Bog Born: Ceramics & Crafts

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Bog Born: Ceramics & Crafts

She specialises in ancient, nature and folklore inspired designs.

Bog Born is the creation of Emma, a Scottish archaeologist and traditional crafter who loves squelching about in clay, collecting leaves and vines, or playing with firey furnaces.

12/08/2026

Pict-ing about for the Celebration of the Centuries at Fort George over last weekend for History Matters Ltd with my fellow Picts: Alex, Nick and Amy.
We may have been fighting the blustery winds instead of the Romans, but great to see so much enthusiasm for Pictish history and archaeology from lovely visitors. And our tents survived the gusts! 😃

30/07/2026

Neolithic Pottery making day through Dunkeld Community Archive yesterday with a lovely group of enthusiastic potters working with local wild clay, natural tools and craft and history chats to fuel us, to create some fantastic beaker inspired pottery.

Clay cleaning, tempering, cordage making, coil building, and decorating. We did it all! Plus a tasty lunch break of course 😁

Looking forward to firing these and getting your finished beakers back to you guys! 🍯🔥 Thanks for joining me for the day.

28/07/2026

Another year of Ancient Caledonia Camp done and dusted. The crafts, archaeology chats, nerdery, campfire cooking and company were all on point 👌 Thanks to all the Pictish campers and all who make it happen for another great one.

21/07/2026

My Neolithic Pottery workshop at Dunkeld Community Archive is fast coming up! A week and a day to go (Wednesday 29th July), in Dunkeld, Perthshire, Scotland.

Here I was just finishing up firing some example pottery to bring along. But on the day we'll have a blast talking about prehistoric pottery, creating clay mixtures suitable for bonfires using local wild clay, handbuilding and decorating pots the old way using natural tools (🐚🦴🪨🧶), and making some cordage for decorating the pottery too!

05/07/2026

Fresh mugs from the kiln 🔥 Pictish designs destined for the gem that is Groam House Museum

04/07/2026

Now that I've recovered from the sweltering heat of Chalke History Festival last week, here's a few snippets of my week as an iron age potter at work. 🛖🏺
Chalke is always an inspiring week and it was awesome to face a bit of an iron age focus this year with the chariot build which I'm in awe of, and cutting edge talks on the iron age and celts by academics.

My humble contribution was to show the process of making the hand built but impressively decorative pottery of Glastonbury Ware from the waterlogged iron age site of Glastonbury lake village. However from studies done on the geology of the clay of Glastonbury Ware, it turns out that much of it was traded in from the wider South Western English region. Prehistoric trade networks always impress me!

Spy my little turn table 👀 which is a theoretical device that could have been used by iron age potters given it's similar to other technology of the time, but no evidence of this exact thing has been found... Yet!

Anyway, I had a blast talking about the iron age and craft with everyone who stopped by, even if I was half shrivelled from the heat 😂🫠

23/06/2026

Experiment time from day 1 of Chalke History Festival Chalke History Festival
As part of the iron age village with Pario Gallico Thomas Timbrell and Daniel Postma I'm doing a Pictish pottery display.
It's incredibly common to read in archaeological reports of prehistoric pottery being tempered (things added in to the clay mixture to strengthen it and prevent cracking in the pottery) with powdered quartz.
But have you tried to break quartz into powder by hand before? It's super hard stuff.... Rock hard in fact! 🪨
So something I've heard about long ago and been meaning to try was hearing the quartz in a fire, quenching it in cold water and THEN crushing it. I was amazed at how well it works! The stuff just crumbles to powder practically on its own. So new pottery temper material officially unlocked 🔓

Pictures 📸 and experiment collaborator: the wonderful Pario Gallico

21/06/2026

SWACS what a wonderful community day of Pictish and medieval crafting and life at the site of coastal caves and very special carvings that have seen so much life over the centuries. Thanks for having me along to demonstrate about Pictish ceramics and textiles, I had a blast chatting to folk, and soaking in the Scottish sunshine 🌞

Do check out the tours they run at Wemyss caves on Sundays and by request.

Great to be amongst other Pictish crafters too! Hamish Findlay Lamley with leatherwork.
W A S T E D R E M A I N S J E W E L L E R Y Pictish jewelry.
David McGovern doing stone carving (he made my lovely and treasured little Rhynie man stone that's in the 3rd picture).

And thanks to Isle of Angus Photography for some lovely pictures here. I always forget to take any myself! 😅

15/06/2026

Burn baby burn 🔥🔥🔥
A fun fiery night tonight getting iron age and Pictish replicas ready for events this weekend at SWACS and then next week at Chalke History Festival

Address

Coupar Angus

Website

http://www.bogborn.com/

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