It's Back
Of course it’s above zero and the mind freeze is over and the real world can again be seen. For me today it was dust bunnies. I did have the television on and as I was changing out the Swiffer and there was a blurb about a new site in the Minneapolis area called Color Me Mine. There were just a few key words that made me stop to see what the buzz was all about. Oh my gosh. It’s back from the days of old. Today it was marketed as Color Me Mine Pottery. In my day it was a ceramics class.
In the 1960s ceramics classes were the hot item. Someone would have a kiln in their basement and offer classes for anyone that wanted to come and clean greenware (soft plaster images that had been poured in various molds). I had taken the kids with me several times to a gal in Hutchinson, Minnesota, as I was working on some items to be used as gifts. After the seam marks from the molds had been cleaned from the greenware, they were painted and then fired in the kiln for a hard finish.
After we moved from the farm and lived right outside of Buffalo Lake, we connected with Mrs. Schrup that also had a setup in her basement. It was no small endeavor as the kilns required an electrical service far in excess of what a home would normally require. The paints, brushes, and cleaning tools were all supplied to you when you came and picked out your greenware. The variety of items in molds to create the greenware must have been quite the expense, and the price quoted to you was a price that had to cover all of the above mentioned tools, all the way to the finished, fired item.
I know that today Kevin still has a bust of Lincoln and one of Washington that he did with Mrs. Schrup. Carrie came with several times and may well have a bank. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it still had coins in it from that time?
For the longest of time I had not noted anything similar to the ceramics class, but today I couldn’t help but take note of this metro business in one of the malls. Home-based crafts are indeed in the past as today there would have to be liability insurance, viable access, air quality inspections and on and on. Gone are the days when people could just get together in an extra room of the basement for the sake of fun and sharing and for someone to make some pocket money as an extra income.