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How were the earliest pottery vessels shaped by hand?
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traditional ceramics
Stages in the slip casting of a thin-walled whiteware container. Clay powder is mixed in water together with a dispersing agent, which keeps the clay particles suspended evenly throughout the clay-water slurry, or slip. The slip is poured into a plaster mold, where water is drawn out by capillary action and a cast is formed by the deposition of clay particles on the inner surfaces of the mold. The remaining slip is drained, and the cast is allowed to dry partially before the drain hole is plugged and the mold separated. The unfinished ware is given a final drying in an oven before it is fired into a finished product.
The earliest pottery vessels were shaped by hand using several distinct techniques:
- Modeling: Potters used their fingers and thumbs to shape the clay directly, a method still used today for raku teabowls.1
- Slab Construction: Flat slabs of clay were joined together using clay slip as an adhesive to create square, oblong, or cylindrical vessels.1
- Coiling: Long rolls of clay were stacked in circles, layer upon layer, to build up the walls of a vessel. The surface was then finished by scraping and smoothing.12
- Molding: Clay was smeared around the inside of a basket or a coarsely woven sack. During the firing process, the matrix (the basket or sack) was consumed, leaving the impression of the weave on the exterior of the finished pot.1
These manual methods allowed for the creation of remarkably fine vessels before the widespread adoption of the potter’s wheel.1