Handmade ceramics are thousands of years old. But the paintings that have been discovered in caves in the past hundred years all over the world are much much older.
In 1903, one of the first cave paintings was discovered in Spain: the cave of El Castillo. At this time, hundreds of caves with paintings have been discovered in Europe, but also in the rest of the world.
The oldest of these images are the hand stencils. These are prints of color pigments, where the hand is used as a stencil. This resulted in a negative hand-print, which to this day kindly waves at us.
Time to wave back….
64,000 years old handshake
Initially, historians were skeptical about the dating of these cave paintings. At the beginning of the twentieth century no one could believe that prehistoric man was able to make art (let alone of this high quality). However, when more and more caves were discovered, evidence grew that our distant ancestors have made art for thousands of years.
However, the exact dating of the cave paintings proved difficult. At the end of the last century it was assumed that some of the oldest paintings were made some 40,000 years ago.
In November 2018, a scientific study showed that the hand stencils from the Maltravieso cave in Spain are 64,000 years old! This has not only expanded our art history by 24,000 years. It also showed that Neanderthals already made art and not only our direct ancestors (the “anatomically modern humans”).
A hand-kiss of a stone-age artist
Hand stencils have been created all over the world. Many discoveries have been made in France and Spain, but also in Indonesia, South Africa and Australia. Everywhere on our planet, artists of thousands of years ago have greeted us.
There have been many studies on how these hand stencils were created. According to some scientists, people put the pigments (red earth, charcoal, etc.) in their mouths and spewed it in small short bursts. According to others they used pipes (a straw or a hollow bone), one in their mouth and one in a container (for example a shell) and blew the pigments on the rock face.
It doesn’t matter how these artists performed their craft, the result is a hand kiss that they have blown to our time.
Waving to the past
Hand stencils are fascinating, beautiful and a very old tradition. It seemed to me it was time to wave back to the artists from the Stone Age. I don’t have a cave to crawl into. So I used my “man cave” (pottery studio) to make my hand kisses…
I had to make a few adjustments. Instead of a rock face I used the bowls that I have thrown on the wheel. Once it is fired to “stoneware”, it is almost the same.
Also, I didn’t want to take pigments (Terra Sig) in my mouth and spit on bowls. That’s why a used a very high tech spray diffuser blow pipe (it also leaves you with a better taste in your mouth).
And, oh yeah, my hand was way too big for the bowls, so I used a paper stencil. Which I have resized and printed. So okay, I haven’t done it quite the traditional way… But I have politely greeted back, my way 🙂
Handmade ceramics with a hand-kiss
A study from 2013 showed that most of the hand prints in the European caves were made by women . So it was also time that a men’s hand was immortalized. Someone had to do that…..
Now in my Etsy Shop
Do you want a hand greeting from handmade ceramics? Take a look at my Etsy shop. And before you know it, you will be eating your breakfast with a greeting to artists of thousands of years ago…
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