Related Projects: Terracotta
Recreating Terracotta Tiles
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The tiles for the Corinth Project Exhibit were fabricated at Notre Dame from local clay, and the natural continuation of those experiments in ancient tile-making was to form and fire similar tiles in Corinth. Towards this end the Corinth Project collaborated with Guy Sanders, the Director of the Corinth Excavations, to build a wood kiln on his property in the summer of 2006. John Lambert, the Corinth Project ceramicist, designed and constructed an anagama-type kiln capable of holding a number of tiles the size of the ones from the seventh century temple. Sanders, Philip Sapirstein (crew chief of the Corinth Project), and Lambert had discovered appropriate clay beds in the area and carried out successful experiments in clay-making, so it was possible for Sapirstein to fabricate the experimental tiles in local Corinthian clay. He and Sanders successfully fired them in the new kiln. This has formed an important source of information and insight for Sapirstein's dissertation on The Emergence of Ceramic Roofing Technology in Archaic Greek Architecture (Cornell 2008) and for his article on “How the Corinthians Manufactured Their First Roof Tiles,” Hesperia (forthcoming).
Recreating a Terracotta Kore
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A year after the anagama kiln was built, in the summer of 2007, the Corinth Project undertook another terracotta collaboration, this time with Nancy Bookidis, Co-Director of the Demeter Sanctuary Excavations at Corinth. Inspired by the replicas of the Corinth Project Exhibit and the insights they provide, Bookidis asked John Lambert to work with her to replicate a 6th century BCE terracotta kore discovered in the Demeter Sanctuary. Following a methodology similar to that employed by Lambert and Sapirstein in the study and replication of the Early Temple roof tiles, Lambert and Bookidis reconstructed the fabrication process on the basis of the fabric, surfaces, and marks visible in the original kore, as well as on Lambert's practical experience and trial and error in the modeling of the replica. A much smaller kiln was constructed beside the large one for a firing more efficient of time and fuel. The kore survived and, fortunately, the preliminary conclusions of the project coincided with those recently published by Bookidis on the construction process of the kore. In 2007 only the bottom half of the kore was formed and fired; in 2008 a full replication will be carried out.
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© Robin F. Rhodes 2007. All Rights Reserved.
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