Potter's Wheel

pottery · clay · ancient craft · spinning

Spinning clay. A potter's wheel is a round machine that spins really fast, letting artists gently push clay into smooth bowls, pots, and vases while the wheel does the spinning work for them.

Trimming and decorating. Once a pot is partially dried but still soft (called leather-hard), potters can spin it on the wheel again to trim away extra clay or add pretty rings of color and patterns.

Old World invention. The potter's wheel became super popular across Europe, Africa, and Asia, but people in the Americas before Columbus arrived never used wheels for pottery, making their pots by hand instead.

Ancient hand methods. Before the wheel became common, potters in the Americas built pots by coiling long ropes of clay and beating them together, or shaping them by hand piece by piece.