Stretched out in a tidy row, they looked like fat pigs.
Strewn haphazardly in a tight circle, they looked like fat pigs playing with each other.
“They” were about a dozen weathered earthenware pots – some with single and double handles, some without, and several misshapen. They were laid out on the ground in the back lot of an auction house recently ready for sale. As I looked at them, I could imagine one or two in my small backyard, but they were much too big for more than that.
These were not the glazed earthenware pottery for cooking or sitting on a table in the living room. They were much too large and way too dusty. These were meant to lend a rustic feel to a garden or porch or patio, topped with dried flowers or stems or nothing at all. They were decorative enough to stand – or lay – on their own.
I’ve picked up a few small broken earthenware pots as part of box lots before. They were chipped at the mouth, which gave them some character. I remember taking them to a flea market to sell and eventually sold one of them (the other is probably still in my garage). I guess other folks didn’t have the imagination I had about how to place them strategically in a garden to look as if they’d been living there forever, pounded by nature and the elements.
The ones at this auction had the crude look of age: dirt encrusted, a few chips here and there, and broken lips. They were lovely in an ugly sort of way – even if factory made, as I presumed. To some of the auction-goers, though, they looked like dollar bills – lots of them.
I overheard one buyer – a heavy smoker who had made a crude remark to another about his wife and their sex life – mention that the large ones sell for $225. “They sell well in the South,” he said. Seemed that he had bought some before, and I assumed he had sold them to southerners for their gardens. He also noted that he had 40,000 square feet of other “crap” like them that he needed to sell. (He later bought 18 stacks of peach baskets with about 20 baskets per stack. “Do they sell?” I asked him, curious. “I don’t know,” he said. I understood why he had loads of crap at home.)
The pots looked to be about 1 ½ to three feet tall. As they were auctioned off individually, staffers sat them upright and many seemed to remain standing on their own. A few, though, had rounded or worn bottoms, and I suspected that they would not stand up without help.
The auctioneer didn’t mention where this hoard of earthenware pots came from, but there’s always some auction-goers who are ready to make a guess: “South America or Central America,” I overheard one man tell another. Googling, I found that pots similar to these with wide mouths were used to hold olives in the Mediterranean.
My auction pal Rebecca noted that they resembled ancient wine vessels. Googling again, I found a story about a hoard that was discovered last year on a 2,000-year-old sunken ship off the Italian coast.
The auction pots have the same shape of the ancient curvy jars, which were called amphorae. They were used for both storage and trading in the Mediterranean centuries ago, and beautiful detailed ones were used for decoration. They not only held wines and olives, but also ginger, walnuts, herbs and presumably other food products.
When the pots came up for sale at auction, it was obvious that a lot of people knew what they were worth and how much money they could be sold for. The small ones went for $60 to $120. A pot with orange streaks sold for $110. The most expensive sold for $170, followed close behind by $160 and $150.
Maybe the crude buyer was right.
