VIP Likenesses in Pottery

I had never thought about the use of pottery as a way to spread visual "news" until I read an article by Terry Kovel. Ceramic figures help to preserve historic faces begins with this stunning and thought-provoking sentence: "Before there were photographs and television, some of the best likenesses of important people were created by makers of ceramics."

Wow. I'd never thought of what the reality would be like of living in a world where visual information was so rare. Kovel goes on to tell us about pottery figures made in the 1800s in the likeness of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Part of what I found so interesting (and startling, given the predominance of their likenesses now available), was that some figures that look like Franklin were labeled as being Washington. They weren't immediately discovered as mistakes, because these gentlemen's faces were not very well known at that time!

What an interesting tidbit of ceramic history trivia, as well as a new way to look at some of the functions (beyond holding food and drink) pottery has played.