Scott McCrindle, Web Designer

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Shocked and alarmed, we packed up our well-used dishes and brought them to the lab for evaluation. I remember the technician running a Geiger counter over each of our beloved Fiesta® specimens. The counter crackled a little bit until the bright orange breakfast bowls were examined. The meter went berserk. I remember the technician looking slightly alarmed as he quickly confiscated the offending items and sent us home packing the rest of our dishware.

It seems that it was not uncommon to include uranium in the glazes of such brightly coloured pottery in the late thirties and early forties. The uranium, coated with a glaze that included a heavy concentration of lead produced a deep, vibrant colour and a durable finish.

Years later, I stumbled upon an interesting project by Theodore Gray – a physical collection of all of the elements of the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements. Strangely enough, the collection features an orange Fiesta® bowl as a uranium specimen. In his frightening article entitled Death On The Breakfast Table, Gray compares the noise from the Geiger counter being passed over the orange bowl with other radioactive samples, exclaiming, This one has that let’s get out of here now before we fry ring to it.

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Posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 14:37 under Technology. Responses can be followed through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your site.