Exhibit Opening

We opened Potters of the Gathering: Clay Work in Early Utah on Saturday, May 2.  I am very grateful for all the help and support of everyone on the team at the Iron Mission State Park. We finished the last bits of exhibit preparation that morning, and my wife Sarah even joined the work team, despite the fact that she was on vacation from her job at the Chipstone Foundation and Milwaukee Art Museum. Sarah helped polish the acrylic boxes that cover the vitrines and then helped Ryan aim lights in the gallery.  

I will post more quality photos of the exhibit as I get them.  I was pretty busy Saturday night talking with visitors, so I didn't take any pictures myself.  

We designed three main areas for the exhibit. The first area has the feel of a natural history museum.  This area includes wall panels with text, photos and a touch-screen DVD, as well as cases of archaeological artifacts and an ambient audio program.  This section of the exhibit explains the process of pottery manufacture, with emphasis on the English factory experience.  It also presents the archaeological research into Utah's clay industries.

This case, as one example, is full of mold fragments from the Deseret Pottery site in Salt Lake City.  Utah State Parks staff and groups of student volunteers did archaeological salvage at the site in 1977.
We built the second area of the exhibit in the style of an art museum.  This section includes several cases that gather together examples of pottery that the maker stamped or signed.  This is the largest collection of signed and identified pieces ever exhibited.  In addition, this area also includes a large table display, pictured below, where a number of unsigned objects sit together.  We hope that this display will encourage people to consider the aesthetic and technical variety in these objects and the similar diversity in the artisanal community that manufactured them.

The picture below shows the Eardley vitrine, which contains many of the Bedson Eardley and Deseret Pottery pieces in the show. In the background are panels that explore the push forces that encouraged potters to leave England for Utah.

Our third area is in the style of a history museum.  We explain the potters' quality of life in this area, including health issues, business practices, and the social construction of identity.  The displays, which include two pioneer period rooms, a peddling wagon, and a black-box theater, interpret objects using text panels and photographs and two separate audio programs.

Some local media covered our opening:

TheSpectrum.com from St. George, Utah.

I do hope lots of visitors will come to see the show while it is open at the Iron Mission State Park Museum.  We have had some inquiries about hosting the show in other cities around Utah, but there is no guarantee the show will travel.  The exhibit includes about 300 objects, most of which have never been exhibited before.  It is certainly the largest collection of nineteenth century pottery ever gathered together.  Besides all the objects, there are two audio programs, an ambient audio atmosphere, a touch-screen DVD with video segments, and dozens of historic and modern photographs.

After our opening, my wife and I took the remaining two days of her vacation time to do some camping and hiking in the desert's spring beauty.  The wild plants are in bloom here, the days are warm, and the Coal Creek has swollen with snow melt runoff.  My thoughts are increasingly turning to the fieldwork at the Davenport Pottery site.  I'll post more exhibit pictures as soon as I get them, but will be write more soon about the field school and excavations!  The students are on the road from MTU and should arrive in a day or two.

Object of the Week, 4/1/09

This week's remarkable object is a potter's rib from the Eardley's Deseret Pottery site.  A number of different potters were involved in this company, including the three Eardley brothers: James, John, and Bedson.  At times, John Cartwright and Jonah Croxall also worked at this site in Salt Lake City, but during that time the pottery had a different name.

In the 1970s, a Utah State Liquor store was built on the site.  For whatever reason, an archaeological survey was not conducted before construction.  Lucky for modern scholars, Nancy Richards walked by one day.  Ms. Richards was a curator for State Parks and she happened to be researching Utah's nineteenth century potteries.  She was shocked by what she saw in the backdirt and as I have heard the story, she called up to the University of Utah for help.  A group of archaeology students came down and they all spent some time frantically putting fragments of things in boxes.  That collection, which has never been exhibited to the public before, will be a large part of the collection on exhibit.

A potter uses a rib as a carpenter uses a profile gauge.  The rib's shape matches that of the preferred shape of a particular pottery vessel or object.  While the wet shape spins upon the wheel, the potter holds the rib up against the vessel to be certain that it has the desired shape and size.  The rib helps the potter to throw things "freehand" but stay close to a particular size and shape. 

One of these potters wrote on this rib:

The rib is inscribed: "Flower saucer / James Eardley / Bedson Eardley" and on the side, the date "June 18, 1864".  The last number is a bit messy and one could argue that it says nine and not four, but I think it is a four.

This is very cool.

I really like this object because it shows the kind of evidence that can only be taken from objects.  On June 8th, 1864, the Deseret News carried this announcement: "John, James, and Bedson Eardley dissolve their partnership; James and Bedson reform the Deseret Pottery; John forms ‘Sixth Ward Pottery’ with Amos Fielding as agent" (p. 292).

Ten days before this rib was made, three three Eardley brothers broke up the Desert Pottery and one of them set out on his own.  A few years after this, John accepted a mission in St. George and worked there for the rest of his life, along with kilns he operated in Beaver and Panguitch.  

I don't know if the brothers divisions were friendly or strained when they split up in 1864, but the fact that James and Bedson marked this rib with their names implies that this flowerpot design was shared between them, but was not John's.  It also implies that James and Bedson agreed upon this design when developing new products for the new incarnation of the Deseret Pottery.  I believe that also hints that consumers in Salt Lake City cared about the design of their flower pots and that people entering the Deseret Pottery noticed the different designs by James, John, and Bedson, and further distinguished them from other partners in the pottery or other clayworks in the city.

You'll just have to come see this little gem for yourself.

Object of the Week, 3/24/09

I have decided to start posting pictures of a single object per week in the lead up to the opening of our museum exhibit at the Iron Mission State Park Museum.  The exhibit should inspire a deeper understanding of Utah's nineteenth century potters, their struggles and achievements, and the diversity of their lives and works.

I'm going to post my working snapshots of items in public or private collections, archaeological artifacts or antiques.  I hope that readers will find them and come to see the actual objects in the exhibition in May, June, and July at the Iron Mission Museum.  

Here is the image for the third week of March, 2009:

This is a large storage jar in the collection of Utah State Parks.  Karen Krieger, the Heritage Resource Coordinator for Utah State Parks, is lending many pieces to the show at the Iron Mission Museum.  This is an unsigned and unmarked pot, but I think it is among the most attractive in their collection.  The crock has consistent glaze and form with others that are stamped "Deseret Pottery" in Salt Lake City.  The Deseret Pottery included a number of different potters through time, but I think that Bedson Eardley was most likely responsible for this pot. 

The potter dipped the lip, rim, and shoulder (and almost over the handles) into a white slip, then playfully splashed a band of green glaze around the pot's midsection.  All the decoration is under a lead glaze, of course.  The colors are rich and the overall effect is beautiful.  This pot is very similar to one in the collection of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers in Salt Lake City, which people can go to see in the Pioneer Memorial Museum there.

Stay tuned to more objects and images, previews of our upcoming exhibit!  I hope you will come see them in person during the summer and stop by our Parowan excavations during your trip.