Pottery history is not drenched in blood, despite some blood related comments in this journal – most recently how some rural potters used animal blood to give their glazes a darker tint…
That bit probably should be explained.
Charles Mehwaldt was a third generation potter born in Bruessow Germany in 1808. After his apprenticeship Mehwaldt worked as a journeyman potter first in Russia and eventually in Lebanon (that an early 19th century German potter would do his journeyman work in the Middle East is interesting enough). Ultimately he returned to a Germany in the throes of revolution.
In 1851 Mehwaldt heard that a colony of Bruessow Germans had formed seven years earlier in Bergholtz, New York. He and his family emigrated but they almost didn’t make it. Their ship sank off Long Island. A tub attached to a cable pulled them ashore. A barge along the Erie Canal pulled them the rest of the way to Bergholtz.
Mehwaldt cared less for the fabled American clays than those of the old country. Still, he managed to produced a wide range of utilitarian redware. At Christmas he made little toy dinner sets and toy whistles. His daughter recalled years later how “We children helped grind the lead for the glaze [They used a grinding stone basin, a “quern,” which was spun by a long wooden pole.] …My brother and I would count to 100 then rest.” She also mentioned how Charles used pigs blood to tint his glazes from time to time.
Whitewares pushed the boundaries of pottery making into the thick of the Industrial Revolution. But darker colored pottery defined the pragmatism of borderland communities like Bergholtz. It didn’t show dirt. Remoteness combined with pragmatism has always led potters to find their oxides where they could be found. Considering the life cycles of farm living, pig’s blood isn’t that big of a leap.
Readings:
The Art of the Potter. Diana and J. Garrison Stradling. Main Street-Universe Books/New York. 1977.
The Rise of the Staffordshire Potteries. John Thomas. Augustus Kelly Publishers/New York. 1971.
Tags: Bergholtz NY, blood, Charles Mehwaldt, Erie Canal, German Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Lebanon, quern, Whitewares
This Day in Pottery History 
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