The Potter's Wheel 161 



The farmer was in urgent need of these articles, which were in large 

 demand; for "a single potter would not do in a country of ten thousand 

 families, and could not supply their wants," and "with but few potters 

 a kingdom cannot subsist." 1 



The potter's particular residence is naturally determined by the 

 sites of suitable clay, and his dependence on clay-digging excludes 

 him from towns and cities. Thus A. K. Coomaraswamy 2 observes, 

 "The Singalese potters are found all over the country in every village 

 affording the necessary clay, but often aggregated in greater numbers 

 in places where an especially good supply of suitable clay is available. 

 Thence the potter carries his pots for sale to more remote districts in 

 huge pingo loads." The same holds good for China: all kilns are lo- 

 cated in the country, and the potters supplying the wants of the villages 

 and towns are farmers themselves. 



The modifications brought about in the industry by the application 

 of the wheel were fundamental and far-reaching. Technically they led to 

 a greater rapidity and hence intensity of the process, but, above all, 

 to many new features of form, consigning many others to oblivion. 

 Likewise they resulted in a regularity, symmetry, harmony, and grace 

 of shape, in a refinement and perfection unattained heretofore. The 

 potter's art came in close touch and was set in correlation with other 

 man-made industries, particularly with that of the bronze-founder, 

 who furnished the potter with new ideas of forms and designs. 3 The 

 birth of artistic pottery was thus inaugurated. In passing from the 

 hands of woman into those of man, the whole industry was imbued 

 with a more active and vigorous spirit, and elevated to a higher plane 

 by man's creative genius. It overstepped the narrow boundary of 

 purely domestic necessity and developed into an organized system of 

 carefully-planned and skilfully-directed manufacture on a large scale 

 and with a wide scope. The ceramic work turned out by woman 

 depended on local conditions, and catered to the narrow circle of the 



1 Mong-tse, VI, 2, §§ 3 and 6 {ibid., p. 442). 



2 Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, p. 218. 



1 W. Hough (Man and Metals, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 

 Vol. II, 1916, p. 125) justly insists on the intimate connection of clay and metal 

 working. The activity of the ancient sovereigns of China is likened not only to 

 that of the potter, but also to that of the founder. Potter and founder pjjj ^ are 

 frequently mentioned together (for instance, by Mong-tse: Legge, Chinese Classics, 

 Vol. II, p. 248). The correlation of the mortuary pottery of the Han with corre- 

 sponding types in bronze has been shown by me in detail. The same phenomenon 

 occurs in the prehistoric ceramic art of central Europe, where imported Roman 

 bronze vessels were imitated and reproduced in clay (see particularly A. Voss, 

 Nachahmungen von Metallgcfassen in der prahistorischen Keramik, Verh. Berl. 

 Anthr. Ces., Vol. XXXIII, 1901, pp. 277-284). 



