Ancient Hairlines, Part V

At an auction today, to the north of here, I was just starting to examine a trio of large crocks when a fellow walked up and said, "Are they all right?"

I said that I thought so, and of course right at that moment detected a hairline crack in the one I was then examining.

"Know how to tell if they're good?" said this expert. "You rap them with your knuckles. They sound different if they're cracked." He rapped on the crock in front of him. It gave off a low, hollow tone. "This one's good. Rap on that one."

I gamely rapped on the one in which I had found the hairline. It had a higher, hollow tone.

"See?" he said, and walked off.

The crock in front of me was smaller, however: so of course it had a higher, hollow tone. The third crock had yet a different hollow tone -- being yet a different hollow shape.

I resumed my examination, using my inexpert means, and found hairlines in all three.

I left before the auction proceedings reached that building, so can only wonder whether the expert bought the "good" one.

I thought they all sounded good: the three crocks, and the expert. All four were cracked, though.

Cheers ...

Ancient Hairlines, Part IV

The fact that hairlines fail to recede must come as welcome news -- and that they never recede ...

A pleased-with-themselves pair of antique buyers at a farm auction outbid us on an intact four-gallon crock, a week ago. Four gallons is a particularly useful size, at our scale of operations; but the price got out of hand, to our point of view.

This self-satisfied couple then bought a crock with an interesting front marking but with notable cracks in the interior that rendered it unusable. I might have bid ten dollars or so on the thing, on the grounds of aesthetics or curiosity; but this couple and someone else bid up the crock's price to more than four times that amount, without much reluctance about tossing their cash into so clearly compromised a vessel -- with the self-satisifed couple winning it.

The collector who buys crocks with so many cracks ... does the crock have multiple cracks, or does the cracked collector who buys them have multiple hairlines? An interesting image ...

Cheers ...

Ancient Hairlines, Part III

During the auction at which our fellow auction-goer asked me why I had dropped out of the bidding, I told him why I had done so: and he went off to inspect his purchase. He soon came back and said, "You call that a hairline? You can't find a crock that old without a crack or two like that!"

This auction-goer is my elder by a decade or perhaps more: so of course I hung my head, admitted my error in not compelling him to pay more for the crock, and in subsequent auctions made sure to make him pay a goodly amount for any stoneware with a crack in it. Ever since, he has gazed upon me with a kindly, paternal air. I have made him pay one hundred, two hundred dollars for crocks with hairlines, and as a consequence I am nearly his son and stand in line to inherit his holdings of hairlines.

Not that he will have any left -- hairlines, I mean, as opposed to hairline -- because he buys the things to sell at a profit. Monetarily speaking. I buy the things to employ for profit -- a profit of more personal dimension. I will be guilty of buying to sell at a monetary profit with regards to stoneware crocks one of these days. The problem is that a crock really worth buying is worth keeping and using. Otherwise it seems hard to regard it as really worth buying.

Cheers ...

Ancient Hairlines, Part II

As I said, a cracked old man has only one option for the future -- which is to get worse.

I mean, a cracked old crock has.

You can use the lower portions of a crock, if it has a hairline in the upper portions, when making wine or beer -- but while you do so you will be haunted vaguely by thoughts of the future, when that hairline must inevitably grow larger.

A stoneware crock in use for winemaking is not a static eye-pleaser in the parlor corner but an active piece of necessary equipment. If it plays a part in the winemaking life, it has no fixed place, physically, in the home. It moves from place to place. It receives cleaning and sterilizings, in the sink or bathtub. It may feel the stirrings-around of a wooden spoon, or the pressing force of hands, masher or muddler, in crushing fruit. The crock will be lifted, turned on its side, upended. It will be carried, tipped, shelved.

The five-gallon Western stoneware crock I bought last summer in a local auction has a hairline, as it happens. In the dirty state the crock was in when I bid on it, I never saw the crack -- which is an extra-fine hairline: "Hardly a crack at all," I can hear a collector say. Fortunately, this crack is located on the quite-fat rim; and the crock has proved itself serviceable during the making of a fair amount of wine and beer already. In fact today, as I am working on this posting, I happen to be sterilizing it for the batch of beer Martha is starting this rainy afternoon.

Cheers ...