Mortal Ware is a series of pieces I have made to explore an alternative process in clay making. This process foregoes traditional pottery methods using fire to vitrify clay, making it watertight and rigid by essentially turning it to something similar to glass.
Mortal ware is unfired clay, also called greenware, that I boil in pine rosin. Pine rosin is a glassy, solid material made from distilling turpentine from pine resin, also called pitch. Chemically the rosin is similar to an oil and as such does not break down raw clay like water would, but it is also solid and very rigid at room temperature. Consequently when I boil the dry clay in the rosin it fills the clay’s pores and solidifies. The result is a strong vessel that holds water without leaking.
A strange consequence of this process is that the vessels are entirely reversible, meaning the raw clay can be separated from the rosin into separate components. By boiling them at high temperatures the rosin will melt again and release the clay. So broken pieces can be recycled and used again to make new ones. Or, if the damage is just a chip or scratch, you can reboil the piece to repair it.
I always viewed firing clay as a way to immortalize the piece. You turn the clay to glass that will last millennia. These pieces are mutable and ephemeral, but they can always be reinvented and given a new chance to be something beautiful when broken.
"The Cliff" on the farm in Indiana where I grew up and source all of my clay. My brother and I called it “soap stone” because we would use it to wash our hands after working in the fields and woods. The hardened clay is a fantastic exfoliant. Apparently it is also a wonderful and pure clay with a muted grey, almost blue colour.
Boiling the pieces at just 400°F allows the inclusion of organic materials that would burn away in a kiln or fire. Combining this with traditional folk practices I follow by collecting and processing clay and resins feels appropriate to me. I don’t want the nature to be burned out of the work.
A couple of pots displaying vegetable corks. The rough texture comes from mixing cattail down into clay slip and spreading it unevenly onto the surface.
This piece holds a special place in my portfolio, as it is when I began integrating elements of folk magic into my journey with clay.
One day I found a dead hare on the road in front of Brian Cemetery, a small local cemetery near the farm.
I cremated it and fetched some clay from the stream. The collected ashes from the fire hold the tiny vessel I made from the handful of clay in a rough wooden box.
Some months later it would also hold the meager antique remains of two strangers, Jan and Roy, whose family donated to me after their relation had been long forgotten.
One of the large lumps of clay at the end of its processing in my studio. The clay dug from the hill barely needs filtering and is simply worked from hard stones into a smooth and delicate clay.
I have a tendency to make liquor bottle forms. Sharing a drink is something I view as an immutable component of human culture. Ever since we have shaped clay into vessels we have used them to drink with friends.
This is an experiment in how the rosin I use reacts to time and elemental exposure. I found a hollow geode, filled it with molten pine rosin, and left it outside for 1 year. What began as a smooth, glassy surface became wrinkled and worn. I am unsure if this will happen to my other pieces, but in time they may also disintegrate as the rosin holding them together wrinkles and cracks.
