For our lab this week, we fired pots we made last week in kilns we constructed. The pots were made of “arb clay,” or clay extracted from the college’s arboretum, and from standard, regular clay that a beginner might work with due to its ease of handling. We were broken up into three groups to…

In this lab our combined group of 8 came together to attempt a bonfire firing of 17 pots made from a variety of clay bodies that we formed and dried over the past week. We selected 4 of those pots for specific attention and data gathering: two made from a pure clay dust and two…

The week 8 lab was a two-day lab event that involved the firing of basic pots in a two stage camp fire and then another day for the fire to be smothered. This experiment was conducted as a joint operation with group E and our data should therefore be near identical. On the first day…

This week’s lab was a continuation of week 7’s lab, during which we constructed clay pots out of both refined studio clay and less refine clay from the Carleton arboretum. Below is the data we collected and the procedure of the lab. Pot Measurements Side Thickness (in.) (Pre-fire/Post-fire) Diameter (in.) (Pre-fire/Post-fire) Height (in.) (Pre-fire/Post-fire) Weight…

This week’s lab took place over a two-day period. On Thursday, we built fires and placed our pots from week 7’s lab on coals before covering them with more wood, letting that burn to ash, and then smothering our fire. On Friday, we returned to uncover our pots and see the results. Data was recorded…

Group C: Reed, Sam, Astrid, and Aubrey This week, we were able to fire our now bone-dry pots from last week’s lab in bonfires outside. Our main focus was the similarities between firing practices of pottery and cremation, keeping in mind the relationship these two practices may have had in the minds of premodern peoples,…