1 62 Beginnings of Porcelain 



home community. The widened horizon of man led him to search for 

 clays and other materials in distant localities, and to trade his finished 

 product over the established routes of commerce in exchange for other 

 goods. It was due to the introduction of the wheel that ceramic 

 labor was afforded the opportunity of growing out of a mere communal, 

 clannish, or tribal industry into a national and international factor of 

 economic value. 1 



In the suburbs and villages around Peking, where pottery is manu- 

 factured, two kinds of wheel are in use. The two specimens illustrated 

 on Plates XI and XII were secured near Peking by the writer in 1903, 

 and are in the American Museum of Natural History, New York. The 

 one is made of a hat-shaped mass of clay, which is hardened by the 

 addition of pig's hair and straw. This wheel is employed for turning 

 out circular vessels of small and medium sizes, and may be regarded 

 as the common, typical wheel used throughout northern China. The 

 other wheel consists of a weighty stone disk made in the great indus- 

 trial centre, the town Huai-lu in Shan-si Province. It serves for the 

 making of round and heavy vessels of large dimensions. 2 A round 

 wooden board is placed on the stone disk as support or table on which 

 the mass of clay is shaped. The difference between the clay and stone 

 wheels, accordingly, is one of degree only, not of type; indeed, they 

 represent the same type, and are identical in their mechanical con- 

 struction. Both wheels revolve on a wooden vertical axis, the lower 

 extremity of which is fixed into a pit, so that the upper surface of the 

 disk lies on the same level as the floor of the shed in which the potter 

 works. The latter squats on the ground in front of the wheel, and sets 

 it in motion by means of a wooden stick, which is inserted in a shallow 

 cavity near the periphery of the stone disk. While the disk continues 

 to twirl, a lump of clay is thrown upon it and worked by the potter 

 with both of his hands: he vigorously presses his thumbs downward, 

 shaping the bottom of the jar, then draws them upward, and it seems 

 as though by magic the walls of the vessel come running out of his 



1 With reference to the La-Tene period, these changes are well characterized 

 by H. Schmidt in his excellent article Keramik, in the Reallexikon der germanischen 

 Altertumskunde, edited by J. Hoops (Vol. Ill, p. 36). 



2 Aside from China, stone wheels seem to occur in India, but only occasionally 

 (H. H. Cole, Catalogue of the Objects of Indian Art in the South Kensington 

 Museum, p. 201). H. R. C. Dobbs {Journal of Indian Art, No. 57, p. 3) remarks 

 that in the north-west provinces of India wheels are made either of clay, or stone, or 

 wood, but most commonly of clay. The difference is merely one of durability: 

 a clay wheel lasts about five years and can be made in four days without cost to the 

 potter; a wooden wheel lasts for about ten years, being made by a local carpenter 

 for Rs. 1-8 ; a stone wheel will last a lifetime, and is usually brought from Mirzapur 

 or Indore at an average cost of Rs. 4. 



