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)
. .
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!