table where brick is madeI've been having too much fun surfing at high speed to take the time to blog! Well, I've got to start somewhere.
After the Craft Fair in Asheville, which went really well, I took the family to colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. I've wanted to go there ever since I visited Jim Chalkley in Norfolk a couple of years ago and I did the pottery show at the Hermitage. I think Jamestown was celebrating the 400th anniversary at the time.
Williamsburg is home to the College of William & Mary where my fellow potters Andrew Coombs and Kevin Crowe hail from. I'm sure there are more of you W & M potters out there, only time will tell.
Back to: Colonial Williamsburg. Williamsburg is an historically preserved late 18th c. city. See this link to view a map. It was pretty amazing being there, although it took some getting used to. There is nothing there that wasn't present or in the historical record of the time.
brick kiln being firedWe were lucky to be there the day they were firing the brick kiln. It would be fired for 4-5 days slowly drying out the bricks and bringing them to about 2000*F. They fire the stack of bricks once a year and during the fair weather months, the brick is made by stomping the clay, then forming the bricks by hand in the brick form.
They wasn't a potter in Williamsburg at the time that this city was "preserved" and that is why there wasn't a pot shop in the hitorical village, only the brickworks. Most of the houses there were were made of brick. In nearby Yorktown, William Rogers made pots. Steve Earp has some interesting posts at his blog, "This Day in Pottery History".I have hundreds of pictures that I took there and I'm trying to edit them so I can show more here. I'm also trying to get back to the swing of things in the pot shop as well. I guess I'll have to knuckle down and organize my time. With the high speed and the new Mac, I may have to disipline my online time. Oh my.
speaking of disipline!Thanks for your patronage (or matronage) as the case may be!
;-)
