Medieval English Pottery

Seriously great video! A free exploration of pottery to glimpse the results from the medieval mind through their resources and what was considered acceptable enough to make and use and sell and purchase!

I also largely research the same general period of history and the ideas from that time are of extreme interest to me, particularly how they manifest in materials and material practices and the themes that are selected or appear associated with various forms of utilitarian or pragmatic art. For example, what might lead to the selection of a certain design element or the addition of certain imagery or embellishment to a piece and what those symbols may have conjured in a medieval or early modern imagination. Right now, even on this phone but also in my own personal collection of books I have numerous books revolving around these topics.

To some people they might just see it and say “Oh, pottery, alright”, but this is so much of a more profound thing when understood as a manifestation of conscious and unconcious organization of resources by an organism which may carry information regarding its thinking, environment, and culture which is not otherwise directly comprehensible or available to us except as encapsulated in these forms, designs, and choices which resulted in these pieces.

There is so much to think about in any expression, but the first step would be for anyone who wants a more vivid view of the world to appreciate all such organizing and productive efforts as expressive and informative even if appearing deliberately or exclusively pragmatic or utilitarian or otherwise unembellished.
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In narrowly categorizing some things as art and some things as tools and some things as meaningful and some things as unmeaningful one misses out on a great degree of potentially inspiring and interesting, as well as useful, information.

Pots of the future! Our stuff in a museum, we seem to have so much stuff and its rapidly multiplying like never before. There was less of everything or anything in the 70s for example. Its becoming really radical and trends are also quickly shifting and major technologies. My issues with pots are generally weight and maintaining or cleaning them and space. I really feel like I have too much stuff for the size of place I am in. The pots and pans and whatever seem to take lots of space too. They have barely provided any cabinets there are 2 drawers in the whole place. I am looking to buy pots of vertical space assistance and places to put things while getting rid of a great deal of books and large items and clothes if possible. I am going to get a bed that is lifted high to regain the space under it as well.​​​​​​

I​​​​​​f one looks at medieval art, some appears sparse, some appears filled with stuff (often with coded meaning). It is highly unlikely that they had the ability to acquire and collect as much stuff as easily as we can today nor had a place to store it. Sometimes owning certain items which seem simple to us now had prestige attached to it as well or indicated things about one’s desired status. Often the poorer people might try to get hold of something that appears to them to be of great value whereas a person without such complexes regarding their status might be willing to experiment with new things that seem to have not yet acquired a reputation.

That is awesome! Wherever you go, see if you can maximize ease and comfort and not make life too tight or miserable for yourselves over any ideal. The priority should be towards having a very nice time together if possible, so if the boat when carefully calculated makes life seem too restricted or too many more pressures or extra difficulties are added rather than reduced or minimized then that should assist in seeing if it is really a good idea or not.