|
Catawba Valley Pottery describes alkaline glazed stoneware made in the Catawba River Valley of Western North Carolina from the early 19th century, as well as certain contemporary pottery made in the region utilizing traditional methods and forms. The earliest Catawba Valley pottery was earthenware made by settlers of German descent who established farming communities in the region. By the early 1820s, however, Catawba Valley potters had adopted stoneware technology that allowed for the manufacture of stronger, larger and more varied wares. Artisans made utilitarian wares needed by the local farming community, such as churns, molasses and whisky jugs and food storage vessels of various sizes. Any decoration was simple, usually limited to one or more incised lines. At the turn of the 20th century the food industry began to rely increasingly on glass and canned food storage along with refrigeration. These innovations brought about a severe decline of the utilitarian pottery industry nationwide, including the pottery community in Catawba Valley. Potters who chose to continue the craft had to rely on tourism and an interest in handmade crafts fostered by the American Arts and Crafts movement. Innovations included decorative techniques such as "swirl ware" ; pottery made by combining two or more different colors of clay. They also introduced unique forms such as "face jugs". The origin of this form is obscure, but it may be derived from traditional German pottery forms such as the Bartmann jug. Face jugs became, and continue to be, popular with collectors of folk art pottery. These efforts notwithstanding, by 1960 only one craftsman, Burlon Craig, was still producing pottery in the Catawba Valley. ==Glazing and firing methods== From the earliest known product, stoneware made in the Catawba Valley was alkaline glazed. Alkaline glazes are made by combining hardwood ash or crushed glass with clay and water. Alkaline glazed stoneware takes on a brown or green color once fired in the kiln. Catawba Valley potters chose alkaline glazes over salt glaze,the predominant stoneware glaze used in America at the time. Potters enjoyed an abundance of wood ash from burning their kilns while salt deposits were not very plentiful in the Carolinas. Furthermore, salt was especially expensive during and after the Civil War. The alkaline glazed ware was initially fired in what is known as "groundhog kilns". These kilns were a unique southern U.S. variation of climbing kilns built into hillsides, such as the Asian anagama. Semi-subterranean in construction, the groundhog kiln featured a door leading into a long, low passage of brick or rock construction, with a stack or chimney poking out of the ground up hill. Ware was loaded in the low passageway or "ware-bed" and the fire was built in a sunken firebox, located just inside the door. The design allowed the stack to draw heated air, flames and ash through the pottery grouped inside and created the draft needed to generate the intense heat required to create stoneware. This type of firing or " burning " worked particularly well with large pieces of pottery. Variations of these kilns, usually referred to as "tunnel kilns", are used by modern potters in Catawba Valley and other pottery regions in the American southeast. () 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Catawba Valley Pottery」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|