I'm afraid blogging has taken a back seat for a couple of weeks. I've been away enjoying a little run around Rajasthan from Mumbai to Delhi. It was certainly a different sort of enjoyment from any other trip I've been on. Certainly more a case of 'isn't that amazing / surprising' rather than any pure enjoyment alternative. Coming home in one piece and healthy was an achivement in itself.
The best place to start is with a picture of a 10th C carving of Lord Ganesha, Hindu patron of the arts and sciences and lord of beginnings and obstacles - both placement and removal. He might be a good kiln god but I'm not sure about needing any new obstacles in my potting.
There were a few things of ceramic and bonsai interest on the trip and certainly much of decorative art. This post covers a visit to a small village pottery. Much of the more remote areas which are purely agricultural is a bit like the middle ages with mobile phones. People live and work close to the ground using their hands.
The potter we visited used a wheel which was a big flywheel that spun on a point pivot. He used a stick in a hole in the flywheel to get it spinning and then it operated like any other wheel, with the exception that because it used a point bearing it could take on a bit of an orbital action, resulting in the top of any work being turning in a tight circle rather than stable. This required a practiced skill to finish off the top of any vessel.
In this pipcture on the left you can see another wheel and pivot and the spinning stick. Indians work hard and long hours to survive. Our potter friend worked in this position for long periods and when he needed to reach something, he just sort of crabbed around on his haunches. My hips and knees screamed just watching him down there.
These spherical pots seemed to be the major product made. All very uniform in production and thin walled. The clay is earthenware and only fired to about 600C and no doubt had a half life of about 3 weeks. That's probably why there were so many potters in the business.
The process started with the pots in the foreground being turned up on the wheel. Then the guy in the background gets to do his part. The white 'mould', which looks like a big egg shell is then used to support the pot while it is struck on the outside with a flat timber batter against a curved piece of stone held against the inner surface. Repeated hits and rotation turns out the spherical finished pot. Very clever. He could do about 20 a day but summer when the temperature gets close to 50 can't be good for productivity. I think they do it this way because the clay may not have the strength to turn with thin walls; labour is cheaper than almost anything.
Brickmaking was another revelation and the subject of a post to come.
The best place to start is with a picture of a 10th C carving of Lord Ganesha, Hindu patron of the arts and sciences and lord of beginnings and obstacles - both placement and removal. He might be a good kiln god but I'm not sure about needing any new obstacles in my potting.
There were a few things of ceramic and bonsai interest on the trip and certainly much of decorative art. This post covers a visit to a small village pottery. Much of the more remote areas which are purely agricultural is a bit like the middle ages with mobile phones. People live and work close to the ground using their hands.
The potter we visited used a wheel which was a big flywheel that spun on a point pivot. He used a stick in a hole in the flywheel to get it spinning and then it operated like any other wheel, with the exception that because it used a point bearing it could take on a bit of an orbital action, resulting in the top of any work being turning in a tight circle rather than stable. This required a practiced skill to finish off the top of any vessel.
In this pipcture on the left you can see another wheel and pivot and the spinning stick. Indians work hard and long hours to survive. Our potter friend worked in this position for long periods and when he needed to reach something, he just sort of crabbed around on his haunches. My hips and knees screamed just watching him down there.
These spherical pots seemed to be the major product made. All very uniform in production and thin walled. The clay is earthenware and only fired to about 600C and no doubt had a half life of about 3 weeks. That's probably why there were so many potters in the business.
The process started with the pots in the foreground being turned up on the wheel. Then the guy in the background gets to do his part. The white 'mould', which looks like a big egg shell is then used to support the pot while it is struck on the outside with a flat timber batter against a curved piece of stone held against the inner surface. Repeated hits and rotation turns out the spherical finished pot. Very clever. He could do about 20 a day but summer when the temperature gets close to 50 can't be good for productivity. I think they do it this way because the clay may not have the strength to turn with thin walls; labour is cheaper than almost anything.
Here are some recently fired pots. The kiln is a brick cylinder about 2m in diameter and 1.5 high. The dry pots are placed in the kiln and covered with a layer of broken pots, then fired with timber/coal. There is no stack or chimney so everyone close by gets to 'share' in the firing.
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