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The Origins of the Potter's Wheel |
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Thursday, 18 August 2005 |
 The potter's wheel, also known as the potter's lathe, is a machine used in the shaping of round ceramic wares. However the name potter's lathe is also used for the machine used for another shaping process, turning, which is similar to that used for the shaping of metal and wood articles. The wheel may also be used during the process of trimming excess body from dried wares and for applying incised decoration or rings of colour.
The techniques of jiggering & jolleying can be seen to be an extension of the Potters wheel: in jiggering a shaped tool is slowly brought down onto plastic clay body that has been placed on top of a rotating plaster mould. The jigger tool shapes one face whilst the mould the other. The term is specific to shaping of flatware, plates, whilst a similar technique, jolleying, refers to the production of holloware like cups.
 The Origin and Development of the Potter's Wheel
- The Potter's Wheel, as we understand it today, was not suddenly invented. The first steps were probably using a shallow dish, bowl or even a large shell for building a coiled pot. This technique probably dates back to perhaps 4000 BC.
- The invention of a simple wooden turntable probably occurred before 3000 BC. Ancient Egyptian tomb paintings depict potters using turntables made from wood and stone.
- The earliest turntables were probably not very free-turning and could only be used for easier coiling.
- When the pottery turntable/wheel was being developed in Southern Iraq during the 4th millennia BC. production increased rapidly. Pottery making became a full-time occupation. Men became the potters.
- Small turntables became larger. A smoother running shaft with a heavier throwing head or large flywheel and bearings with less friction progressively improved the speed and power of the wheel.
- A potter's assistant could turn the wheel around or a low flywheel could be slowly kicked by the potter.
- Strangely, the technique of making a pot changed only gradually. The "Fast Coiling" method using a wheel is still common in many village potteries of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Asia even today.
- "Throwing" derives from the Old Saxon term "to twist".
- Until the 18th century the throwing technique was only possible with a low friction, fast, heavy wheel, called a momentum potters wheel until the 18th century when mechanical power wheels began to be developed.
- The throwing technique using a momentum wheel in cyclical (kick then throw; repeat). By contrast a mechanical/electrical power wheel can usually run at a continuous steady speed or varying speeds controlled by a foot pedal.
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