Words and Clay

Studio Pottery has a great Summer/Fall issue on the long history of writing and pottery. It's full of stories about ancient histories written on clay tablets preserved in library fires and every-day grocery lists found on pot shards and contracts recorded on bowls.

I am going to make some knitted swatches and press them into tiles. I wonder if I'll be able to press some colored slip into the spaces to make stitches. Wouldn't some knitted tiles be nice? I've been thinking of those written languages which evolved from pictographs and how a piece of knitting represents a code as well. Somehow I have to combine some knitting stitches and some poem or code.

I've also been looking through pottery books and have fallen in love with these squarish pots for cooking oil and batter jugs. They have wire handles and tin lids. They remind me of hobo tea pots - masculine and slap-dash. I have long been in a Planet of the Apes phase - but I am segwaying into a Mackintosh (think Glasgow School of Art) mood. A dark glossy Mackintosh, wire-handled, cork-lidded tea pot - but the cups will all be tin cans!