I'd love to hear views on this

[morgaina]

This is a subject that has occasionally come up on the SCA potters list. I'd like to hear what people in other crafts, and dear GWEN of course, thinks.
Many examples of Western pottery show poorly made work. Heavy bases, uneven walls, obviously off center when the surface design looks like it was intended to be symetrical, visually weak forms. Handles that were squeezed and visually don't work with the form, etc.
First semester student work.

So, a lot of SCA period pottery pieces are considered by us moderns to be purely utilitarian, never left the kitchen, broke a lot, cheap 'n easy to replace.
Poorly crafted.

Folks, I cannot do poorly crafted. I have to do the highest quality I am capeable of doing.

I suppose I could just do Middle Eastern and Chinese work, or late period. But I love trying different things.

Many of you do Medieval crafts that, even though the craftsmen used simple tools, way outshine the work people do nowdays. Does anyone else face reproducing Medieval poorly made work? And if you don't would you?

Comments

[gwen-the-potter.livejournal.com]

My stuff is not as decorative as Morgaine's work (I never seem to find the time to carve and put decoration on pieces), so my stuff looks much more utilitarian. However, I also try to do the best that I can with my purely functional stuff. Most of what has been found is throw-aways, so it would not necessarily be the best. But there had to be a master among all of that apprentice work, and if you take the age, wear, mistreatment by the elements into consideration, a lot of the work was at one time very beautiful. I look at my box o' shards that I got from Mark Gaukler, and bits and pieces are very finished, and some are very crude. There's a bit of everything.

I can't make myself sell a piece that I think is poor quality. I'll give them away, or use them in fountains, or mosaics, or landfill. (The scribal people love the little jars I give them, the ones that develop stress cracks that don't go all the way through.) I don't think that things have changed much, there were bound to be master potters back then that produced fine works, not just all crap work.

[copper-oxide.livejournal.com]

I think we just have different styles. I probably do a lot of carving because my second love is drawing, so it's the best of both worlds.
One of the shard you gave me (or I got from him ?????) is a part of a handle that was pulled and attached to the neck of a jug. It's beautifully made, graceful and strong, many potters modernly couldn't do that well.