Alchemy of Clay

 This treadle sewing machine was woman-powered.  It just sewed nice straight seams. ..no gimicks.

The pitcher and basin were usually made of ceramic.  An industry which provided bathing facilities for thousands of people before they got running water and a bathroom!

If I look around me to see what might be worthy of a museum in 100 or 200 years, I hope these fluorescent light bulbs will be there...and of course some laptop or iPad. An air conditioner/heater has made my life much better.  How about a microwave? I think a pop-up umbrella is pretty nifty too.

I think mainly of pottery when I think of art. That includes archaeology where ancient beauty has been immortalized in various forms.

Probably a jaguar jug

Maybe another kind of jaguar, a black one

A drumming bird

Some Moche (100-800 AD) stirrup-handled figurative pots from Mesoamerica. I saw these in a North Carolina museum a few years ago.


Ceramic sculptural tetrahedrons by Tai Rogers, my son, sitting in the crouch of the cherry tree.

From Florida art museum

Photo of a small ivory (2" I think)  prehistoric goddess figure, found in Germany in 2009.

Jomon jar, from Honshu, 2500-1500 BCE.

Thanks to Sepia Saturday for giving me a chance to troll through my own archives to find some of my favorites.  For more interesting stories about old art treasures, or other topics, link on over to their site

"...1914 photograph from the Flickr Commons collection of the Dutch National Archives. The caption of the photograph is "The Great War. Refugees from Antwerp, Belgium, bringing a painting into safety. Belgium, 1914"