Tamales

The Art of the Americas wing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is arranged on three floors. The top floor displays contemporary work. The middle floor features artists from the past 200+ years of what is now the US. And the first floor contains Pre-Columbian and Native American art. Questions could be raised about this benignly implied chronological layout, as many of the Native American works were made well after much of the art on the floors above it.

…But the topic here is tamales. So never mind…

The first things you see upon entering the Wing’s first floor are three large Pre-Columbian ceramic jars. These imposing, highly ornate, earthenware containers are described as ossuaries or funeral urns. The honorary storage of human remains occurs throughout the history of ceramic usage and continues today in the form of urns for people’s ashes. I cannot doubt the curators’ classification of these objects.

However, several years ago I attended a talk by foodways historian Dr. Frederick Opie titled “Earthenware: A History of Table Traditions and Related Recipes.” During the presentation, Dr. Opie mentioned a feast somewhere in Pre-Columbian Central America at which the regal host gifted a very large quantity of tamales to a visiting dignitary.

The tamales had to be put in something, and ceramics were the go to containers of the day. My conception of those MFA funerary jars shifted radically when I imagined them being stuffed full not of human bones but of tasty tamales and presented, quite probably along with the chef who made the tamales and the potter who made the jars, to a visiting noble. This image catapulted the MFA jars beyond the austere, quasi-religious domain of funeral art and into the raucous realities of traditional competitive feasts.

A disclaimer here: Although I had eaten tamales before, I fell in love with them many years ago during a sojourn in Nicaragua. A bicyclist traversed the neighborhood every day hawking tamales from a basket on his handlebars. They were still hot, fresh from his mom’s kitchen just around the corner. To die for.

I am impressed by the iconic formality of the MFA containers. But we needn’t always consider ornate Pre-Columbian ceramics to be intended strictly for religious ceremonies. When I think of jars like these being crammed full of tamales and presented as gifts of high honor, I can only smile.

Readings:

Earthenware: A History of Table Traditions and Related Recipes. Dr. Frederick Douglas Opie. 2015 NCECA Conference Keynote Presentation. Providence, RI. March 25, 2015.

The History of Art, Second Edition. H.W. Janson. Prentis Hall/New York. 1977.

The Old Soft Shoe

Andrew Duché of Savannah, GA was one of many 18th century devotees of the quest for a true ‘Western’ porcelain formula.  In a May 27, 1738 trustee report by Georgia’s colonial secretary Colonel William Stevens, Duché proclaimed “something very curious, which may turn to good account for transporting, and he is making some tryal of the kinds of clay; a small tea-cup of which he showed me, when held against the light was very near transparent.”

Duché next announced he “had found out the true manner of making porcelain.”  This would make him the first English-speaking person to achieve the quest.  Duché more likely had simply stumbled upon Cherokee “unaker” clay, an American kaolin.  He asked Georgia’s board of trustees for money, a 15 year patent, and more money. 

A board member asked Duché to replicate the porcelain feat.  Duché said he couldn’t until someone gave him money to build a kiln.  An interesting conversation would have ensued had a potter been present.  As it was, the obvious follow-up question was left hanging…

But Duche’s song and dance convinced Georgia’s founder James Oglethorpe.  In 1743, Oglethorpe gave Duché a trip to England to lobby potential backers there.  Duché failed on that count.  But his visit helped spark a chain of events which led to the successful replication of porcelain by other quest devotees. 

Duché’s visit inspired William Cookworthy, a London apothecary, to begin his own search.  Cookworthy ultimately discovered Cornwall stone.  Bow Pottery, near London, agreed to use unaker in their experiments.  Bow made England’s first true porcelain the next year with Cherokee clay.  And of course Josiah Wedgwood had his ear low enough to the ground to hear of Duché’s curious unaker clay.  Soon Wedgwood agents would be trawling Georgia and the Carolina’s for this white gold’s source. 

Back home, Duché convinced Isaac Parker to hire him.  Isaac and his soon to be widowed wife Grace were attempting New England’s first stoneware production.  Duché went to Cambridge, MA and did whatever it was that he sort of did.  But his tenure there soon ended.  He then faded to obscurity.

These were heady years when the scientific method was still not quite the fully defined, quantifiable process it is today.  Anything was still possible.  You could almost make a living at it.

Readings:

The Art of the Potter.  Diana and J. Garrison Stradling.  Main Street-Universe Books/New York.  1977.

Early New England Potters and Their Wares.  Lura Woodside Watkins.  Harvard University Press/Cambridge MA.  1968.

 

Technorati Tags: Andrew Duché,Porcelain,Cherokee,unaker clay,kaolin,William Cookworthy,Cornwall Stone,Bow Porcelain,Josiah Wedgwood,Grace Parker,the scientific method

Lake Hitchcock

Lake Hitchcock doesn’t exist.  But I learned something about it when picking up bricks in my yard after my old chimney collapsed/was torn down. 

Old bricks are useful for any number of things.  I gathered up the debris and stored it for, well, whatever.  Many of the bricks had the name “Pray” on them.  As my house is 120 years old, there must have been a Pray brick making company somewhere near here at that time.

Casual research (ie; Google) into the Pray Brickyard exposed an entire field of brick obsession.  There are research sites, forums, blogs, etc.  How interesting can a brick be?  If you’ve ever stood inside a Hoffman brick kiln during a firing and saw the glowing stack, you’d probably say “Ok, this is pretty cool.”  (Especially if the brickyard was located in the shadow of a live volcano and operated by a consortium of ex-convicts freed on the condition that they keep the yard going.  But that’s another story altogether…)

Brickyards appeared in Virginia by 1612, and were soon found throughout the colonies.  Mid century laws regulated dimensions, molds, and (as in a June 10, 1679 order by the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony) that clay be dug no later than November 1 and turned over in February or March a month before production.  Large scove kilns could hold 200,000 bricks and take almost a month to fire.  By the 1850’s stoneware’s predominance combined with widespread building and land improvement projects led (forced) many redware potters into the brick, tile and drainpipe business.

But all that is economic necessity.  The love of brick developed later, so that by the mid 1980’s billboards throughout England proclaimed “Bricks make Britain beautiful.”  True enough.  (There was even a one hour TV special on this wonderful building material hosted by non other than Prince Charles.)

Anyway, back in Massachusetts, where did Robert E. Pray get the clay for his bricks?  The clay was obviously dug up right there in his Greenfield, MA brickyard yard from the 1840’s to 1960’s .  But the deposit for his bricks was laid down over 15,000 years ago.  During that time the area was under a gigantic Pleistocene lake.  This lake, which doesn’t exist anymore, is known today as Lake Hitchcock.

Readings
Domestic Pottery of the Northeastern United States, 1625-1850. Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh, Ed.  Academic Press/New York.  1985.

The English Country Pottery, Its History and Techniques.  Peter Brears.  Charles Tuttle Co./Rutland, VT.  1971.

The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States.  Edwin Atlee Barber.  G.P. Putnam’s Sons/New York.  1909.

The Art of the Potter.  Diana and J. Garrison Stradling.  Main Street-Universe Books/New York.  1977. 

Early New England Potters and Their Wares.  Lura Woodside Watkins.  Harvard Univ Press/Cambridge MA.  1968. 

Domestic Pottery of the Northeastern United States, 1625-1850.  Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh, Ed.  Academic Press/New York.  1985.

 

Technorati Tags: Lake Hitchcock,Robert E Pray & Co,Hoffmann kiln,scove kiln,Prince Charles