64 POTTERY MANUFACTURE. 



348), of pottery-making in Fiji, as it exactly suits my description of 

 pottery-making in these islands of Bougainville Straits. 



It will be interesting, perhaps, to briefly notice some of the grada- 

 tions in the art of pottery manufacture amongst the savage races in 

 this quarter of the globe. A very simple method, as recorded by 

 Captain Forrest^ more than a century ago, was employed by the 

 women of Dory Harbour, New Guinea. They formed " pieces of 

 clay into earthen pots ; with a pebble in one hand to put into it, 

 whilst they held in the other hand, also a pebble, with which they 

 knocked, to enlarge and smooth it." The natives of the Andaman 

 Islands ^ advance another step in the process. We learn from Mr. 

 Man that the only implements employed are, an Area shell, a short 

 pointed stick, and a board. The clay is rolled out into strips with 

 the hand. One of these strips is twisted to form the cup-like base ; 

 and the pot is then built up strip by strip. The method employed 

 by the natives of Bougainville Straits in the Solomon Group, may be 

 considered to be an improvement on the plan adopted by the Anda- 

 man Islanders. As already described, they also fashion the c'ay into 

 strips and build up the vessel in a similar manner, but in the 

 employment of a special implement as the wooden beater, in the use 

 of the ring-cushion, and probably in tlie more artistic details of the 

 process, they make a nearer approach than do the Andaman Islanders 

 to the pottery-making of the Fijians. Then we come in the ascending- 

 scale to the method employed by the women of the Motu tribe 

 around Port Moresby, New Guinea. By the Rev. Dr. W. Turner,^ 

 we are informed that they use a round smooth stone and a wooden 

 beater but no cushion, the vessel being made without the aid of 

 strips of clay into two pieces, the body and the mouth, which are 

 moulded together. This method, as employed by the Motu women, 

 may not be superior to that followed amongst the women of Bou- 

 gainville Straits ; but inasmuch as the former manufacture three 

 kinds of vessels, one for holding water, another for cooking, and a 

 third to be used as a plate, whilst the latter confine their art to the 

 cooking- pot, I have assigned the first place to the former. * From 



^ " A Voyage to New Guinea and the^Ioluccas," by Captain T. Forrest : London, 1779, p. 90. 



- Journal of the Anthropological Institute : vol. xii., p. 09. 



•■* Ibid : vol. vii., p. 470. 



* In the Ethnological Collection of the British ."Museum there are specimens from this 

 quarter of New Guinea of the wooden beaters employed in the pottery making. They are 

 highly carved and much more finished than those of Bougainville Straits, being labelled 

 "blocks ■' in the collection, as if their chief use was for imprinting patterns on the clay. It 



