“Primitive Potter” Travels into the Backcountry for 10 Days with Only a Knife & Buckskin and Makes Anasazi Pottery

From film­mak­er Steve Olpin comes a short doc­u­men­tary (a “doc­u­men­tary poem”) called Earth and Fire, about artist and prim­i­tive pot­ter Kel­ly Magle­by. The film fol­lows Kel­ly as she trav­els into “the back­coun­try of South­ern Utah with a knife and a buck­skin for 10 days to try to learn about Anasazi pot­tery by doing it the way the Anasazi did it.” On her web­site, Kel­ly writes “My desire to make Anasazi pot­tery start­ed with my inter­est in prim­i­tive and sur­vival skills. I love the fact that you can go into the wild with noth­ing and get all you need to sur­vive and even flour­ish from the earth. The idea that you can go out and dig up some ‘dirt’, shape it, paint it and fire it all using only mate­ri­als found in nature is amaz­ing to me.” On her site, she details her method for mak­ing the pot­tery. Find more info about the Anasazi and their pot­tery here and here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!


by | Permalink | Comments (3) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (3)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Beverly Fry says:

    As far as I am con­cerned the only mis­take this lady made was in label­ing her work as Anasazi. Know­ing the prob­a­ble method and pur­pose of mak­ing pot­tery “from scratch“is not a sin. It is ille­gal and a defama­tion to a cul­ture to claim that her pot­tery is Anasazi or Aco­ma or Mound Builder. It is Olga Alexan­der pot­tery and shares method to a degree with all oth­er pot­tery.

  • John Dobbs says:

    Hey Bev
    Well if you read the descrip­tion right it is nev­er stat­ed that she is mak­ing Anasazi Pot­tery. It is states it as Anasazi Style pot­tery. Kin­da like The Sur­re­al­ists did Dali Style Paint­ings. She nev­er claims to be Anasazi.

  • Anthony says:

    Hey John, well if you read descrip­tion right above the YouTube link on the open­cul­ture page it states quite clear­ly “Anasazi Pot­tery”.

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.