Potter's wheel
The potter's wheel is a horizontally rotating disc made of wood or metal, on which the potter forms a rotationally symmetrical vessel.
species
Pottery wheels are divided into slow and fast rotating discs. The slowly turning potter's wheel is usually set in rotation by hand and helps to create ceramics from several pieces of clay (building). The fast turning potter's wheel enables the technique of pulling up. The vessel is made from a single lump of clay that is placed in the center of the potter's wheel and then hollowed out by hand and pulled up between the fingers so that an even, smooth wall is created. This technique not only speeds up the manufacturing process significantly, but also ensures more regular, symmetrical shapes.
drive
The fast turning potter's wheel was mostly driven with the feet. For this purpose, two discs, the upper disc head and the lower flywheel , were connected with a vertical axis. The upper one was worked on, the lower one was rotated with the feet. So the potter could work with the clay at the same time and keep the potter's wheel going. An alternative was the pottery wheel , which emerged in the Middle Ages . Instead of the foot disk, a wheel with spokes was used, which, when set in rotation with a stick, had the disadvantage that the potter had to interrupt his work again and again to get the wheel going. Modern pottery wheels are powered electrically.
history
The oldest pottery wheel is dated to around 3000 BC. And comes from Mesopotamia . The invention of the potter's wheel is therefore often ascribed to the Sumerians . However, there are older ceramic finds from India that suggest that the Indus culture used the fast-rotating potter's wheel as early as the 5th millennium BC. Chr. Knew. In Egypt , too , the potter's wheel had been around since the 3rd millennium BC. Known. It is possible that the foot-powered potter's wheel was invented there. Around the same time, the wagon wheel , which is based on the use of the same machine element, became known. There are not many finds of pottery wheels, but there are a number of representations, including on Egyptian paintings showing potters at work.
literature
- SK Doherty: The origins and use of the potter's wheel in ancient Egypt . Oxford, Archaeopress 2015.
- Adolf Rieth , Günter Groschopf: 5000 years of the potter's wheel , Kabitzsch, Leipzig 1939; Thorbecke, Konstanz 1960 DNB 36162493X .