vince pitelka on thu 22 feb 01
> A current thread started (if memory serves,) with a query as to how the
> ancients managed to make earthenware oil lamps. The consensus seems to
> be that it can't be done, and even high-fired stoneware is not safe
> without a product such as "Easy Seal". I wonder who was supplying that
> to the Romans? It is not possible to make stovetop cooking vessels with
> our current technology (unless we have elaborate control equipment) and
> yet it was common practice to use pottery vessels on the fire just a few
> hundred years ago, and it is still done in many cultures today!
Norman -
No there was never any concensus that it can't be done. The Roman and
Middle Eastern oil lamps used olive oils or thick fatty fish oils that
burned more like wax and were not particularly volatile. There would have
been no problems with these oils soaking through the terra-sig coated lamp
housings. That is not the case with kerosene or contemporary lamp oils.
And as has been very clearly stated in recent posts on Clayart, there is no
problem with porous earthenware vessels in stovetop use, aside from the
obvious concerns with food contamination and easy breakage. There is no
danger of explosion. The conversation was specifically regarding high-fired
vitreous stove-top wares. That is where the danger lies.
Best wishes -
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Crafts
Tennessee Technological University
1560 Craft Center Drive, Smithville TN 37166
Home - vpitelka@dtccom.net
615/597-5376
Work - wpitelka@tntech.edu
615/597-6801 ext. 111, fax 615/597-6803
http://www.craftcenter.tntech.edu/
Norman van der Sluys on thu 22 feb 01
Yes, technology is wonderful. It has brought us all kinds of new ways
of doing things. It is also habit-forming. It sometimes generates as
many problems as it solves. Sometimes it makes us forget we are
involved in a craft that has an eleven thousand year (or longer!)
history. That's eleven thousand years of problem-solving, and almost
all of those solutions have involved utilizing plentiful and available
local resources.
It is tempting to say, in this high-tech age with our well-developed
commercial system of distribution, that, in order to solve a given
problem, you need to use such-and-such a proprietary product, or that
technology has not been developed to enable us to make ware to perform a
given function. The fact often is that the problem has been solved,
often many times, in the past.
A current thread started (if memory serves,) with a query as to how the
ancients managed to make earthenware oil lamps. The consensus seems to
be that it can't be done, and even high-fired stoneware is not safe
without a product such as "Easy Seal". I wonder who was supplying that
to the Romans? It is not possible to make stovetop cooking vessels with
our current technology (unless we have elaborate control equipment) and
yet it was common practice to use pottery vessels on the fire just a few
hundred years ago, and it is still done in many cultures today!
The conventional comeback usually involves deprecation of the older,
more "primitive" culture that solved the problem. "Yeah, but those
Romans poisoned their own drinking water with lead, and lots of their
houses burned down." They also built structures like the Pantheon,
which has been in continuous use since the 1st Century AD. (That's
about 1900 years, folks! In the good old USA a 50-year-old building is
usually considered obsolete and unsafe, ready for the wrecking ball.)
And that popular notion of folks in the good old days only living to be
40 is a prime example of misinterpretation of statistics. When you take
into account the much higher infant mortality rate and other hazards of
life that are less likely to be fatal now than then, the number of gray
heads in the population was not so overwhelmingly different then from
now.
I personally take the notion of the "progress" of mankind with a grain
of salt. Yes, we have made some great advances, but we have opened our
share of worm cans as well. Sometimes it is the wiser course to take a
look back in time to see how others have solved a problem. Maybe their
methods can be adapted to our situation. And maybe, if your budget is
tight, you don't need that computerized kiln or that $600 oxyprobe to
make your pots. Perhaps a pile of bricks and some brush will do the
trick for now. Read about Pierre Bayle, and look at his marvelous pots!
The bells and whistles are nice, but don't let not having them keep you
from working in clay! The best advice I got when starting out in clay
was that a good sturdy table is a really handy thing to have in a
studio. Get one or make one and then go from there!
--
Norman van der Sluys
by the shore of Lake Michigan
Cindy Strnad on thu 22 feb 01
Hi, Norman.
You're right. We don't **need** all those gadgets. We need to know how to
get along without them, just like we need to be able to tot up a column of
figures without a calculator. However, at $10/per, I've got plenty of
calculators and I'm glad, glad, glad to use them. It frees me to do other
things.
As to "primitive" Romans making low-fired lamps that held oil, yes, I'm sure
they did find a way. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was a
coating of some sort or other. Terra sig alone simply will not do it.
Now, one may use a terra sig oil lamp, though it seeps oil. You wouldn't
want to set it on the piano or anything, and you'd want to put it some place
where it wouldn't catch anything but itself on fire. Might be an interesting
sight, really, to watch the whole lamp burning. I wonder if it would be in
danger of explosion? If not, heck, it might make a good torch, too.
The thing is, if an ancient Roman housewife caught the best china hutch on
fire because she didn't know any better than to set an oil lamp on it, she
was just s.o.l. Today, things are different. Today, she would call a lawyer
and sue for the cost of the china hutch and smoke clean-up plus punitive
damages of $10 or 20K. So, today, we make sure our oil lamps don't leak or
absorb enough oil to catch themselves on fire.
Cindy Strnad
Earthen Vessels Pottery
RR 1, Box 51
Custer, SD 57730
USA
earthenv@gwtc.net
http://www.earthenvesselssd.com
Snail Scott on thu 22 feb 01
At 10:28 AM 2/22/01 -0500, you wrote:
It is not possible to make stovetop cooking vessels with
>our current technology (unless we have elaborate control equipment) and
>yet it was common practice to use pottery vessels on the fire just a few
>hundred years ago, and it is still done in many cultures today!
>Norman van der Sluys
Cooking on a fire is NOT like cooking
on a stovetop! I have no doubt that most
of us could make 'true' flameware with
no difficulty, because cooking over fire
often involved pots on a grate or suspended
from a hook. Even a pot nested in a
banked-up bed of coals is being heated much
more evenly that a stovetop ever could.
-Snail
p.s.- on the oil lamp issue: Could the type
of oil being burned be relevant to its rate
or degree of penetration? Most of us burn
paraffin-derived lamp oil. How about testing
with olive oil or butter? (Both were common
early lamp fuels.) Perhaps the penetration
is less? Perhaps they burn poorly if they do
penetrate? (Perhaps the ancient world was
simply resigned to pervasive oil-staining!)
Perhaps oil lamps were placed on saucers or
small supports? Perhaps they were always
suspended? Parhaps they were deemed
disposable?
I expect that the wealthy used metal lamps,
and the poor made do with less desirable
products and endured the deficiencies.
(I've never seen an ancient oil lamp with a
high degree of craft or finish.)
We cannot properly consider the use of a thing
without considering the 'system' in which it
was used.
-S.
p.p.s.- A single material, no matter how fondly
regarded by its users, cannot hope to be the
optimum material for all applications.
-S.
Norman van der Sluys on fri 23 feb 01
Snail Scott wrote:
> Perhaps oil lamps were placed on saucers or
> small supports? Perhaps they were deemed
> disposable?
>
There you go - a solution for today's use. Make a saucer to go under your oil lamp
and bill it as a safety feature. I think you might be right about the fuel being
different, too. Perhaps modern users would prefer olive oil to lamp oil. Something
to test. Of course we might all be better off as potters with an item for sale
that was deemed disposable. We just have to figure out how to make them cheap
enough. When the customer comes by for her regular supply of lamps, maybe she will
buy a nice tea bowl :o]
> p.p.s.- A single material, no matter how fondly
> regarded by its users, cannot hope to be the
> optimum material for all applications.
I could not agree with you more! Metal is much better for cooking on a modern
stove. If one objects to the appearance of a cooking pot at table, the old
fashioned solution is to transfer the food to a serving dish. If one wants to cook
in pottery, have a go at it with earthenware glazed inside only and soaked in
water. Use it on your grill (gas or charcoal.)
--
Norman van der Sluys
by the shore of Lake Michigan, thinking it is about time for winter to say goodbye.
Lili Krakowski on fri 23 feb 01
And don't forget: a lot of this good stuff was invented BL: or Before
Lawyers. Do you want to risk everything you have by blinding someone or
disfiguiring a Famous Model just to make "stove top" flameware? Do you
want to ruin the antique silk-sari atop a Steinway Grand with your oil
lamps??
Lili Krakowski
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