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| I like the way the decoration emphasizes the handle shape. |
I spent an entire day at the Met in New York and took dozens of photos of pots…mostly looking at handles. I’ll post more as the week goes by. If you read the literature that the Met provides, you would wonder if there were many pots at all. In fact, there are thousands of amazing pots in every nook and cranny of that spectacular building.
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| How cool to make a double handle an animal head! |
There are pots there that I’ve seen in books for years with plenty of room for them to be examined. It’s always awe-inspiring to be reminded of how much the history of humankind is told through ceramic objects.
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| Never lose your lid again… |
These double handled pots are huge…5′-6′ tall and 4′ wide. Maybe bigger. In fact, there were lots of huge pots made thousands of years ago. The technology is fantastic to produce such beauties…long before cones and burners and store bought materials, potters were true masters.
Yes, amazing stuff. We saw some similarly wonderful old pots in the museums in Greece. Great to be able to look so closely at the work.
awesome… i’m gonna get to see these…i love old pots!!! for now i’ll just drool from over here :)) thanks dan
That pot with the lid attached is so cool.
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Doesn’t being a potter make you feel so connected with these makers from the past? Despite all the cultural differences, you know they woke up every morning and faced so many of the same challenges and struggles that we face in our own lives. Good post, Dan.
great post and handles- makes me want to sit in and watch to see how they worked….time travel…
I got to spend the day in the Met a couple of years ago, wish it had been a week! There just wasn’t enough time to take it all in, but it was amazing to see pots, like you said, that I had been looking at in books for years. Like the little blue hippo, he is even better in person isn’t he? So happy that you are doing these posts so I can see what I missed!
Handles are interesting. They’re just a little bit of a reality check on the creative process. A reminder that functional potters are playing basketball, not HORSE. They’re either the hated afterthought of a not-so-well conceived pot, or the integrated embellishment of a unified whole.
The Met also has an “Artwork of the Day” feature where each morning they send you a picture of one of their works. I love to get them each morning. John
I’m always amazed at the variations at such simple things, theres so many interesting interpretations of things like handles and bowls.
I always find antique pots to be so inspiring!