144 ADAMS AND PRATT. 



After the pots are formed tliej^ are allowed to dry until the clay is 

 leathery. They are then given a second shaping by holding a smooth 

 stone on the inside and beating them with a wooden paddle. This. 

 renders the clay more dense and serves to overcome the tendency to crack 

 while air drying. Sometimes the pots are given a second beating. If 

 they are washed with ocher they are usually rubbed with a smooth object 

 to cause the ocher to enter the surface of the clay. The operculum of 

 some large shell is commonty used in this operation. The air-dried pots 

 are then piled on a layer of bamboo sticks or rice straw, covered with 

 more fuel and burned in the open, the burning being completed in about 

 twenty minutes. 



The manufacture of pottery in this Avay is carried on as a household 

 industry. The making of the pots is usually done by women. The 

 obtaining of the material and the marketing of the product is done by 

 the men. Certain: towns and barrios are centers of the industry and in 

 passing through them one sees the products displayed for sale in the 

 houses and dooryards and hears the beating of the pots as they are being 

 formed. The localization of the manufacture seems to depend to some 

 extent upon the pressence of Suitable clay, but more particularly upon 

 the facilities for marketing the product along routes of water trans- 

 portation. 



Introduction of Tcilns. — The use of kilns and some improvements over 

 the primitive methods of making pottery seem to have been introduced 

 under the Spanish regime in order to meet the demands of household 

 articles not found in use by the natives and to supply earthernware 

 required in certain industries. The use of kilns permitted a better burn- 

 ing of the common red ware and they produced a sufficiently high 

 temperature to semivitrify the product. 



Braziers for cooking with charcoal or wood fires are made with three projections 

 which will support a round-bottomed pot. Sometimes a small oven forms a part 

 of a brazier. If made as a separate piece, the oven can be placed on top of a 

 brazier or used as a "Dutch oven" by setting it on a bed of coals and placing fuel 

 around it and on the cover. As a substitute for the porous water jars of small 

 size, large ones are turned on potters' wheels supported by a vertical axle and 

 moved by the foot of the operator or by an- assistant. Such jars are burned to 

 semivitrification and are used for water jars in households, for collecting the 

 various saps used in making native liquors, and as containers for coconut oil. 

 As containers they are sometimes transported on pack animals, but more com- 

 monly in the native boats called bancas or cascoes. Conical-shaped receptacles 

 with a hole in the bottom called "pilones" are used in the manufacture of sugar. 

 The crude sugar is poured into these molds, where it crystallizes, the molasses 

 filtering out through the hole. The sugar cones or "sugar hats" thus formed 

 are sometimes taken from the earthernware molds, but are more commonly 

 transported in them. Large and small flowerpots of common red ware are also 

 made and occasionally bowlshaped receptacles for domestic use. 



