Mudlarking Spongeware Special! Who were pottery girls? Matching finds with antique Methven pieces

[Music] [Music] hi scottish mud larkin here with the colin fig we've come along for cody today and we're searching for sponge wear now the idea is that we want to kind of give you an idea of what that sponge wear looked like when it was originally created so we've got a beautiful sponge wear patterns in it and we're going to see if we can match up the pieces that we find here today with the patterns that are in the book and then we're going to see a little bit about some of the young women who used to come around here and collect all the seconds that were thrown into the barn and used to sell them door-to-door to make a wee living for themselves a little bit later on nicole's gonna make some jewelry using the sponge wear that we found today and maybe some pieces that she's had in her collection for a wee wellness [Music] absolutely gorgeous day today we've really just had to get out the door take our chances get along down here kakodi weather's supposed to turn nasty over the next few days so we're taking advantage of this spell of sunshine really beautiful as always here in kakadi we find these kiln stilts or kiln furniture there's another one just off to my left so i'm gonna quite quickly swing down there now it's one of these pieces that i suggested was a wee bit like a thor's hammer and nicole saw it like a a duffel coat button either way they're amazing things really cool so are we collecting kiln stilts today do you think always okay well then i have a good check for you here we go oh thank you that's nice big chunky bit again isn't it yeah that was hangar yeah are you missing this difficult things how well okay so i'm not entirely sure if this is uh transfer wear or sponge but we'll take that along it's a really chunky piece of blue i don't think it's a tile piece of a really thick piece of sea glass as well shiny here looks like a bottle bottom to me really chunky seeing that we're actually looking for pottery pieces today i think i'll take this one piece along some nice frosted c-class really nice chunky bit there another wee bit just above that [Music] yes oh that's cool so seen this wee bit of a kind of blue here it's like a baby blue or a c foam and right alongside it first time we've seen one of these here now this is a wee bit different i think that's a little bit different to the ones that we found at lower largo yeah that's quite cute isn't it yes you'll have to excuse the noise uh crows are actually sea birds in scotland certainly here in kirkaudi yeah we have uh quite a lot oops quite a lot of crows at the beach there's another one that's a wee bit bigger that's very cool pair of these wee birds yeah let's take them very cute one birdie two birthday and some seafood and oh have you found something oh yeah you have it's one of those little pyramid pieces of kiln furniture let's take that as well yeah well they're pretty and that little uh seafoam piece isn't quite as blue as i thought it was no it's a lovely seafoam yeah it's still very nice yes okay let's see if we can find some of this um sponge wear there something we don't see often around here which is i guess more of a surprise than anything else i think this is a a bone from a seagull where we been lots more wii pottery shards all blanks kill stilts and i found the tiniest piece with a little piece of blue on it now that might be sponge wear i think we'll have a hard time spotting what pattern that would be though [Music] [Applause] that's very cool although you can't see it there's a slight raised pattern on this i'll take a closer look at that later another nice new piece there the burgundy line lovely lovely piece of blue porter in there i found a teaspoon that's very cool and what's that from well it's it's a teapot yeah so if you ever find a piece and it looks kind of like this and it has these weird holes in it it's obviously there were there was loose tea before uh and if you poured the tea it got stuck in these little holes so that's the tea spout and then it went up yeah so it helps strain out that loose tea leaf yeah pretty much cool so are you having any luck i found two pieces one is spongebob the other one is also spongebob it only has a stripe on it okay we'll have a look at this [Applause] find something okay cool so i think nicole's found a piece of sponge where the stuff that we've been looking for all day and yet have uh has managed to evade us and apart from a couple of small pieces there we go that's a lovely piece isn't it it is yeah so the tide is coming in around us just now so we'll have a quick look at that in your hand oh and that was rescued at the last second yeah that could have floated back out to sea would have been chasing it swimming after lots of little pieces of pottery thankfully we've now found a few pieces of uh spongebob but most of the pieces we're finding our blanks like this piece i did see something just a minute ago that had a big blue line on it and i've lost it i know typical isn't it i saw it but i can't see it now yeah oh well i think i see something oh i think you do see something it's not just i think i see something i think that's a definite something there you can see it through the waves it's really pretty through the water actually yeah i'll leave it in there no i'll take it yeah yeah let's take that that's a piece of spongebob oh it is that is very pretty that's very nice very distinctive markings nice and clear well i hope we can identify this piece right so that says gilmore oh i'll tell you this is him and watch your fingers okay you take that out so we think that's gilmore off kilmarnock so there's a kilmarnock brick manufacturer is that not on the west coast yes it is and that's from lockheed gilley yeah that's here yeah yeah that's local whilst we're here very large piece of this ceramic i think that's that's obviously a piece of plate yeah i think there's no marking on it sadly no sponge we're here but we can definitely see that that's a plate but it reminds me though of course when the potteries were dumping stuff in here way back in the day people would come along and collect the whole pieces these days on a good day we find lovely shards and fragments of the things that were once made by the methment pottery company but up until around 1920 this burn regularly flowed with entire sets of crockery that were ripe for the picking back when kirkody's potteries fired up their kilns on a regular schedule young women across the town kept pace with these schedules these young women knew how long it would take for the pottery to be fired cooled and inspected they knew that once this time had passed a horse-pulled wagon would arrive at the teal burn to dump large amounts of pottery seconds these seconds were plates cups saucers teapots and a multitude of other items that failed to pass factory inspection for one reason or another some pieces had failed entirely during firing leaving only shards though others had failed inspection because of minor faults and glaze printed pattern or perhaps a slight mis-shape small groups of young women would flock to the barn to collect the best of these dumped pieces they would take them home clean them up and perhaps if they were very lucky they might even match up designs to form sets once ready these young women traveled from door to door around the town selling these seconds for far less than the cost of a perfect base while ships exported sponge wear pottery around the globe these young women were making a living or supplementing their earnings as entrepreneurs who took advantage of the opportunities that carcade's tailbone offered they were not alone we have already mentioned that there was once a trading seacoal that is coal waste that was once far more commonly found along five's coast was collected and sold the major industries of the fife area often spawned secondary employment for those in lead very little is written about these people history excels at telling the big stories though often lacks enough documentary detail to describe the small though extremely important stories about people like this like the shards of pottery we find today we are only left with the fragments of a history describing the way ordinary people lived their lives in extraordinary ways spending time on the shore here in kirkaudi collecting shards of pottery glass and other pieces of a time gone by we can't help but think about these young women and how they collected pottery from these stands and how they too relied on the shore and the activities that took place around it to make their own way in the world sadly we no longer find entire plates cuts saucers or pots instead we find fragments of a time gone by fragments that are nonetheless beautiful and that like the crockery young girls found here around 100 years ago can be treated with care so they can be given a second life as lovely pieces of jewellery a little bit ginger beer bottle and the bottom of what looks like it would have been some kind of uh some kind of jar i think i'll take this out put it somewhere in the light i say it's in the light it's really no it's in the shade here take all yeah yeah that's good nice thick piece all plain yep so we shall leave these maybe somebody else will spot this gilmore from kilmarnock brick and be attracted to come along and pick these up so bizarrely as is often the case here in kercode this uh the burn manages to redirect itself otherwise it's redirected by the movement of large stones that are supposed to prevent coastal erosion but the consequences of the movement this time is that the burn has now gone off in the opposite direction that it used to and that is having the consequence of creating this little cut off point so we're gonna have to get off because this is the way to go off the beach nicole's busy searching maybe we'll find another piece of uh spongebob before we go fingers crossed there's an interest in the top of the jar very warm bottom of a jar and an oddly shaped piece not sure what that could be and i found another piece of sponge where just has a red line but still very pretty i dare say with that single line we probably won't be able to identify that but we shall take that as the water comes in we seem to be doing really well for seafoam pcs today it's really nice and beside the broken shells there's a bottle there can see foaming just off to the left i think nicole's going to pop that down here oh yeah there you go so a good day for seafoam and here's a very unusual killstone i've never seen one of these before do you have one of those i've got half one of those okay yeah but they are very rare there's a whole one and another tiny thor's hammer now where's all this sponge wear don't know now this looks like a definite bottleneck it's really thick though very very thick i'm gonna plant that so you can see how thick it is it's my finger for a reference point a wee piece of privacy glass just alongside that that other piece of seafoam and you can maybe just make out that wee bird shape yeah see that some horses on the beach today it's an unusual sight so have you found anything that's french beer but oh it's a nice piece of blue glass yeah it is pretty lovely it's really nice yeah okay now i've brought you a little a pile of uh well we'll call it treasure for the minute um let's uh okay if you want to take that blue piece off i'm just going to put this little pile of goodies well i'm calling them goodies they might not be goodies all right yeah okay well there's i can see a couple of bottlenecks here i know where you picked them up uh a couple of street pieces oh and the partial spongebob piece [Music] [Music] so [Music] yeah okay let's have a look at that yeah see if you can you can see it i was just sitting here looking through the debris kind of hard to see in here i get a sense this is a a bit of a trick nicole's playing on us here oh actually yeah okay there's the hint you give me wee hint i'll point it yeah okay it's there yeah now you can only just see the pattern on that it's very faded it is yeah it's much less clear than the wee red stripe and that piece of sponge that's right yeah that's probably an edge yeah i think there's a plate or a saucer or so well this looks to be my favorite part and the glition pattern yeah let's take those and we'll probably get back to the car so we've missed it on a trick here i've only just remembered to say let's go back to the car oh yeah yeah that's why we didn't find spongebob marbles really thick chunky pieces here for me maybe a leave it plain but take that now i'm not sure i don't think this is sponge where whatever it is it's very worn not very clear if there's a pattern on there or not being colored on both sides at one point looks like a red glaze if you'll take that long now what could that be oh just a bit of shell so i know where the spongebob has been hiding i just found three pieces there's one here one there and one over there very cool what's the music there there we go it's a nice big piece of brown sponge where yeah it's really nice you can really see the sponge pan yeah nice and clear yep okay let's see if we can find those other pieces yeah they're just over there let's have a look leave it tight in between these rocks here but i think you can see this piece very clearly nice very clearly marked purple piece that's lovely and purple is such a rare color so i'm really tough with that we'll take that one along classic spongebob colors a really nice clean print there as well you can see the leaves yeah it's a little flour yeah that's lovely yeah for that one i know i've got a couple of pieces at home so we can match that so we found some sponge wear so let's see if we can pair it with the items that we've got in a book and that i've got bookmarked on pinterest now here are the lovely pieces of spongebob we found in kokodi today they've all been worn down by the sea over about a hundred years now they're really lovely and smooth to the touch so i've been looking through my books of sponge wear and i've been able to match these four pieces [Music] one of the few named spongebob patterns was called the grecian pattern it was very popular so many items were made that i have almost found enough pieces to make an entire plate you can see the lovely scroll work pattern on this piece it's printed in a subtle shade of grey and it was made around the 1880s i hope that one day i have enough pieces to fill the plate so i can frame it this is a really cute pattern i have a few pieces that have more of the little pink flowers on them so i immediately recognized this pattern when i found this piece i think it's a rather romantic and delicate pattern it is easy to imagine this as a piece of a ewer along with its washing bowl in a grand bedroom in some fancy house this leaf pattern that almost looks a bit like fern or maple leaves was a new pattern for us we hadn't found it before and it was exciting to find this children's teacup set printed in red to get an idea of what it would have looked like when it was made this red and green pottery piece was more difficult to match not least because very similar patterns were made by several potteries in scotland as i discovered it is called the glasgow rose pattern because it was influenced by charles rennie mcintosh's rose designs a little bow this piece was always a mystery so when i finally found this match it was really lovely the red bow and green leaf pattern is very festive looking and it always reminds me of christmas the inscription on this bowl is in scots and it translates as your eyes are harder to fill than your stomach it basically means to be greedy i always thought that these crown pieces must have been made for royal events after some research i found that crowns and flags were often made to commemorate events that took place during the first world war and that many were intended to celebrate angry french alliances [Music] this wee brown piece puzzled me i hadn't realized that it was part of an image of a cow standing in the field until i looked through my pottery pieces again what a quirky and fun piece this once was a cow in a field i love matching little pieces of sea pottery is fascinating and often very interesting the sea has given the pieces we find a lovely soft matte finish but when pottery's made sponge where over a hundred years ago it was actually highly glazed and a lot more colorful than you might assume it is really amazing to think about these little pieces and how they fit into the crockery used on a breakfast or dinner table so many years ago i wonder what the people who drunk from a cup or ate from a plate would think about me wearing their old crockery as a pair of earrings a bracelet or a necklace [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] thanks so much for watching commenting and liking the videos if you haven't subscribed to the channel please do take a minute to subscribe to the channel thanks also to everybody for helping us out through etsy and through helping us out through coffee you wonder why i'm laughing i'm almost sitting in the water the amount of times the water is filled by wellingtons today is quite frightening [Music] you

Channel: Scottish Mudlarking

Views: 5,214

Rating: 4.9395084 out of 5

Keywords: Mudlarking, Scottish, Pottery, spongeware, sponge ware, tiles, shards, sherds, sea glass, beach, Kirkcaldy, Spatterware, spatter ware

Id: KDyu4rn26Zs

Length: 37min 44sec (2264 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021