Mortarium

[M. Demetrius]

No, I didn't put the crushed quartz on this first batch. What I did do was to rough up the inside surface with slip, just enough to give (hopefully) some roughness to abrade the leaves or whatever will get ground, so the pestle will have surfaces to break up the vegetable matter against. Once the process is more refined, then some of the future mortaria will have the grit. I guess you could say that a smooth-finished mortar is just a bowl, but the shape of the spout, the rim around the edge (I don't know if it's not more decorative than functional) make them recognizable at once as mortars. They have a somewhat wider base than a typical Roman bowl, too. I think they must have had a lot more spills than we do these days, having those small bases.

Not all of the ones I've seen in museums and pictures had a really rough surface, so I suspect the surface on the inside was dependant on what was to be ground. Peppercorns need a rougher, sharper cutting surface (at least for the first grinding) than dried parsley. You can't really grind anything finer than the spaces between the grit. Modern porcelain mortars are really very smooth, too. I get the drift of what you're saying, though.

Monday the 9th, we were in Houston, where there's a 1st Century Judean/Hasmonean/Roman exhibit in conjunction with the Seige of Masada lecture. There were different types of mortars there, and all were really pretty smooth, except for the natural surface of the material. One really big one (probably a hundred-pound white stone "bowl") was for grinding incense, they said, possibly in some temple or other. For that, I suppose the finer powder would be preferred.

As for the book, though it is probably a very fine one, seeing that it costs 100USD used on Amazon, it's just out of my budget for the time being. Any excerpt info you can share would be helpful, of course.

[M. Demetrius]

Ok, back to the reporting. The three mortaria and two pistilia survived the firings. My friend, Jan, the potter, bisque fired them with her things, and we pit fired them at my place Mar 21. The coloration was very interesting, and varied according to where the smoke plumes went inside the pit, what was in direct contact with the sawdust base, where the cow dung touched, and who knows what else? It's always unpredictable, basically, but adds individuality to each piece. I believe the Romans, who were not making tiles for fun, but to cover large areas of floor, fired their tiles in oven/kilns that were probably walk in sized, and odds are they could put at least a couple of hundred at a time in the firebox. I don't have such an oven, and don't plan to build one. I'll just fire a few now and then in the pit. It's a good way to get rid of the sawdust from wood projects, and scrap wood, plus deadwood from the forest next to the house.

So here they are. At least a couple of them will make the trip to Houston to the museum display tomorrow. We'll see how that goes over. Here's a link to the three mortaria and pistilia. The third pistilium (pestle) will be made of hard wood, yet to be collected and shaped from the woods. Oak, most likely.

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd29 ... stilia.jpg

[jvrjenivs]

Wonderfull! I realy like them. You did a great job!

[M. Demetrius]

Thanks, Jurjen. It has been a great learning experience so far. We've yet to use them, but that should happen during this week. The next batch will be fired directly in the pit, and will skip the commercial kiln bisque firing. If they break, they break.

More on that later.

[Salvianus]

looking good Good luck for the next stage.