I Overcame Failure to Make This Tusayan Polychrome Bowl
Last time on Ancient Pottery Challenge, disaster ensued when my pottery firing exploded.
Now with five of the Ancient Pottery Challenge pots made and only two to go, can I come back
with a win on the next project which is this beautiful Ancient Toussillon Polychrome Bowl.
Keep watching to the end to find out in this action-packed episode of Ancient Pottery Challenge.
When you're making a replica pot the first thing you need to really think about is the size of
your puke. The puke is going to form the bottom of your bowl so you need one that's the right size.
Now with this particular bowl I don't actually have the official size. On the website where
it's listed it doesn't give the dimensions so I'm kind of guessing here. So I'm looking at maybe
let's say 10 by 6 in the finished product. Now that clay is going to shrink like all clay.
So this is where it comes in handy knowing the shrinkage rate of your clay.
The clay I'm using I mixed up special for this project because I'm trying to get something
that's kind of that orangey color which believe me isn't easy. I don't have anything that's really
like that. So I don't know. I haven't done any tests. I'm hoping this is going to be pretty
close. Also because it's specially mixed I have no idea what the shrinkage is but
I'm going to guess a good average of 10 percent. So if I'm looking for a 10 inch bowl,
10 percent shrinkage means I need to make the bowl 11 inches and then it'll shrink down to 10.
Okay so I know the size I'm trying to make the bowl 11 inches wide. I'm looking for a
pookie that's a little bit smaller than that. This pookie inside dimensions so make sure you
never measure your pookie from the outside because that has nothing to do with the size of your bowl.
Your bowl comes up from the inside of the pookie. Inside dimensions on this pookie is about
nine and a half. So that only gives me an inch and a half you know to get to that 11 inches beyond it
which is easy because you're going to come out a little on each side you know evenly. That's what
three quarters of an inch on each side. Pretty easy to do. So I think this is going to be a good
pookie to use and I've got my orange hopefully orange clay mixed up ready to get started.
Although it appears that making a bowl is less work than making a jar because there's less
coils there's less work building it but you make up for that. You more than make up for that with
all the smoothing because with a bowl you have two surfaces to smooth both the inside and the
outside whereas with a jar the inside is completely unfinished and coarse and so although a bowl seems
like an easier project with less labor it's probably actually more work than a comparably
sized jar. Okay so I'm gonna let this sit and firm up for a few minutes that way I can flip it upside
down take it out of the pookie clean up the bottom that way as I continue building the sides
I won't have to worry about the bottom later I'll know that the bottom is relatively clean and ready
to go. Finishing the bottom ahead of time like this is not something I always do but when it's
a large project a large pot or a large bowl it's a good idea because this pot's going to be pretty
firm before I can take it out of the pookie and work on that. Okay I'm about ready to add my first
coil I don't think I'm going to need more than a couple of large coils on this that's the nice
thing about a bowl by the time you've done with the slab in the pookie you know you're over halfway
there. I might have a little bit of a high spot here I'm going to trim it down a little bit
relatively even I probably should wet that because it has dried a little bit.
This is why I leave about an inch above the edge of the pookie when I get started and that is as
you see the way I do the bonding pinch I'm pressing down and into that slab I need that space in order
to give it a good bonding pinch. Now when you're pinching these walls you can pinch them right to
whatever thickness you're looking for with a lot of the jars I make I'll build the walls more vertical
and then I leave the walls a little thicker than I want as I pinch them up
that way I have some extra when I push them out into that rounded form.
Now with this bowl I mean I will shape it some but I'm generally coiling in the shape that I want
that rounded shape not going to be any extreme pushing out going on just about 11 inches which
is what I'm going for so that's good. So the main thing I need to worry about at this point is just
that as you can see the rim does a lot of ups and downs kind of roller coaster like so I'm just
going to trim it off so it's relatively even I've got a big low spot here I'm going to add some in
there so that when I add that next coil I'm building up evenly otherwise I'll just accentuate
those roller coasters when I get to the top. The process I use to make pottery is called the coil
and scrape method it's the same method that the ancient Pueblo potters used and it's the same
method that their descendants modern Pueblo potters use to this day it's a five-step process
and the steps are as follows one coil roll out a coil two bond bond that coil to the base of the
pot with a firm downward pinch three pinch pinch that coil thin to the desired thickness four
scrape scrape it smooth on the inside and the outside and five repeat repeat as necessary
until your pot is the desired size and shape I think I'm getting really close to the size and
shape I want I'm about 11 inches across and about five and a half inches high I don't have a photo
to reference of the original out here with me so I need to go get one just to make sure I've got
the shape pretty much right and then I'll finish up the shape then I'll let it firm before I put
the handle on which you know might not be till this afternoon we will see all right so I looked
at a picture of the original and it doesn't curve in at all or very very little so the sides need
to come pretty vertical at the top and I think it's pretty deep I think it's a tad deeper than
what I have so also my rim is pretty thin right here it needs to be a little thicker to give that
rim some solidity so I think what I'm going to do I'm going to trim this down a little bit you know
just the high spots I'm going to add a small coil much smaller than what I've used so far pinch that
up I think that's going to give me the the verticality I make it a little thicker and get
me where I need to be on that this clay was a unique blend it was two very different clays
one from up in northern Arizona one from here in southern Arizona but it turned out it had
really great properties I might just do it again just because it's such a good clay
now because this coil was relatively thin it was just a little bit thicker than the walls of the
pot I'm not doing a lot of pinching I am pinching it thinner but I'm also paying special attention
to the shape that I don't bring it in anymore you know I don't want it rounded I want the
sides to kind of come vertical according to the picture it doesn't really come in much
a lot of those prehistoric southwestern pots they kind of come in at the top and that makes
for a stronger shape and you know you get in a habit of working you know I make a lot of
salado pots and a lot of those salado pots do kind of come in and so you get in a habit you
know and that's the way you work so I kind of naturally want to do that so I'm I'm working
against that now trying to make those walls more vertical one thing I often hear from people is
that their clay is cracking you know and there's different levels of that but one thing you have
to realize is that this highly tempered wild clay that is used for primitive pottery it always kind
of has a tendency to crack it's not ever as smooth or as plastic as store-bought clay especially if
you're used to working in a studio with store-bought clay you know you might think there's something
wrong with it this is a good example as I'm attaching the handle this bowl has a handle
you will see that clay starts to crack right where I'm bending it around right there you can see it
it's cracking and I just take my wet finger and I just keep pressing it together and you know it
might crack again and I'll just take my damp fingers and just press it back together it's okay
you can learn to work with it that way the Kayenta region exists in far north central Arizona
there ancestors of the Hopis lived from earliest times the first decorated pottery they made was
black on white painted with organic paint which they started making around 600 AD
in fact organic painted pottery may have originated with the Kayenta for over 400
years they made and perfected their beautiful black on white pottery then around 1050 something
happened and redware started to be made in the Kayenta region this redware called by archaeologists
Segi orangeware closely resembles the redware that had previously been made in southeastern Utah
which archaeologists call San Juan redware oddly San Juan redware stopped being made at the exact
moment that Segi orangeware started to be made leading archaeologists to believe that the people
who had made it packed up at that time and moved 100 miles southwest into the Kayenta region
so who were these mysterious redware makers from Utah just as the San Juan redware had suddenly
stopped being made around 1050 it had also started to be made there just as suddenly around 750
as though the redware makers had moved there lived for about 300 years and then moved on
this region in southeast Utah like the Kayenta region had an older gray and white pottery
tradition so where did this technology for making oxidized red and orange pottery come from
the technology itself is harder to track to a specific area although the Hohokam and Mogollon
cultures to the south where oxidized pottery was common are a likely source the designs however
that were used on early San Juan redware hold clues about who these people were in 1946 an
archaeologist named John Brew noticed that the designs on the earliest forms of San Juan redware
were very similar to those found on Mogollon red on brown pottery from southeastern Arizona 500
miles to the south so it seems plausible that these people were originally Mogollon who for
some unknown reason picked up and moved far to the north to live among the Anasazi making their
traditional redware pottery when things got tough in southeastern Utah they moved again south into
the Kayenta region where they lived for around 250 more years then around 1300 things got bad
in the Kayenta area and they moved a third time and this is the most surprising of the moves these
people made instead of going to a nearby group they moved far to the south and settled back in
southeastern Arizona in the same area where their ancestors had ostensibly come from over 500 years
before coincidence who can say but to me it looks like this group of Mogollons made a 500 year
900 mile round trip across the southwest all the time clinging tenaciously to their pottery
traditions I made a video about these lost Mogollon people a few years back if this is
interesting to you then you will like that video which covers them in a lot more detail and is shot
on the ruins of several of their homes I will link that video in the doobly-doo in case you're
interested all right it's the next morning this pot has had a chance to firm up a little bit
and so today I'm going to take it out of the poopy and I'm going to work on the bottom
and today is Labor Day for those of you not in the United States that's a holiday celebrating
work I guess so in celebration of Labor Day here I am working actually I'm going to the Labor Day
rodeo in Sonoyta so I'm going to get the bottom of this all taken care of and then I'm going to
go off to the rodeo while this sits and dries and there it is you can see it's kind of crusty around
the edge of the pookie it's got a little bit of a some divots in there some depression that needs
to be filled in with some damp clay need some scraping that's the kind of love you have to give
that pookie area after you pulled it off and remember I pulled that pookie off early and
worked on the bottom so this area is all pretty good it's just that edge an interesting thing
about making replicas of Kayenta pottery is that almost nobody has access to that truly authentic
Kayenta clay because the Kayenta homeland sits smack dab in the middle of the Navajo Nation
so unless you're a Navajo tribal member it's all off limits this clay that I'm using is a
blend from different places neither of which are Kayenta homeland and the slip I'm going to use
also comes from a place far from the Kayenta homeland so it would be great to try to experiment
with some of those Kayenta clays that get the colors I'm sure perfect but as I said they're
pretty much off limits to everyone my initial idea was to let this dry while I was at the rodeo today
but I'm thinking that because it's going to be a warm day it might dry too much so what I'm going
to do is wrap it up in plastic so I don't come home and find out that it's dried beyond the next
stage which is going to be stone smoothing and then putting on that slip which isn't actually
a slip it's a hematite wash so just because I don't want it to over dry I'm going to wrap it up
and let it dry more carefully when I'm home to keep an eye on it okay enjoyed the rodeo yesterday
pot has firmed up some more and it's time to do some stone smoothing so for this I'm using a smooth
natural stone and some water that's it this is not the same as burnishing although stone smoothing
uses the same tool it's used wet instead of dry and it's used at a different stage of dryness
for the pot and it does a different thing if you want to learn about these ancient pottery types
you can often just google the names of them either the specific type in this case
to see on polychrome or the general type the broader category which is segi orangeware and
there are quite a few resources online by different archaeological institutions the state of new
mexico has a good one and museum of northern arizona and flagstaff also has a pretty good one
at least for the types found in their area and so if you go and look at those resources for this
type of pottery there'll be a lot of interesting information or good information for anybody trying
to do an authentic replica of that type for polishing I usually do it on my workbench
when I'm filming videos because it's easier for filming it puts me in an awkward position to do
polishing you know trying to do it on a workbench the way I really like to do it is sitting on the
couch with the pot in my lap because that's comfortable and it supports the pot at this stage
the pot is far from dry it's leather hard but still quite fragile you can break it doing this
so you want to kind of support it and that's why put in my lap a lot of times I'll put a soft blanket
or towel on my lap just to protect the pot from my pants because if I'm wearing jeans or you know
work pants they have abrasive edges you know a belt buckle could scratch it so put a soft piece
of cloth down and then I can just kind of cradle the pot in my hands and go to work polishing it
move it around and you know just work on it real comfortably not only am I comfortable but
more importantly the pot is comfortable it's not going to get broken this way
now this tucsion polychrome according to the internet is polished on both the inside
and the outside so I want to get that polishing done before I apply that red paint which is really
a red it's more like a red slip it could be clay it could be just red hematite or even yellow and
I think that's what I'm going to use is some yellow clay but at any rate before I apply that
I want to get the polishing done because once I get that red on there then I'm going to have to
polish around it so it'd be easier to polish at least the plain areas the non-painted areas
before I get the red on because once I get the red on I will also polish the red areas
and polishing is one of those things has to be done at just the right stage of dryness
if it's too early you're not going to get a good polish and you leave a lot of
tracks you know stone tracks from where the stone travels across the pot if it's too late you're
really not able to you know move the clay around very much so you're not going to get much success
at this stage right here it's just about perfect and you can see it's just taking on a nice shine
just as the stone goes across it but the whole pot isn't always ready to be polished at the same time
the rim may dry faster may be ready to polish before say the bottom is you want to be aware
and polish each part of the pot at the right stage for dryness that may mean you polish the rim
in the morning and you don't polish the bottom until the evening it's going to vary it's going
to vary based on the pot and where you live and lots of other things here's my bright yellow clay
that I'm going to use as the red areas on this pot aspires to a bright red I get this up in
northern Arizona it's all purified and levigated ready to go now I had no end of trouble trying
to record the painting of this pot and I'll show you why it's a pretty deep pot and I don't usually
make pots this deep but I'd get the camera all focused on the pot and then as soon as I put my
arms in the pot to paint you can't really see the painting all you can see is my arm and of course
I'm doing this in my office instead of my back porch studio because it's summer and it's hot
outside and that also limits my camera angles I can do so I've got probably like one or two
possible camera angles here and I had trouble making any of them work now what I'm doing here
is using this bit of string to measure the distance from the rim to the bottom and I'm
putting a little dot to mark that length that distance and then I'll just come back with the
paintbrush and I will you know like connect the dots just paint a circle where those dots are
that way the circle in the bottom of the pot is even with the rim and I think that worked out okay
but again the recording it and keeping it focused without putting my arm or my head or something in
the camera also seems to want really bad to focus on the outside rim the outside of the
pot or the rim of the pot and not the details going on inside the pot and I'll show you at
the end I did find a solution somewhat of a solution once I get all that yellow slip on
then I have to come back over it with the polishing stone and just make it all nice
and smooth and shiny and then when it's fully dry I'll be ready to paint this kind of pottery
for the black design now I haven't seen any archaeological studies on exactly what that
material is so I'm just guessing at this point but one thing we know is that it's not an iron
based paint like I used on those chaco cylinders because that's only black in a reduction atmosphere
with all the bright colors and reds on this segi orange where we know that it's fired in
an oxidation atmosphere so we need something that's going to turn black in an oxidation
atmosphere and so I'm using manganese and copper now this is handled just like I did with the
hematite in my last video if you haven't seen that I'll put that link over here and down in
the doobly-doo and in that video I went out and I collected hematite I made sure it was soft I took
it home I ground it up and then I levigated it and that's what I'm left with is this fine powder
the manganese and the copper are done exactly the same way and so I'll just give it a scoop
of manganese dioxide a scoop of copper carbonate and a scoop of clay the clay will help it harden
in the firing so it doesn't wipe off after the firing and then the last ingredient I'm going to
add is a little bit of mesquite sap that's just an organic binder that's going to make it sticky
give the paint some viscosity and then it'll also make it a little firmer when it's not fired yet
so that as I handle the pot while I'm painting it and in the firing I won't rub off any of that
painted design now here you can see the age-old problem the shot's all lined up I go to paint
you got the top of my fat head get the shot all lined up focused on the pot I go to paint
and of course I lean in to see better and you get the top of my head this goes on and on and on for
hours so you'll forgive me if there's not a lot of good shots of me painting here these are some
of the best shots I have as you can see I don't have my head or my arm in the way but you can't
really see what I'm painting very well and it's out of focus because the camera is focusing on
the outer rim of the pot it's maddening eventually what I did was I turned off the autofocus on the
camera I set it to manual focus focused it on the bottom of the pot and then made sure I didn't move
the pot too far in or out so that it stayed in focus and that helped a lot that helped a lot
getting shots still you really can't see inside the pot very well with my hand in the way so what
I ended up doing is turning the pot on its side and that not only allowed me to get better video
of what I was doing but it also helped me stabilize my hand and do better on the painting
a pottery firing is an emotional roller coaster it can bring you down and make you feel terrible
or it can make you feel great depending on the outcome now because my previous firing has been
such a disaster and believe me it was I found myself a little apprehensive a little nervous
about doing this which is silly because this is a different kind of firing this is a surface
oxidation firing I do these all the time successfully but but still that last firing
had a big impact on my approach to this one it was a perfect day for firing the weather was perfect
it's starting to cool off now and so it was just really comfortable out there
it hadn't rained in a couple of weeks so the wood was all really dry
there wasn't too much wind it was just the perfect day for firing the cows seemed happy about it
now as I get ready to open this up keep in mind that those irons will not be oxidized at this
point or at least not very much so a lot of time irons when you open up a firing like this and
it's still hot they'll be very dark almost kind of maroon or brown and then they brighten up as
they cool so you see that little pot that's going to be bright red when it's cool but it's kind of
brownish maroon right now and the same with the oranges on the bowl they're just not as bright
as they will be in just a few minutes and this is a time lapse you can kind of see it brighten up
really fast so remember only you can prevent forest fires all right I think I did pretty good
on this one it rings like a bell so fired nice and hard the colors came out pretty close to the
original I'm surprised because you know that body color that orange I wasn't sure about and so
just mixing them kind of blind because I didn't know exactly what they were going to make I assumed
you know knowing what those two clays did that that would get me close and I think pretty darn
close so I'm happy with that the colors look good I wish I had been able to paint a little better I
think the original is a little nicer paint job on the inside and that's just a matter of practice
I don't have much experience painting in these deep bowls I didn't really know how to anchor my
hand as I went on with the painting I did get better but it's just one of those things I need
more practice painting in the bottom of deep bowls overall a good project and a nice comeback from
the last one which was an abject failure so you know I was nervous just because I'd broken pots
on the last one but very different firings that was a smothered organic paint firing and this this
is oxidation this is my thing I can do this blindfolded not that I would but I still have
one more pot to make in the ancient pottery challenge and that's that pitcher and that is
organic paint that's going to be another one of those smothered firings so we'll see if I can
learn something at the kiln conference this year that I can apply towards that little pitcher and
the kiln conference should be the very next video after this one now if you want to see the previous
video after this one that's the one where I blew up that pot and the mug oh son of a gun that was
the disaster that I'm going to try to correct at the conference I will link that video up right
over here go watch that see my failures because you know you've seen my successes thanks for
coming with me today I will catch you next time