It was around the 7th century, that the town of Boleslawiec, Poland began making the high quality pottery that has come to define it. In the 17th century, a large deposit of vitrified clay was discovered in the basins of the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers. This caused a build up in production that brought the manufacturers in Boleslawiec to rival some of the biggest pottery producers in Europe. Many of the techniques used to make this beautiful pottery, have been passed down through generations to the Artisans of today.

One of the things that makes Boleslawiec stoneware stand out is the special clay from which it is made. Kaolin is a fine-grain white clay that is almost exclusively found in the Boleslawiec region. In a long, and painstaking process, the clay is collected, air dried, and then thoroughly checked for flaws. It is then pre-burned in an oven to create the clean white bisque on which the intricate patterns will be applied by hand. The bisque often acts as a background color and is used creatively as both negative and positive space in many different patterns.

Hand cut sponge stamps in various shapes and sizes, and paint brushes, are used to decorate the pottery. Artists layer thousands of stamps and paint marks by hand on any given piece. The patience, and consistency involved in the application of these intricate patterns is awe inspiring. Individual painters often sign the bottoms of pieces in the more artistic patterns. Polish Pottery is generally known, and instantly recognizable, for the use of traditional dark blue patterns on the white bisque, but today a wide variety of vibrantly colored patterns are available.

After the paint has dried, a special glaze is applied, and large pallets full of pottery are placed into giant ovens, and baked at 1,230 degrees Celsius (2,246 degrees Fahrenheit). When the product has cooled, it is ready for use.

But why figurines?  Surely, humans of the time had more important things to do, such as searching for food, finding cover from Earth’s relentless elements, and fighting off those pesky sabretooth tigers!  There could be several answers to this, but two are worthy of closer consideration.

Before Jesus, before Moses, and definitely before L. Ron Hubbard, human worship consisted of many beliefs, most of which were (in some form or another) animalistic.  These roving bands of humans were confused about the workings of the world, and to help explain some of its mysteries, they created belief systems based around animals.  To pass down the traditions, some people created animal figurines to help their tribesmen (and women) envision these animal deities while stories about them were being told.

Another reason we are finding these animal figurines from thousands of years ago could simply be from the fact that humans have incredible imaginations, and some among us have a yearning to express these imaginations through art.  While many of the animal figurines found are most likely religious in nature, it would be foolish to say that they all have religious meaning, since it is very possible that some of them were spontaneous works of art.

Today, animal figurines are created from a variety of materials:  metal, stone, wood, plastic, porcelain, and clay, as is the case with pottery.  The Easter bunny is a great example of a contemporary animal figurine.  While intricately tied to Easter in the minds of most Americans, the Easter bunny makes no cameo appearances in the Bible and is separate from Christianity (being more closely related to American Capitalism).  Nevertheless, millions (if not billions) of Easter bunny figurines have been created in the recent past, a great deal of which were made of pottery.  They range from tiny to gigantic, from monochrome to intricately painted, and from cheap to Good-God-how-much?!

Thousands of years from now, our robotic descendants will excavate a pottery Easter bunny figurine and wonder what we were thinking when we created it.