Making the Gila Football Pot - Hand-Building Pottery

Today I'm going to show you how I recreated the 600 year old pot that's in the collection at Eastern Arizona College. Here's my finished unfired replica. Let me go back now and show you how I got to this point. Helipolychrome was made between 1300 and 1450 in southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico. So I start with a slab of clay and a round wooden bowl. I just press it in and I work at making a perfect circle of clay that's the right width. Now in order to make that oval bottom that I need for this pot, I'm using this wooden dough kneading trough and some clay to kind of make that oval shape I want. And then I'm going to set that disc of clay into it and kind of fold it up like a taco and then cut the edges off so that it's even all the way around for me to add my first coil. So now that I've created my oval shaped base, I'm ready to start adding coils and building it up into that oblong football shaped jar. I'm just using a bonding pinch here to attach the coil and then I'm going around with a flat pinch and thinning the walls and then I'm using my gourd rib tool to just kind of smooth it on the inside and a little bit of compression pinch here to kind bring those walls up into the shape I want. Now I'm using this towel to support the pot while I work on the bottom and that way I can scrape and clean up the bottom put it back into my ad hoc pookie and continue and I won't have to worry about the bottom again until I'm down the road quite a ways. I'm going to reshape the oval shape in that bowl there and place it back in and now just kind of reshaping and smoothing it and add another coil and of course using that bonding pinch to attach the coil and a flat and compression pinch to bring that wall up and in a little bit. I'm going to keep adding coils and building it up until I get the nice oval shape I'm looking for. Now the original is nine and a half inches long so I'm looking to make it a little longer than that to account for the shrinkage in the clay. I think I'm a little over 11 here which is probably more than I needed. So just filling in a little gap on the end there and filling in some more gaps on the sides and this is all good and I keep building it up but what I end up with is kind of a rectangular opening on the top that I have to deal with later because of the way I'm building this up. See that rectangular shape? So I'm just using a rounded bowl that kind of as a template to kind of cut out a circular shape. I want to make sure my jar neck and rim are circular not rectangular. So working from that circular shape and building up is going to give me a nice rounded rim and that should be my last coil. Now I'm just going to trim off some of the high places and smooth off the rim and I'll be done forming it. Lots of water on that rim kind of making it soft and then a little piece of buckskin here to just smooth it off and that's it for the form. That's it for the first day. I'm ready to wrap it up let it rest. So at the beginning of day two my goal is to smooth those walls now that the pot is firmed up some. So I'm using a deer rib here to kind of scrape it down taking little bits of clay and filling in little holes and dents that I have. Scraping it down nice and smooth and even and then once I've got it all scraped I'm going to use a damp stone to do stone smoothing and that's just like troweling concrete that just makes it smoother. I am not polishing it yet. Now this is the Salado secret sauce. This is that special smectite clay slip that will hold the organic paint and turn it into black designs in the firing. So I'm applying this nice and thin that's the goal on this. The red ochre it's just red ochre and water and it's just a wash over the clay and then that is burnished into the still damp clay to make it permanent. Day three is mostly just drying day. I am going to polish the white very very gently and then just let the pot dry completely. Okay I've got my organic paint here made out of yucca fruit and I've got my yucca brushes and I'm ready to start painting the designs. Now in this case there's no room for artistic expression. This is a replica of an ancient pot so I have my ipad out and I'm referencing the original pot all the time trying to make the design as much like that as possible. The other thing about the painting is I do freehand it. That means I'm not drawing it in ahead of time with pencil because I not only want to make it like the ancient pot I want to make it like the ancient potters made it and they didn't pencil in their designs they were free handing it. Now here's the ancient pot again for reference. Take a look at mine and let me know in the comments how you think I did. Now I can't fire this for a while because of fire restrictions in my area. I have to wait till at least July before I can fire. So you'll have to look for that firing video at a later date. If you'd like to see another video where I recreate an ancient pot from a museum check out this video right over here. Thanks for watching. I'll catch you next time.