Experimental pottery

My goal in this project was to create some pottery that resembled an Anglo-Saxon pot that would be commonly found in grave sites. More than material or design I was interested in stamps and decorations. I had looked at few papers on the internet and found some interesting ones about different kinds of stamps, one of them was about cruciform stamps the other about animal stamps. I also discovered that a lot of designs or markings on pots are made from different animal parts, like the horns or teeth from a deer. A common thing found on the pots are lines and triangles, it is thought that each design is specific for each person that the pot was buried with, but this mostly only applies to cremation urns.
(C) Thorskegga
This is a Anglo-Saxon Cremation Urn, from Loveden Hill cemetery. It has a couple of stamps on it and the traditional lines going around it, the runes are most likely the persons name.


The pot I tried to create had a similar shape to the on above, put due to limited supplies it had to be made a bit smaller in size. I started out with a solid base for the pot made out of one piece of sculpey, I then added some larger coils to the pot. After my first attempt and failure i learned that the coils had to be thick or else when you smooth them out they will become too thin and will loose their shape or collapse.

Image from beginning of second attempt.
I kept on progressively adding coils to the pot and smoothing them out as I added them, this may or may not be the same way that the Anglo-Saxons did it. They could have made all the coils and added them up and then smoothed it or they could have done it in chunks like us. I think it is likely that they would have built it up bit by bit and smoothed it along the way like we did, that way it is easier to get to any spots that need reinforcing.

I slowly built up the bottom part of the pot then I made a top part separately and attached it, then i made the very top spout thing and attached them all together.
In the end this is what i got, i used two of my necklaces as stamps for the pot and for the lines and circles i used one tool that has two metal prongs on it. It was lots of fun making the pot even though we did run across some complications.