Hands Across the Distance

In my college alumnae magazine, there's a short article about a student's work experience, recording items in "the Penn Museum's Near Eastern collections. Kennan photographed objects, some dating back to 5000 BCE.

A high point? "'A piece of pottery that still had a little fingerprint on it from the person who made it...That was amazing.'"Bryn Mawr, spring 2019)
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I get shivers at the thought of a touch with someone 5000 years ago, maybe, and around the world.

The student's experience reminds me how much pottery is about touch. First it's the maker's hands touching clay and the way the clay shapes itself to what our hands do.

Then the touch of the pot's user. These are the common connections of maker and user through the pot.

I tend to make marks on pots with tools, like these carved designs

or the spirals I put on the bottom of almost everything.

But what if it is fingerprints? Hands make a much more intimate touch.

The lines across this jar are throwing marks, fingers held on the pot as the wheel turns and the pot is shaped.

And what if the mark of people crosses history, or even prehistory? Besides the fingerprints on ancient pots, there are footprints in some of the painted caves in France and Italy, at least. And much older ones, where people and pre-humans walked in sand or mud that became stone with the prints still there. Ooh!

Medieval Skills in Demand!

I love it.

A disastrous fire in the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris destroyed the roof and a tower and maybe weakened other parts of the structure.

A week ago, an article in the Los Angeles Times: "A medieval role model for Notre Dame rebuild", suggests people could rebuild the 12th century roof using materials, tools and techniques from the time the original was built. How do we have access to those tools and techniques?

Of course, because there are people engaged in, passionate about, everything. In this case, there is a fantasy castle build going on a couple of hours away from Paris. With an imaginary owner and story, a 13th century castle is being built, as accurately as possible, with researchers, carpenters, masons...learning, reinventing, and practicing medieval building skills. They are offering their knowledge, labor and training for repairing Notre Dame.

There is something encouraging and delightful about this project, the live past. To a certain extent it is historical play, like reenactments. What delights me is the sudden practicality of this esoteric hobby. Now it is needed, in the contemporary world. (Evidently, in France with all its medieval monuments, these skills are always needed for repair and maintenance, so it is not really sudden.)

And I go directly to pottery making by hand. It was a practical skill set in the past, and still is in some less industrialized places. But could potters be needed, here and now?