These are highlights from the Working Clay session that was a part of Object Lab 1.1 at the Chipstone Foundation (www.chipstone.org) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in June of 2009. Nine talented undergraduates were in attendance from a variety of schools and many different disciplines--art history, history, studio art, industrial design, geography, and architecture. The overall goal of this intensive material culture program was to explore innovative ways to think about and look at old things.

After a lunch of spiced chicken baked inside of clay pockets on a gas grill, the students engaged in a series of clay related activities. A team of scholars--Jill Casid and Ann Smart Martin from UWMadison and Kate Smith, a visiting scholar from the University of Warwick in England--led hands-on and interactive sessions that examined issues of style, production, and consumption as they relate to 18th century Anglo-American pottery traditions and history. Additional programs were led by Michelle Erickson, a potter from Virginia, and Robert Hunter, editor of the journal Ceramics In America.