My latest assignment for my archaeology course is about ceramics… we had to choose three pieces and describe them in terms of form, function, material etc as if they were artefacts we were looking at.I do think I am a little dyslexic, or maybe I am careless reader because I thought the task just read ‘ceramics’ and so I collected thee things made from clay… then I reread it and it was ceramic vessels.
So I collected a favourite jug I had bought in Ireland many years ago, a porcelain bowl that was part of a set of Chinese things, which included chopsticks and a black wooden tray, and a beautiful pot from Ecuador my dear friend Elly gave me which is another favourite thing.
I use the bowl and jug regularly, and the pot is on the fireplace so always in view; however, I don’t think I had ever looked at them properly before. As part of the exercise I had to describe them, and describing meant looking. I had never realised that the stub of the handle where it joined the body of the jug had a little flower design stamped into it; I had never properly looked at the Inca beasts on the pot or looked at the strange way the handle had been affixed to the rest of it.
So what have I learned from this exercise? To look properly at things!
My beautiful jug was made by Nicholas Mosse in Ireland
Lois Elsden 