This project will digitise from the archive of Richard Carlton who recorded the making practices of traditional potters from the Balkans between 1987 and 2020. The majority of the archive relates to material collected in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia with additional work in Greece, Romania, Serbia and Türkiye. The archive includes photographic prints/negatives, slides, video films and notebooks, as well as some pots and tools which give further insight into working practices. The records focus on the making of pottery vessels and document the practices of multiple potters, covering the entire chaîne opératoire from raw materials procurement, clay-paste preparation, forming and firing pots as well as marketing and using them for cooking. The records comprise 3,000 print photographs, 500 slide photographs, 1,125 later photos (2002-2021), 20 films of pottery-making in 18 locations, 20 notebooks document manufacturing processes, including terminology, and include notes from interviews.
The focus of documentation in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) are the villages Liješeva, Višnjica, Malešići, Ularice and Pulac, all documented by photographic and video of pottery-making processes. Other villages in BiH for which only photographic documentation of living potters was carried out include Vrkašic, Skokovi, Krasinac, Donji Rujani and Demiševci. In Croatia, villages documented by photographs and video are Veli Iž, Potravlje, Kaluđerovac, Oteš and Rastoki as well as in the town of Petrinja. In Serbia, pottery-making was photographed and filmed at Zlakusa in 1994 and 2010. In Greece, pottery-making was photographed and filmed at Thasos in 1992 and 1993, including the reconstruction of a kiln, and in 1992 at Serres in Thrace, on the island of Sifnos, and at Thrapsano and Margarites on Crete. In Romania pottery-making processes were filmed at Oboga and Romana in 2003. In Türkiye potters were photographed at Gökeyüp in 1987 and in Cyprus at Phini in 1992.
The majority of the material dates between 1987 and 1995, with additional material dating mainly from 2000-2021 which we include for completeness, since it brings the record up to the time of the recording we undertook with EMKP in 2022 [Ref. SG2021-01]. In 2022 our EMKP project recorded the last potters then practicing in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The records in Carlton’s archive document earlier generations of these families as well as other potters who did not leave successors and were the last of a long line whose craft can be traced back through archaeological evidence into the early medieval period. Except for the video films which only require metadata input, all the materials in the archive require digitisation and metadata so that they can be shared as a record for the local communities involved and for wider academic research.
PI: Mark Jackson
Collaborator: Richard Carlton
Research Location: Bosnia-Herzegovina; Croatia; Greece; Romania; Serbia; Türkiye; Cyprus
Host Institution: Newcastle University
Top Banner Image: Calcite-tempered cooking pots made by Dževad Delić at Malešiči, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Photo credit: Richard Carlton, 2018.