Gary's Third Pottery Blog

When the going gets tough, dragons gonna get going....

Gary's third pottery blog

WRITE TO ME! garyrith@yahoo.com Come see me! Open studio HERE! November 25-26 (11-4 each day); Aurora Art and Design, daily until 12/24; Cooperstown Art Assoc. daily until 12/24; Ellis Hollow Community Fair, 12/10; December 10, Little Red Wagon at the Space at Greenstar. All material on this blog unless stated otherwise is copyright Gary Edward Rith 2016

Sunday, November 29, 2009

witch bottle


(witch bottle by Gary Rith)
Open studios are so much fun. If you had one you would understand why--friends coming over to chat and all the rest. You can still come over, just send me an email! We might be out of cookies though.
My buddy Gordo sent another link about witch bottles. In brief, witch bottles were from about 400 years ago in England. A scowling Cardinal Bellarmine, a meanie from the Inquisition, was made on the front of a bottle, and if you wanted to put a spell on somebody you would put blood and hair and such in there. I have made several witch bottles lately, this one I made at home with my pecan pie glaze.

From the link we read about one particular bottle:
"It probably dates from the last quarter of the 17th century, and contained 12 bent iron nails (one of which pierced a small leather heart), eight brass pins, 10 adult fingernail pairings (not from a manual worker, but a person “of some social standing”), a quantity of hair and urine with traces of nicotine, indicating it had come from a smoker. There were also traces of sulphur, then known as brimstone, and what is thought to be navel fluff. The brimstone recalled the passage in Revelation where the beast and the false prophet were “cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone”. "

NAVEL FLUFF!

4 comments:

Mrs. Pottersblog said...

Navel fluff! That's really offensive.

Reverend Awesome said...

The navel fluff thing is just creepy. Why is it creepier than blood and hair? I can't answer that. It just is.

Gordo said...

Navel fluff AND urine. Ewww.

Anna M. Branner said...

Still hopin' for one of these jugs. :)

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I am a full-time studio potter, sculptor, and dog walker, married to superhawt Missus Tastycake.