YOU DON'T NEED TO BE GREAT TO START BUT YOU DO NEED TO START TO BE GREAT.

POTTERY REPRODUCTION

July 16, 2019

Over a decade ago, I was in the antiquities business and marketed all kinds of items, including clay jugs, coins and glass, bronze and stone utensils. These were not the type of artifacts that you find in museums. I have kept up my contacts and my access to antique pottery since that time.

I always enjoy weaving or otherwise producing new creations that excite the senses and arouse curiosity. One such idea called for weaving baskets that resemble millennia-old pottery jugs.

I began with a jug from the Early Bronze Age (about 2,500 BCE) that was discovered in Israel, having been produced by Canaanites who were living here at the time of the Patriarch Abraham. While the jug’s broad base facilitated the task somewhat, it was still a challenging experience that required constant, meticulous calculation and confirmation of the basket’s angle, the dimensions of its aperture and whether the sides are to be rectilinear or curvilinear. These challenges make the job particularly rewarding.

Here is the result: A woven basket with the original jug alongside it.

I then duplicated another clay jug of an entirely different form, found in Israel and dating back to the Iran Age—to about 1000 BCE, the Era of the Judges.