Beneficial Results of a Tactical Failure :: Personal Narrative Ceramics Essays

Beneficial Results of a Tactical Failure When I primary examined this assignment, I decided that I would shape some piece of pottery that I believed would have been useful to my ancestors. I wanted to make something simple, as I had no experience working with clay. I thought that a small bowl capable of holding a small sum total of water would be my best bet. However, when I arrived at Aura Ceramics my in tennertions changed. at a time I sat down to make my pottery, I decided to make something I thought would have been useful to hunter-gatherer societies, to the individuals that first utilized pottery. I tried to imagine what sorts of vessels would have been a necessity to these people. I cogitate that a larger container capable of carrying water over distances would have been more than useful than a smaller bowl. I wanted to make a container large bounteous to transport water. It needed to be light enough to carry for long periods of time. And, it would have to be durable s o as not to crack or spill water while cosmos transported. With these thoughts in mind, I began molding my clay. I started by making a fairly large basin that I estimated would have held just to a lower place a gallon of water. I figured that would have been sufficient for an individuals workaday consumption. Next, I began condensing the top of the vessel into a small neck-like salmagundi in which something like a cork could be placed to hamper water from spilling out once inside the pottery. Finally, above the neck, I forge a funnel. The funnel would have made scooping and filling this container with water from an heart-to-heart source oftentimes easier. Unfortunately, my creation did not survive the heating process, so I do not have a finished return to demonstrate. However, I can best describe the container as looking much like a spittoon with a smaller opening at the neck of the container. After observing the transitions which the pots my classmates made went through, I can close that my container would have been useful to early hunters and gatherers. After the pottery was processed in the kiln it weighed less than it had when the clay was wet. Judging the differential in these weights from the other students creations, I believe my finished product, with the gallon of water it was meant to hold, would have weighed around ten pounds.