7.4 Potter’s Wheel

It is thought that man’s first application of rotary motion was to use log rollers to move large, heavy objects, but that the second application was the potter’s wheel some time before it was used on vehicles such as carts. This would date it to between 4 and 3,000 BC in Mesopotamia, where they are thought to have first invented the cart wheel. However, it is impossible to put a single date on the discovery of the potter’s wheel, as it has evolved over millennia and independently round the world. Using the Middle East as an example, the wheel’s earliest embodiment was a relatively easily turned simple mat or wickerwork base that helped the potter turn a pot for finishing the neck or rim or for decorating (Jericho around 6,500 BC). Perhaps the next stage occurred when the lower part of a larger vessel was made separately, possibly in a mould. When it was partially dried it might be placed in a suitably sized fired pottery bowl to protect it while coils of clay would be built up to form the upper part and rim, the process made easier by rotating the bowl. Over time turntables appeared that were easier to work, one version being two flat stones, one resting on the other at a low level and usually operated by potters squatting on the floor (probably Samarra/Halaf 6 to 5,000 BC where there is visible evidence on the pots of rotation used to form the rims). Sometimes a wooden or earthenware platform was attached to the top stone to make handling easier. The next development was to ease rotation by using a pivot. A projection would be formed on one stone and a recess on the other, akin to a circular mortice and tenon joint (Ubaid around 4,000 BC, and as a comparison in China around 4,200 BC). These “slow wheels”, or tournettes, were more a means of fast coiling and finishing rather than “throwing” as we know it today. “Throwing” a pot is a potentially confusing concept, but the word comes from the Anglo-Saxon word to “twist”.

Potter’s Wheels Egypt temple of
Knum, Reign of Claudius 41-54 AD

As the simple turntable evolved, it raised the desire for better-prepared clay and more controlled firing. These early potter’s wheels were progressively made more sophisticated, including lubrication with oil, to enable them to run faster and smoother. Each development step makes the production of pots more rapid and with higher quality (consistency and symmetry). The wheels were hand driven at this point, either by the potter himself or perhaps by an assistant, often a child. This “faster’ wheel probably appeared in Sumer around 3,250 BC, Egypt 2,750 BC and Troy in Anatolia 2,500 BC compared with around 3,000 BC in China. Such a “faster” wheel is the first one with the potential for the centrifugal force of the pot to be balanced by the pressure of a skilled potter’s fingers on the clay. As early as 2,500 BC the Egyptians had a pivoted wheel with detachable top and large low wheelhead. By the late Egyptian Old Kingdom (before 2,200 BC) potters were sufficiently skilled to be able to draw up the wall of a vessel with one hand while rotating the wheel with the other, pretty close to “throwing” a pot. This was made easier around 2,000 BC by increasing the mass, therefore the momentum, of the spinning wheel. A further development was to make the top stone a working table with a pedestal and pivot so the potter could sit more comfortably or stand to operate it, and a 1,800 BC Egyptian wall painting showed such a tall-stemmed wheel.