Firing the Thule Pots

Whole and exploded pots

I fired the Thule and Choris/Norton pots yesterday, with generally positive results.   Laurie let me use one of the fire pits on The Compound for this phase of the project.  Of the six pots that started the firing, one was reduced to a ziploc bag full of barely recognizable pottery sherds by the end of the day.  The remaining five stayed in more-or-less one piece, although two had sizeable heat spalls pop off in the second hour of the firing.

Looking good on the outside

I fired them for just under three hours, turning them every 10-15 minutes.  I'm not sure exactly what the firing accomplished.  I wouldn't say that the pots are fired like ceramics in a kiln.  I don't think there was a significant change in the chemistry of the clay, but it got hot and dry and hopefully a little harder and more durable.  They should be a little more stable now, although I didn't get all of the colour change that I was hoping for.  A couple of the pots have a good colour on the outside, but the clay inside is still very light coloured.  I need them to be almost black in cross-section so I'll have to antique them a bit more once I crack the sherds into shape.

The  six pots before the firing. 

The five survivors at the end.

This one lasted about a minute

I had originally planned to put two pots directly in the fire and heat the remaining four around the edge.  These are pretty fresh pots, with a lot of moisture in them.  I made half of them five days before the firing and the other half four days before the firing.  In pottery terms, I'm sure I would have had much safer results if I had waited another week or two for the pots to dry.  But, even stretching the drying time to four or five days was pretty generous for this style of pottery which would traditionally go from raw clay to firing all in one day.  The plan to put two pots in the fire ended pretty abruptly when the first pot that I put in started exploding almost immediately.  It kept popping like popcorn until it was rubble.  The two video clips below show the pot popping.  Based on that, I didn't bother putting a second pot into the fire.

At the end of the firing, I fished these and a dozen other fragements from the exploded pot out of the coals.

They hold water without reverting to mud

When I got the pots home I wanted to see if they would hold water.  They were still warm from the fire and I didn't want to risk thermal shock so I filled them to the brim with warm water.  They all held water, so I let them sit for about 15 minutes to see if the water would slowly seep through them or if they'd turn back into mud.  When I checked on them again, the two blood coated Thule pots had developed big cracks around the rim.  I'm guessing that they started to reabsorb the water and tried to expand, which led to the cracking.

Cracks formed in the two thicker pots with the best seal blood coating.  There was one thick pot that didn't crack, so I don't think it was thickness alone that caused the problem.

Surface heat spalls

So at the end of the day, I really only have one pot left intact.  Two survived the firing, but are now cracked from the water, two have surfaces pitted with heat spalls, but can hold water, and the sixth pot is in inch sized fragments.  As far as making pots go - this would have to fall into the "learning experience" rather than "howling success" category.  However, for making sherds, I think I'm still on track and can continue to work with these vessels.  Even the surface heat spalls might work out for me.  The sherd that I'm trying to match has a couple areas where the outer rind of the pot has flaked off in a similar size and shape to the heat spalls.

The interesting things that I want to remember for next time:

• Don't put the pots in the fire - heat them around the edge of the flames.
• Pots coated with seal blubber only were the ones to experience surface heat spalls after 2 hours of firing.
• The seal blood adheres to the pots best if it goes on while they are still cool and barely dry.  Blood smeared on the pots on the hot sunny day flaked off in the firing.
• The two thickest pots with seal blood coating were the two that cracked from the added water.  Thinner pots and those smeared with seal blubber only, did not crack.

The three pots in the foreground had seal blood on them at the start of the firing.  The two on the left had the blood applied on a cool day, while the pots were barely dry.  It stayed caked on and was cooked onto the surface - although they are also the two pots that cracked when I filled them with water.  The taller pot on the right had the blood coating applied on a hot sunny day and it never really adhered like the other two.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Seal Blood, Fat, and Thule Pots

Choris or Early Norton Pot

I stayed on a pottery kick over the weekend.  You never know when you might need some Choris/Norton pottery to go with your Thule sherds, so I added some fine linear grooves to the back of the paddle that I used to make the Thule style pots and made some earlier style vessels.  In order to make these vessels look a little more like Choris or early Norton pottery I made the walls thinner with narrower corrugated paddle stamping and tried to shape them more like earlier pottery forms.

Small pot and paddle

These ones have a little more sandy grit temper added and I tossed in some feathers along with grass for the organic temper.  To form the pots, I either made a flat base and then attached a donut of clay to that base to form the walls, or just started pinching out a pot from a ball of clay.  As soon as I could support it on one or two fingers I started paddling it to form the vessel.  I liked the paddle, it seemed to help seal up any tiny cracks that formed at the same time that it thinned and raised the walls.  I had some good tips from Wendy Shirran, the clay studio coordinator at the Craft Council Clay Studio.  She took pity on me when I went to pick up the clay.  Between Wendy's advice and An Experimental Approach to Understanding Thule Pottery Technology I haven't gotten stuck yet.

Smearing on the blood

When the clay was leather hard I added seal blood and grease to the surface as a kind of organic slip.  I have six pots on the go right now and all of them have some seal oil on them and four of them have seal blood.  I smeared the blood on to two of the pots while they were still a little damp and it actually seeped into the clay and disappeared where it was damp.  It was cool and damp when I coated the first pots with blood and it went on fairly smoothly and adhered well.  I added blood to the other two this morning and brought the first two out into the direct sunlight and the blood layer started drying and cracking.  I smeared them with seal fat to try to slow the drying and refix some of the blood.

The inside of this vessel was completely coated in seal blood, but the lower half was still a little damp.  It absorbed the blood overnight, while the top inch or two stayed bright red.

In the direct sunlight the blood starts to craze and crack off.  But that's ok - this crazing pattern shows up on Thule pottery.

I smeared grease and wet blood on top of the cracked layers to try to seal in the pattern and preserve it for the firing.  I'm really hoping that this pattern will survive the firing.  

Starting to look old

The crazing that formed in the dried blood as it cracked looks fantastic.  Everything is bright and fresh, but the pattern and texture over the paddle stamped pottery beneath is turning out to be a perfect match for the archaeologically recovered pots.  I'm really hoping that the crazing pattern is preserved through the firing and I'm optimistic that the blood red will turn to a more rusty brown and black.  We'll see, but right now everything seems to be lining up the way it should.

They certainly smell authentic.

The great pot in the background is coated in seal grease.  I'm not certain how everything will react with the heat of the firing, but I'm hoping that the organic grease layer will darken and burn.  I'm surprised how much grease the clay will soak up.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast