It's always a great feeling when a pot comes out of the firing as good as this one did. Learn more about the ancient traders who inspired this pot here ua-cam.com/video/mK-Gn6AWIIU/v-deo.html
Wow! That turned out so awesome! Once again, a fantastic video and very educational. It was so interesting to hear about using a piece of rope as a ring instead of a puki. I had never heard of using rope that way but I started doing that a few years ago. I was thinking, “How can I make a rounded bottom on my pots?” and using a rope ring came to my mind. I’ve done it that way every since. Goes to show how traditions are born.
Thanks Chad. You can travel all over the world and find many similarities in pottery making traditions because ingenious people often come up with the solutions.
It turned out beautiful Andy!!! Awesome video and jar! I can't wait to get started on this one. You've got me totally excited. (currently levigating dirty clay for it) The strange wet/cold out here hasn't been kind for clay drying and fires.
Yeah, not the best pottery making weather that's for sure. I saw you had a recent Hohokam pottery video, I haven't had time to watch it yet but plan to. Thanks!
Thanks. I think the take away is that you should make it in a way you are comfortable with. I could have tried paddle and anvil on this but the results were way better this way.
Hey Andy! An app you might be interested in for approximating dimensions is imagemeter. You take a picture and define a dimension. Then it can extrapolate the other dimensions from they image. It isn't perfect, but it's close. For example you could define the height of the pot, then use it to estimate the width at the rim and at the neck.
Andy, your work is a breath of fresh air. As I’ve said in other posts, you are a natural teacher. And you’re not afraid to make mistakes. It’s so refreshing to see that. Thank you. Your Aussie friend.
Thank you for putting these videos out there! Because of you I have learned enough to successfully fire my own coil bowls made from unprocessed clay from the creek in a campfire! This knowledge is precious and your channel is gold!
Good to see a man of integrity! Many people fake it till they make it and don't care about the original method, nor the cultural context. So it was refreshing to see someone acknowledge that this isn't the real method. My only request is that Cultural context would be helpful with (especially indigenous) craft. Things weren't just crafts and hard skills. Everything has a deeper purpose; the spiritual is in the everyday and seemingly mundane. Also what would have this kind of pot been used for? Thanks for your videos. Well made!
Thank you. Here in the American Southwest there was some sort of cultural upheaval around 1400 AD that changed everything. So unfortunately with a lot of these ancient pottery forms we are left guessing what they were used for because by the time the first Europeans arrived and took notes, these forms were no longer being made and used. So much of the cultural context has been lost unless archaeologists can figure that out.
The shape of that piece is so plump. I have had trouble finding pottery photos with large rims/brims. The lower weight and the taper look great. It seem they are not very common tho. A really warm look even without burnishing or flashy artwork. Yours came out perfect :)
Amazing work on that pot! I have a great buff clay here in Idaho and lots of red slip, so I'm inspired to make some pots in a similar style. I'm curious, how hot do you try to get it during the preheat, before you put it over the embers of the preheat fire?
I don't have a set temperature, but I try to make sure it gets hot everywhere. Usually the time it takes to build a bed of coals is sufficient to get a pot really hot everywhere if you are attentive. If I preheat in my oven, which I do sometimes, I usually set it at 200 F for a half hour or so.
Thanks a lot for sharing this video. This little mens on the pottery look like kokopellis. :-). Many Greetings from Germany and wish you a good start to the new year. Thankfull for your videos.
I want to join the pottery club. I will have to wait until April. As an oil painter and I love to paint feathers, even with oil paints I often have to wipe off my brushes as well for cleaner brushstroke’s.
Beautiful pot! I finally got inspired and made my first 2 pots from clay I gathered (water bucket method) mixed with ant hill sand. Both fired without breaking, but they seemed soft (no nice ring). Next day I cooked them again and still seem not as hard as I thought they would be. I don't know if there's a risk of breakage with repeated firings. I love your videos. Thanks for all the helpful tips.
I am have had the same experience. I think the outer clay is cooking but the inner is not. All of the pieces I have done and run into this tended be very thick... almost 1/2 inch in places. Much harder to cook. Ive been trying to thin things out and reduce my temper from what I had. So far my best (rings) yet.
This is great! I definitely want to try it! As for the pot measurements from the museum, I used to work in collections in different museums for a few years. Whenever we are entering an item into the collection, we have to take measurements of it. They may have access to their archives online, or I bet you could reach out to one of the museum workers and ask for the measurements from their archival software. Hope that helps!
I just finished dry-processing a small batch of backyard clay this week. Although, the process was faster than the wet-procesing method, the grinding generated so much dust that I was affraid to continue without wearing a dust mask and working in a well-ventilated outdoor area. I don't want to end up with silicosis from inhaling too much clay dust.
Great stuff Andy, that sure looks a nice pot and results of an unknown clay mix ..im ready to fire my version soon..i had to make some slip to achieve the buff colour.
Thanks again, Andy. You've introduced me to a new hobby, and I appreciate your work and expertise. To find the diameter of your pot you can use a cloth tape to measure the circumference and solve for the radius: radius = circumference ÷ 2π. Double the solution for the diameter of your pot. To make a close estimate of your model's dimensions you can photograph it alongside a finely graduated scale bar or tape measure. The measurement obtained from a computer screen is very accurate this way. Cheers.
That looks lovely! You might not have made it the same, but you still made it well. I find it weirdly hilarious that you tried an ancient backpack and immediately discovered a potential explanation for why broken pots are sometimes found in weird places. Do you think they ever thought about that? Like, when they were hiking through the desert and dropped something, did they go, "Meh, someone'll pick it up in like 500 years," and keep walking? Experimental archaeology strikes again!
Idea for the future. Use parallel lasers for scale, like they do in space and on deep ocean explorers, to shine 2 beams a known distance apart. A quick Google doesn't turn up anything ready to use though, but it should be fairly simple to rig something with cheap laser pointers and a bit of glue.
The one I've been working on is as inauthentic as yours! LOL! Still have some more preparation to do before firing. To keep the paint from gunking up my brush, I like to add extra water to my mix to where I can see a thin layer of water on top of my paint (and I load my brush properly)... It keeps lines pretty sharp but tends to only work with 50% hematite and 50% clay. Enjoyable video sir! We Look forward to the next.
😀Well done, your clay mixing turned out really good. How long did it take you to get all the traders painted? I better start on making one too. Ive been practicing painting this week .
I determined that it took me about 5 minutes per trader with a few breaks along the way. There are 29 traders on the pot, plus the lines at the top, so maybe about 4 hours. Thanks!
You were concerned about the size of the piece on display at the university. I'd expect that they have the work cataloged with the height & width somewhere. Maybe that info is available online, or perhaps you could call and ask.
If your looking at pieces from the Arizona State Museum I would contact the "head of collections" and chances are the vessel measurements were recorded in the inventory.
Some people misunderstand the word primitive and see it as a put-down. But it really just means; "ancient, original, established from the beginning". And those ancient original potters had mad skills, there is no shame in that.
Well if they hold water without falling apart, then they are fired hard enough to make ceramic. They will always leak a little unless you seal them, I have a few videos about sealing earthenware here is a playlist of those ua-cam.com/video/Ln4jKlfruaw/v-deo.html
Hi Andy, I painted slip on pottery after about a week of drying just as you did in this video, however mine just dried and crumbled off, how do you get yours to stick and what am I doing wrong? Thanks for the great video, love the pot and great design work too. Cheers!
@@AncientPottery that's a good point, I may have left it too long to dry. As a newbie I find the timing of everything challenging; slipping, scraping, stone polish, burnishing... I just don't really know when to do it.
I watch other pottery making videos, and others seem to have better behaving clays than you do. I'm not sure how to describe the difference, but the others seem more easily manipulated, formed, and reformed. I think it's the clay. Are Southwest clays of different quality broadly than elsewhere?
Whose videos are you watching? Mine is wild collected clay, are you watching others who are making their own clay or are you watching videos of people using commercial clay because that is apples and oranges.
The pot is on display in the "wall of pots" so I doubt they would go to all the trouble of opening up the display and making those measurements for me.
@@AncientPottery my bet, although I have never run a museum, is that each piece displayed in an exhibit would be inventoried, with measurements and known specs recorded in their database. I bet they could look it up without disturbing the display. At the same time, a "close enough" measurement suits me fine. 😊
18:23 Have you considered using lard as an accelerant instead of lighter fluid? The flames are less likely to climb up a stream of lard. It's scary watching you squirt lighter fluid on a lit fire.
It's always a great feeling when a pot comes out of the firing as good as this one did. Learn more about the ancient traders who inspired this pot here ua-cam.com/video/mK-Gn6AWIIU/v-deo.html
Wow! That turned out so awesome! Once again, a fantastic video and very educational. It was so interesting to hear about using a piece of rope as a ring instead of a puki. I had never heard of using rope that way but I started doing that a few years ago. I was thinking, “How can I make a rounded bottom on my pots?” and using a rope ring came to my mind. I’ve done it that way every since. Goes to show how traditions are born.
Thanks Chad. You can travel all over the world and find many similarities in pottery making traditions because ingenious people often come up with the solutions.
It turned out beautiful Andy!!! Awesome video and jar! I can't wait to get started on this one. You've got me totally excited. (currently levigating dirty clay for it) The strange wet/cold out here hasn't been kind for clay drying and fires.
Yeah, not the best pottery making weather that's for sure. I saw you had a recent Hohokam pottery video, I haven't had time to watch it yet but plan to. Thanks!
Very well done Andy. That piece turned out fantastic. Maybe not as authentic as you'd like to have done, but impressive none the less.
Happy Holidays to you and your family as well as to all your viewers. Incase we don't see from you again until after. ☮️ And 💖 to all
Thanks. I think the take away is that you should make it in a way you are comfortable with. I could have tried paddle and anvil on this but the results were way better this way.
excellent job Andy. this is my favorite pot of the series so far.
Good video, thanks. It is nice to see pots that give us a window into the lives of the original people that made them.
Glad you enjoyed it! The best pots are those that provide a window on the past.
This is one of my favorite designs, I love to see characters from the ancient art. Plus love the Roy Underhill cap :D
Thanks!
Hey Andy! An app you might be interested in for approximating dimensions is imagemeter. You take a picture and define a dimension. Then it can extrapolate the other dimensions from they image. It isn't perfect, but it's close. For example you could define the height of the pot, then use it to estimate the width at the rim and at the neck.
That's cool, I could definitely use that.
With the difficulties you've had in previous videos....this was a well deserved win!!! Fantastic job, sir!
Thank you kindly!
It is so interesting to hear about the different mineral makeup of the clays and the histort of pottery as well.
Glad you liked it.
@@AncientPottery I appreciate the wisdom you have. I am very interested in the mineral makeup of class and glazes.
Andy, your work is a breath of fresh air. As I’ve said in other posts, you are a natural teacher. And you’re not afraid to make mistakes. It’s so refreshing to see that. Thank you. Your Aussie friend.
You are very welcome
Thank you for putting these videos out there! Because of you I have learned enough to successfully fire my own coil bowls made from unprocessed clay from the creek in a campfire! This knowledge is precious and your channel is gold!
Glad to hear that you have put it to use already. Thanks for watching.
The trader figures are adorable. I like how you showed us your practice sketch on paper. Totally makes sense.
Thanks so much!
Good to see a man of integrity! Many people fake it till they make it and don't care about the original method, nor the cultural context. So it was refreshing to see someone acknowledge that this isn't the real method.
My only request is that
Cultural context would be helpful with (especially indigenous) craft. Things weren't just crafts and hard skills. Everything has a deeper purpose; the spiritual is in the everyday and seemingly mundane. Also what would have this kind of pot been used for?
Thanks for your videos. Well made!
Thank you. Here in the American Southwest there was some sort of cultural upheaval around 1400 AD that changed everything. So unfortunately with a lot of these ancient pottery forms we are left guessing what they were used for because by the time the first Europeans arrived and took notes, these forms were no longer being made and used. So much of the cultural context has been lost unless archaeologists can figure that out.
I’m also having trouble with getting my fires going. Your pot is fantastic! Excellent work. ❤❤❤
Thank you, now if spring will just get started
Nice work, I always like to watch your hand work, Clay is the material of our bodies.
Beautifully shaped and painted! Thanks for sharing your experiments.
You're welcome
That’s very nice Andy!
Thanks
That's a lovely pot!
Thanks
Andy its -33 in Montana, sure wished it was 60 degrees, that would be like summertime!! nice work on the pot!
Yeah it's all relative. Thanks
Beautiful! another great video! thanks for sharing
Thank you too!
The shape of that piece is so plump. I have had trouble finding pottery photos with large rims/brims. The lower weight and the taper look great. It seem they are not very common tho. A really warm look even without burnishing or flashy artwork. Yours came out perfect :)
Thank you. It is a rather unusual shape but also fun to make.
Amazing work on that pot! I have a great buff clay here in Idaho and lots of red slip, so I'm inspired to make some pots in a similar style. I'm curious, how hot do you try to get it during the preheat, before you put it over the embers of the preheat fire?
I don't have a set temperature, but I try to make sure it gets hot everywhere. Usually the time it takes to build a bed of coals is sufficient to get a pot really hot everywhere if you are attentive. If I preheat in my oven, which I do sometimes, I usually set it at 200 F for a half hour or so.
Thanks a lot for sharing this video. This little mens on the pottery look like kokopellis. :-). Many Greetings from Germany and wish you a good start to the new year. Thankfull for your videos.
Thank you.
Great job, Andy! That Fauxhokam pot is a beaut!
Thanks
I want to join the pottery club. I will have to wait until April.
As an oil painter and I love to paint feathers, even with oil paints I often have to wipe off my brushes as well for cleaner brushstroke’s.
Thanks. I hope to see you in the Zoom class next month.
Beautiful firing, Andy! And those basket carriers...precious!!
Thanks
Looks awespme!
Thanks
Beautiful pot! I finally got inspired and made my first 2 pots from clay I gathered (water bucket method) mixed with ant hill sand. Both fired without breaking, but they seemed soft (no nice ring). Next day I cooked them again and still seem not as hard as I thought they would be. I don't know if there's a risk of breakage with repeated firings. I love your videos. Thanks for all the helpful tips.
I am have had the same experience. I think the outer clay is cooking but the inner is not. All of the pieces I have done and run into this tended be very thick... almost 1/2 inch in places. Much harder to cook. Ive been trying to thin things out and reduce my temper from what I had. So far my best (rings) yet.
Keep firing and use more wood, or try charcoal.
The thicker the pot the more time it takes to heat it through
This is great! I definitely want to try it! As for the pot measurements from the museum, I used to work in collections in different museums for a few years. Whenever we are entering an item into the collection, we have to take measurements of it. They may have access to their archives online, or I bet you could reach out to one of the museum workers and ask for the measurements from their archival software. Hope that helps!
Thanks, it's worth a try. I have had trouble getting info from that museum in the past though.
I just finished dry-processing a small batch of backyard clay this week. Although, the process was faster than the wet-procesing method, the grinding generated so much dust that I was affraid to continue without wearing a dust mask and working in a well-ventilated outdoor area. I don't want to end up with silicosis from inhaling too much clay dust.
Never grind clay indoors.
Pretty authentic-looking fake! You ended up with a beautiful pot. Well done. I also like that Logan green hoodie.
Thanks, I love that hoodie, it protects me from those chilly sub 70 degree days we have around here.
Great stuff Andy, that sure looks a nice pot and results of an unknown clay mix ..im ready to fire my version soon..i had to make some slip to achieve the buff colour.
Slip is a great way to do it, that's how I did the recent Hohokam wedding vase.
Thanks again, Andy. You've introduced me to a new hobby, and I appreciate your work and expertise.
To find the diameter of your pot you can use a cloth tape to measure the circumference and solve for the radius:
radius = circumference ÷ 2π. Double the solution for the diameter of your pot.
To make a close estimate of your model's dimensions you can photograph it alongside a finely graduated scale bar or tape measure. The measurement obtained from a computer screen is very accurate this way. Cheers.
Thanks, but the pot is in a glass display case at the museum, they aren't going to let me get my hands on it.
That looks lovely! You might not have made it the same, but you still made it well. I find it weirdly hilarious that you tried an ancient backpack and immediately discovered a potential explanation for why broken pots are sometimes found in weird places. Do you think they ever thought about that? Like, when they were hiking through the desert and dropped something, did they go, "Meh, someone'll pick it up in like 500 years," and keep walking? Experimental archaeology strikes again!
Idea for the future. Use parallel lasers for scale, like they do in space and on deep ocean explorers, to shine 2 beams a known distance apart.
A quick Google doesn't turn up anything ready to use though, but it should be fairly simple to rig something with cheap laser pointers and a bit of glue.
That could be a whole UA-cam video making that tool. I can just imagine the looks I would get from museum personal when I pull that out of my bag.
👍👍👍👍👍 Merry Christmas everyone.
The one I've been working on is as inauthentic as yours! LOL! Still have some more preparation to do before firing. To keep the paint from gunking up my brush, I like to add extra water to my mix to where I can see a thin layer of water on top of my paint (and I load my brush properly)... It keeps lines pretty sharp but tends to only work with 50% hematite and 50% clay. Enjoyable video sir! We Look forward to the next.
Thanks, I can't wait to see yours.
Awesomeness
Thanks
Working with mud is a fun job. I try to work on it humbly
Humility is an underrated characteristic.
Looks good
😀Well done, your clay mixing turned out really good. How long did it take you to get all the traders painted? I better start on making one too. Ive been practicing painting this week .
I determined that it took me about 5 minutes per trader with a few breaks along the way. There are 29 traders on the pot, plus the lines at the top, so maybe about 4 hours. Thanks!
You were concerned about the size of the piece on display at the university. I'd expect that they have the work cataloged with the height & width somewhere. Maybe that info is available online, or perhaps you could call and ask.
I imagine they do have that info but it would be hard to get someone to look it up and get it for me as they are always understaffed and underfunded.
If your looking at pieces from the Arizona State Museum I would contact the "head of collections" and chances are the vessel measurements were recorded in the inventory.
No doubt they have that information but they are have been very hard to get information from in the past.
Andy, this is great!
How much grog was added to the clay? 1:2? 1:3?
I used 20% temper for the white clay (4:1) and slightly less for the brown clay because it was a bit grittier.
I understand why primitive is used, but i feel like it really undermines the ingenuity of these people for creating such beautiful pottery
Some people misunderstand the word primitive and see it as a put-down. But it really just means; "ancient, original, established from the beginning". And those ancient original potters had mad skills, there is no shame in that.
Your cover sherds are things of beauty compared to mine!
LOL, you are welcome to them, I plan on grinding them into temper soon.
Sir Andy, I want to fire my clay cups tomorrow but I've been wondering, how would I know if my cups were fired long enough to safely drink from?
Well if they hold water without falling apart, then they are fired hard enough to make ceramic. They will always leak a little unless you seal them, I have a few videos about sealing earthenware here is a playlist of those ua-cam.com/video/Ln4jKlfruaw/v-deo.html
Hi Andy, I painted slip on pottery after about a week of drying just as you did in this video, however mine just dried and crumbled off, how do you get yours to stick and what am I doing wrong?
Thanks for the great video, love the pot and great design work too. Cheers!
No idea, some clays just don't work well together so that is one possibility. Are you sure your slip is actually clay?
@@AncientPottery thank you, yes it is clay. I will just have to do some binder experiments.
@@damimose did you slip the pot while it was leather hard? That works a little better than slipping bone dry
@@AncientPottery that's a good point, I may have left it too long to dry. As a newbie I find the timing of everything challenging; slipping, scraping, stone polish, burnishing... I just don't really know when to do it.
@@damimose yep, I am planning a video about the timing.
I don't have white clay can i use lime insted of it?
No. Lime does not do well in pottery firings
What happens when your clay freezes when it's drying -- is it going to be game over?
No, you don't want that to happen it will ruin your pot.
Nice video despite the embarrassing state of your cover shards 😂
Those things are about to get ground into temper.
👍
Does running clay and minerals through that grinder dull the blades or burrs pretty fast?
Probably, but it’s hard cast iron. My last one lasted for almost 10 years.
Hey Andy is normal that the paint on the pot before the firing is fugitive?
Your paint needs a binder (sticks it to the pot before firing) and a fixative (sticks it to the pot after firing).
My pot here has 50% clay which does both jobs.
@@AncientPottery oh ok, thanks for the answers!
That green sweatshirt looks really comfy. Mind telling me what it is?
Super comfy. freecountry.com/products/mens-osprey-sweater-knit-fleece-jacket
@@AncientPottery thanks man!
hey just curious if you ever made it to get the measurements?
Of the original pot? No
I watch other pottery making videos, and others seem to have better behaving clays than you do. I'm not sure how to describe the difference, but the others seem more easily manipulated, formed, and reformed. I think it's the clay. Are Southwest clays of different quality broadly than elsewhere?
Whose videos are you watching? Mine is wild collected clay, are you watching others who are making their own clay or are you watching videos of people using commercial clay because that is apples and oranges.
@@AncientPottery It was this lady in Uganda, but also some potters in India 🇮🇳.
ua-cam.com/video/64jKUPde52s/v-deo.html&feature=share7
What Uni did you go to?
Could you call the museum and ask if someone there could give you those measurements?
The pot is on display in the "wall of pots" so I doubt they would go to all the trouble of opening up the display and making those measurements for me.
@@AncientPottery my bet, although I have never run a museum, is that each piece displayed in an exhibit would be inventoried, with measurements and known specs recorded in their database. I bet they could look it up without disturbing the display.
At the same time, a "close enough" measurement suits me fine. 😊
Can you add too much temper?
Absolutely
😎👍🏼
Andy Ward is what you get if Doc Brown lost Marty in pre-Columbian Arizona for a decade and overshot the return date by forty-five years
18:23 Have you considered using lard as an accelerant instead of lighter fluid? The flames are less likely to climb up a stream of lard. It's scary watching you squirt lighter fluid on a lit fire.
The straps tied to one’s forehead….this is typical way of carrying a basket in Taiwan. I mean, the aborigines.