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How were woven baskets used as molds for early pottery?

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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.

In early pottery production, woven baskets or coarsely woven sacks were utilized as foundational molds to shape clay vessels. Potters would smear or press the clay around the interior of the basket, which acted as a support structure for the wet clay body.1

During the subsequent firing process, the organic material of the basket or sack was consumed by the heat. This left the finished ceramic vessel with a distinct impression of the basket's weave on its exterior surface. While this technique served a functional purpose in shaping the clay, the resulting patterns were often aesthetically valued, leading later potters to intentionally imitate these basketwork designs on vessels created through other methods. Archaeological evidence of this practice has been identified through the discovery of pottery bases that retain the impressions of the basketry foundations upon which they were originally molded.123