A good place to start would be with what I even am. As you know, I'm Herb the potsherd, but what does that really mean?
Pottery is made out of clay. Clay is made out of very small pieces of rock, usually mixed with other larger pieces of rock and pieces of things like shells, sand, and minerals. In nature, clay can look like this:
I'm not crazy, I promise! I'm sure you're wondering how I came from this... wonder no more!
Once a potter, or anyone with hands and a fire, got the clay, they still had to add more. Clay can be shaped when it is wet, but it also is very sticky because it loves to suck up water. So, to make it less sticky, straw, ash, sand, or even poop is added! These don't suck up water, so they make the clay the perfect mix of wet but shapeable!
Now, shaping.
Pots can be made by hand, but not me! I was made on a potter's wheel, just a spinning table top! The potter used one hand to spin the table, and one hand to shape the pot. This process is represented by this Egyptian figurine:
Pottery making is represented in Egyptian art, such as here:
On the table, the potter would spin the table as the clay was shaped and pulled. Using a pottery wheel leaves special marks, the biggest being a spiral of ridges that handmade pots do not have. They can be very regular, which would have only been possible on a wheel. These type of ridges can be seen here:
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| THIS ONE NEEDS A CITATION |
Can you see the ridges? They perfectly beautiful that they couldn't have been done without a wheel! And a master potter of course!
With the basic shape done, handmade handles and other decoration were added!
Ready to be fired???
Uh no!!!!
When pottery is wet, there is a lot of air in it. And when pottery is fired with air in it... it EXPLODES.
What a waste of time!
To make sure a perfect pot doesn't explode, it needs to air dry before it can be fired, so there are no air bubbles in the clay. It also needs to dry slowly, because if clay dries too fast, it can crack. Longer process than you thought?
But, alas! It's finally time to be fired!
I bet you're wondering why I'm being fired, when I already said that I am dry?
Well, drying takes out most of the water from me, but there is still water tightly bonded within my particles that air just can't get to. So, firing takes out all of the remaining water that is too tightly packed in my particles. This makes me super hard.
I was fired at a perfect temperature for just the right amount of time, which allowed me to come out this uniform, perfect color.
If I was fired for too long at too high of a temperature, I would have slumped over. However, I needed to be fired long enough for my particles to get nice and close together so that they could be super strong. If I had a very dark core, that would have meant I wasn't fired long enough at a high enough temperature.
Because I turned out this perfect color, I know that I was fired perfectly. What a skilled potter I had!
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