My horse clipart now used as logo for horsehair pottery
From time to time different people contact me about using my horse clip art for different projects. Jaki and Bruce Merrihew of Arizona emailed me asking permission to use my horse head clip art of a horse with flames as a logo design to stamp on their Horsehair pottery.
The horsehair pottery samples you see in the images below were made by Jaki and Bruce Merrihew. The Arabian horse head ceramic piece is a gift to me from them. I photographed it so you could view it.
Jaki and Bruce used my horse head clip art on the bottoms of the horsehair pottery and I think they were right to feel that my horse and flame clipart would be perfect for this project. They also print the horse clipart as their logo on the gift cards they hang on the pottery items.
Info and History of Horsehair Pottery
Horsehair pottery is a 20th century Native American pottery tradition which seems to have come about by accident.
I read that it was develop because a native potter’s long hair touched and burned on a hot pottery piece as she removed it from the kiln. Where her hair touched the hot clay it crinkled and burned leaving leaving permanent squiggly, dark lines of carbon in the porous clay.
“That’s interesting” she must have thought (artistic types seem to be open to seeing design potential in strange occurrences). She made farther experiments using horsehair (seems she also had common sense too — didn’t want to burn all her hair). She found that the much coarser horsehair left a more striking impression in the pottery than fine human hair. All horsehair pottery has a similar look, but each is quite unique as the horsehair hits and burns on the pottery surface differently each and every time.
Because of its beauty the creation of horse hair pottery has been adopted by other potters both native and non native. Hair from a horse’s mane and/or tail are used and most horse hair pottery is created using white clay for better contrast with the fine dark lines of the burned horsehair. Because the clay is fired at a lower than usual temperature the pottery is porous and cannot be used as a vessel to hold fresh cut flowers in water. Horse hair pottery is wonderful for displaying dried and artificial flower arrangements and plants, and other dry items.
Horse hair pottery is a lovely and unique form of pottery that blends the controlled with the uncontrollable and unpredictable forces of nature.
P.S. If you are looking for horse clip art or a horse logo for your company, site, products, or project check out my site Horse-Logos.com