So, I’ve been making experimental British Neolithic pots. Not confining myself to the Southwest Hembury Bowl Style, I’ve been making some carinated cups, using a a pinch pot method, allowing it to dry to where it’s just off leather hard, then paddled and thinned out. Then reinforce and flatten the rim, then add flattened coils and that’s the basis of a carinated bowl. I used the small quartz pebbles as ribs to get a fairly uniform curve above the carinated shoulder. So I haven’t been using any modern materials, metal, rubber, plastics.. I have hide, shells, bone pins, flint burins , flakes and blades, a granite hammer stone, for smashing up vein quartz- it’s in the little Must Farm type pot( not Neolithic 🤣😀 just beautiful and as a potter I’m an artist). A wooden paddle and some Stoke Hill Exeter clay. I’m making a quartz tempered pot, based on a large sherd that was found in the same assemblage as the Hembury Bowl. It’s a cup/bowl with an everted rim. It’s black and Burnished on the surface. Pictures to follow.
So I’ve been smashing up quartz. It’s harder work than anything. The granite hammer stone has taken a beating so there might be bits of mica and feldspar in the mix. 🤣I think the piece of quartz I was using is very akin to a piece of elvan. Very hard. I’ve smashed as much off it as I can. I’ve got some more friable type of quartz which I got off a tailings heap at Devon United Mines nr Peter Tavy. So that will be the next piece to be smashed up.
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