Surprise!

Amir,our local builder,drove past the studio a couple of days ago with a load of sludgy-looking stuff he'd dredged from the bottom of a well in the Old City,where most old houses had wells to supply the house with water [ours also,by the way].It looked to me suspiciously like clay,so I grabbed a handful,made it into a slip with some water,sieved it to get the stones out,dried it,threw the little pot in the picture,and fired it cautiously in my test kiln with cone 06- around 1000 degrees C, earthenware temperature.The cone went down,and I could see [by carefully opening the lid] that the pot was untroubled by the heat,so I continued firing to about 1220.As you can see,the cone has melted completely,and the pot looks totally happy.Which means that this clay from the bottom of a Safed well is a local stoneware,which surprises me greatly,since I have been explaining patiently to visitors for many years that there are no [or next to no] high-firing clays in the whole Middle East region,for reasons that are unclear to me until I meet a geologist who can explain why this is so,and which explains all the earthenware in all the museums around the region,together with the total lack of high-fire technology here until modern times.
Needless to say,I am mightily impressed and not a little chuffed,and would be delighted if some knowledgeable reader could shed light on this matter: my email,as ever,can be found among my personal details by clicking something appropriate at the top of the blog.