In adults, it can increase blood pressure and affect the brain and the kidneys and reproductive organs. Exposure to lead during pregnancy can increase the risk of miscarriage and affect an unborn baby.
1:04:38 Alie Ward? So if you are prone to being afraid of lead poisoning, the word from health departments like New York is stay away from using ceramic ware labeled for use only as a decorative item or that contains a warning label such as not for food use, may poison food. Also, stay away from using antique ceramic ware or damaged or worn ceramic ware. And it also cautions against using ceramics that are irregular in shape or purchased from flea markets or street vendors, which sounds like the New York City Health Department is just being like, don't use sketch pottery. But that also seems like very highly subjective. Now, one thing that you should not do is drink out of a decorative vase for several
1:05:22 Alie Ward? months, as I did before learning that this could poison me, no matter how cute it felt. Now, from poison to pop culture. Yeah, Sarah and Graham have consulted for the Great Pottery Throwdown. Yes, they think things get dramatized and set up for failure on TV, but that's not what I want to talk about. Annie Pepper wanted to know, as did Lee L. and Leo Shang, feelings on the movie Ghost. I hope.
1:05:53 Alie Ward? Clay slide between your fingers.
1:05:58 Alie Ward? On the absolutely iconic pottery doings of Demi Moore.
1:06:04 Speaker 02 Well, Graham has some trauma from that film, I believe.
1:06:07 Alie Ward? Oh, no. What happened?
1:06:09 Speaker 01 I was demonstrating on said stick potter's wheel at a festival at Dover Castle a few years ago when a lady snuck up behind me and decided to try and emulate me.
1:06:23 Alie Ward? Oh, no.
1:06:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:06:31 Alie Ward? Not ideal. Was she as handsome as Patrick Swayze? You'd have to be.
1:06:35 Speaker 01 I'll be honest, I really can't remember. But if you're listening, hi.
1:06:43 Speaker 01 Um, yeah, I mean, it's a scene. I got a feeling that the pottery wasn't the main focus of that scene, really.
1:06:53 Alie Ward? I do think it's almost impossible to throw a pot without thinking of that scene. And at least for a novice potter, who their only frame of reference really is watching Demi Moore do that. But I threw a pot recently and I thought about, for a moment, Demi Moore. And I thought, listen, I'm just trying to make a pot here. I'm not trying to be sexy. Not a sexy procedure.
1:07:19 Alie Ward? If I can ask one more question from listeners. Sarah Boudreau said,
1:07:23 Speaker 02 Hey, Ally, I've been a potter and an archaeologist for over 15 years.
1:07:28 Speaker 01 Nice, nice.
1:07:29 Speaker 02 I really want to know from your experts, something that keeps them up at night in terms of pottery. For me, how did people figure out that you could reuse pottery and make it stronger? Like grog, which is ground pottery that you put in the raw clay body. How did these people discover that?
1:07:45 Alie Ward? Any idea how they, how they figured that out?
1:07:48 Speaker 01 Basically, the earliest pottery is pretty much made from what you dig out the ground. They're gonna be pretty much contaminated with grits and rocks and bits and pieces. That was the clay they would have used to make the pots. Now, clay shrinks as it dried. So as it shrinks, it pulls away from the grit a little bit and it leaves little fissures, little gaps through the clay, through which moisture can escape the pot. So when you've got a really gritty clay and one with a lot of organic material in it, which we were talking about before, as that burns out, you're left with even more cavities. It gets the chance for the moisture to escape. People would have found that as they started
1:08:27 Speaker 01 to purify clays and make them finer and nicer and smoother to use, it became more difficult to fire them.
1:08:35 Alie Ward? So the finer the clay, the harder it is to manage the escaping water vapor. Now, rough clays, like those with grog or recycled mashed up ceramics, though, are harder to mess up when you're firing. And this grog, by the way, I know what you're thinking, because I was thinking it too. It's not to be confused with the hot grog, boozy rum and water drink, which was named after an admiral who wanted his sailors to be less drunk. So he's like, let's add a little water to that. And he wore a cloak made of grog rim, which is why they called him grog. And grog rim is a stiff waxed wool fabric, apparently. And I'm imagining this guy with like a silhouette like Darth Vader, but a reputation even worse. But yeah, grog in pottery terms is crushed up old stuff mixed with the new clay.
1:09:20 Speaker 01 And if you want clay that's gonna fire easily, as you would in making, for instance, amphora, because you're gonna make hundreds and thousands of them and you don't wanna mess about being so delicate firing them, you're gonna realise that the gritty clay was actually what was helping you to get them through the firing. The other advantage that grog has over any other kind of grit is its expansion and contraction rate in the fired pot is gonna be exactly the same as the repot, because it's made from exactly the same material. So I think people would have sort of come to this bit by bit as a process. You know, I was talking to an archaeologist just a couple of days ago about middens. Middens.
1:10:03 Alie Ward? Oh, yes. Middens, side note, are trash dumps. Or in wildlife ecology, a midden also refers to a dung heap used as a communal latrine by like hippos and rhinos.
1:10:13 Speaker 01 Middens that you find at Bronze Age, Neolithic, whatever sites that sort of look as if they haven't just formed in one nice even layer. They look as if they've been churned up. But the reason they're churned up is because I think prehistoric people viewed middens as recycling centers. You put stuff there until you need some of it again. And I'm sure that was the case with pottery bits, pottery fragments. They get put there, they get dragged out, they get crushed down, they get added into the clay. Of course, there are cultures in the world which add granny's pots back into your pots for the heritage continuation, for that idea that you are bringing the spirit of granny's pots into your pots.
1:10:56 Speaker 01 And I'm saying granny's pots because actually, sub Sahara in Africa, it's almost entirely women that make pots. And north of the Sahara tended to move more towards men. And it's sort of, I think it's as soon as machines start to be involved, boys and their toys, and they want to play with it.
1:11:13 Alie Ward? Well, I've seen some of your reproductions of phallic works in Roman times. And we even had a listener ask about, you know, that ancient Romans and Greeks really love to make phalluses out of clay. Okay, one more listener, two more listener questions, courtesy of Z Renee Bay, first time question asker, who said, "My best friend is doing her PhD in classical studies and told me that they find a lot of pottery on digs in Italy and Greece. And they are curious about the non-art uses of pottery throughout time." But let's go down, let's go down a little further. Ty Sunquist asked, "I know that ancient Romans and Greeks really loved to make phalluses out of clay. Was the purpose for a good laugh or for really?"
1:11:57 Alie Ward? Ritual or for sex or all of the above. That wouldn't have been an obscenity necessarily at the time. It was like a wishbone or something like a horseshoe over the door.
1:12:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's good luck. The phallus with the wings and the little chicken legs.
1:12:11 Alie Ward? Yes.
1:12:11 Speaker 02 He's called Facinus and he is a good luck god. He's a deity of good luck. So people would wear, you know, a phallus around their neck, like a little glass penis, essentially. I mean, the plaque that I make that says, happiness lives here, but I can't remember the Latin, but that was above a bakery. So when you went to get your bread in the morning in Pompeii, you would have a big penis on the, above the door. And as you walked in, I guess it would give you luck. I don't know.
1:12:40 Alie Ward? Come on in, have a ball.
1:12:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:12:43 Alie Ward? Uh, looking at reproductions, I did see the one with the chicken feet and I was like, that's not something you see every day.
1:12:48 Speaker 02 No, no.
1:12:49 Alie Ward? Just adorable. It's like a little cartoon character. Well, last questions I always ask are the hardest parts of what you do, but um, is there something that is very difficult about working with clay? Is clay, will we run out of clay? Does that keep you up at night? Is there something that that's really tough about the job?
1:13:09 Speaker 02 I think for both of us, it's the admin.
1:13:12 Speaker 02 I think not that.
1:13:15 Speaker 02 We could make pots all day, but tax returns, that's the worst.
1:13:21 Speaker 01 This is where Claire comes in.
1:13:22 Speaker 02 That maybe doesn't answer your question. Um, it can be frustrating when things break though. It can be sometimes when you've made something and you've put a lot of love into it and then it goes into the kiln and the kiln gods are just not kind to you. That can be quite soul destroying.
1:13:38 Speaker 01 I mean, one of the things, we're definitely not going to learn how to clay. The, the earth is fairly abundant in clay. We've got lots of the stuff.
1:13:45 Alie Ward? So clay is considered a renewable resource because new clays are always being made from these geological processes. But if we go really hard with it, we could outpace it. But in general, the worry is low.
1:13:58 Speaker 01 I suppose for me, I've become more and more conscious every time I pack a kiln of getting as much stuff as I possibly can into each. Firing because I know I'm using energy and I know I'm using quite a lot of energy in a single fire. So it has become a sort of thing of trying to make sure that we're as low impact as we possibly can be. I mean, clay is wonderful because basically, as you've pointed out, it can be turned into grog even once it's been fired, but until it's fired, it's infinitely recyclable. You wet it down again, you use it again, you keep going. And certainly, our waste output from the workshop is minimal and our packing materials are now all sort of biodegradable, et cetera,
1:14:39 Speaker 01 et cetera. But it is that sort of realisation of we've got to be as efficient as we possibly can be with the energy resources we're using and we're leaving something for the next generation that they want.
1:14:51 Alie Ward? Well, what about your favourite pieces of pottery or ceramics? Do each of you have like a favourite piece that you just is inspiring or that you just you love a lot?
1:15:00 Speaker 01 Well, for me, I got a phone call from Stonehenge about three years ago. They were running an exhibition called Circles of Stone. And what it was doing was comparing what was going on at Stonehenge at the time it was being built with what was going on in Japan in the Jomon period. If you listeners don't know what they look like, go and look up Jomon, J O M O N, flame pots and be amazed because these were Neolithic people. Apparently, we are told making cooking pots.
1:15:35 Alie Ward? So we'll link these on our website, of course, but they resemble kind of the top of a really ornate Corinthian column in the way that the flames lick upward and outward. They look so complex and modern, but they're 5,000 years old.
1:15:51 Speaker 01 And they are the most elaborate pieces you will ever see in your life, I think. And Stonehenge was asking us to make a replica of the flame pots and some of the figurines, which Sarah did. But the flame pot is the most brain cracking, challenging, probably, piece that I've ever made. And I loved it, absolutely loved it. The only trouble is they A week to make and you know, I won't be making an awful lot of them. But again, it's going back to that. Here we have somebody from the ancient past just really showing off. You know, and I always sort of say that ancient Greek potters were showing off.
1:16:35 Speaker 01 You know, the black and red figureware is showing off. The Japanese, they were doing it 2000 years earlier.
1:16:40 Alie Ward? Sarah, what about you? Do you have a piece that sticks in your mind?
1:16:43 Speaker 02 Well, at the minute, I'm really enjoying making their little estate figures. They're from Cyprus.
1:16:48 Alie Ward? Imagine a kind of terracotta Barbie doll, but with actual human woman proportions and a little extra detail.
1:16:56 Speaker 02 From 1700 to 1200 BC is when they are. What I love about them is they've got these sort of big ears, this kind of almost beak-like nose, but they've got earrings. And so you have to put the earrings in afterwards. What I love about them is it jingles. And so you've got this kind of lovely female figure. Sometimes they're breastfeeding and they're also a bit like a rattle. And it's at the minute, it's something I just, I just like making them. Cause when you get them out the kiln, you just each one, even though I know what's going to happen, you've just got to give them a little jingle and I love all of that.
1:17:27 Alie Ward? This has just been so inspiring. I have a pottery studio nearby and when I went to go throw a pot a couple of weeks ago, I was like, I will be back. This was great fun. Thank you guys for the work that you're doing. You're just, you're beyond delightful. You're criminally delightful. You're too charming.
1:17:45 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:17:46 Speaker 01 It's been wonderful. Thank you.
1:17:49 Alie Ward? So ask learned people absurdist questions because how are you supposed to know stuff without admitting that you don't know it? So thank you so much to the whole family of Potted History, Graham, Sarah, Claire and Linda, for all of your hard work and your humor and your insight and talent. This was a blast that you're a gift to all of us. Now I raise my ceramic tanker to you. Now to learn more about the work, you can see Potted History on YouTube, which is excellent. You can check out their website and their social handles, which we'll link right at the top of the show notes. A ton of links and studies will be up at aliward.com/ologies/ceramology, including links to Little Lifts and Cancer Research UK. We are at Ologies on Instagram and Blue Sky. I'm at Ali Ward on both.
1:18:32 Alie Ward? We have shorter kid-friendly versions of Ologies in their own separate podcast. ...podcast feed you can subscribe to wherever you get podcasts. That show is called Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. We also have shirts and industrial-made mugs and stickers and totes at ologiesmerch.com. You can check out our Patreon at patreon.com/ologies, including new quips that started this week. Aaron Talbert manages the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Ardwire does the website. Noelle Dilworth is scheduling producer. Susan Hale managing directs the whole shebang and helped out on research this week. Jake Chaffee has feet to the fire every week, putting this all together sonically and only gets stronger in that fire. Lead editor and additional
1:19:13 Alie Ward? research is done by the archaeological archetype lead editor, Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn made the theme music. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, then you have a lot in common with a sinus infection that has been plaguing me like a poltergeist for over two weeks. But I will tell you another secret, and that's that while I worked on this episode, I need someone to know. I needed, I need to share this burden with someone. I was researching, I'm making my notes, I'm watching videos, all while having dozens of ants crawling all over me and biting me. My little shed office, which is heaven on earth, also has some invasive roommates. And there is nothing
1:19:55 Alie Ward? like the paranoia that you are covered in bugs, only to look down every 30 or so seconds in your workday and see that, yes, you have another bug on you. There are worse things, and at least I had my tea by my side, but I would not rate it as the best working experience. Loved the episode, though, and happy eighth anniversary to us. Okay.
1:20:14 Speaker 02 Bye-bye.
1:20:15 Alie Ward? Pachydermatology, omeology, cryptozoology, lithology, nanotechnology, meteorology, geology, nephology, seriology, histology.
1:20:34 Speaker 05 I will tolerate no reenacting, whether it's ironic or sincere, of the Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore pottery scene in Ghost.
1:20:43 Speaker 03 This podcast is supported by Nurtac ODT, Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time, and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtac. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtac can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtac is right for you, because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtac ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness,
1:21:27 Speaker 03 pain, or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-NUR-TAC or visit Nurtac.com. All right, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever's keeping you going today.
1:21:43 Alie Ward? Home is for impressing, but also resting and entertaining guests in, and festing, and feasting, and sleeping, and greeting, and rising, and baking, and making space for friends in, burning some sage in, decorating and staging. This season, visit HomeSense to get all the things that make your home, home. HomeSense, abundantly affordable.
Previous Neuropathoimmunology (MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS) with Aaron Boster Next Human Technomorphology (SWAPPING OUT BODY PARTS) with Mary Roach Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
