Gray goods

Gray ware (also referred to as blue-gray ware and hard gray ware ) represents, among other things, the typical utility ceramics of the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Although their share in the more recent mediaeval range of finds is reduced due to the change in fashion and taste towards light-ground and / or glazed vessels their use until the early modern period is documented.

The clay is fired hard to very hard, finely leaned, from white to dark gray in color and kept rather simple, sometimes with “belt-like grooves”. The surface is gray, slightly metallic blue. The light to dark gray color of the body comes from a special firing process, the reduction firing. The furnace is hermetically sealed during the firing process, and an oxygen-reduced atmosphere is created. In this, the iron components in the clay cannot oxidize with the oxygen in the air; instead, graphitization occurs.

The Paffrath goods , which are very similar to gray goods - named after the production center in Paffrath in the Rhenish foothills - must be clearly distinguished from the rest of the gray goods. Compared to all other goods, Paffrather goods show a specific break. It is layered like a slate and is often white. The typical shiny metallic surface is probably the result of a salt glaze after a microprobe examination and thus another difference to the optically similar gray goods.

literature

E. Kirsch: Ceramics from the 13th to the beginning of the 16th century in Berlin / Brandenburg. (1994), esp. 33ff.
Hartwig Lüdtke: The medieval ceramics in Schleswig, excavation shield 1971-1975 . Excavations in Schleswig: Reports and Studies 4. Neumünster 1992, pp. 62–63.
Günter Mangelsdorf : Studies on the form of late medieval ceramics in western Brandenburg. In: European University Writings . Volume 50, 1994 esp. 134 ff.