IIERAMIC STUDIO 
III 
vegetable in common use for food. At various points in the 
islands have been found saucer-shaped dishes of a bright 
terra-cotta color, some of them displaying beautiful tints of 
amber, brown and gold. Large spherical jars for holding water, 
with short necks and footless, like the cooking pots, are made 
in large numbers. It is doubly curious that this unstable form 
should have extended to the water-jars, which of all things one 
would suppose should be able to stand upright without assis- 
tance. Some of the more fanciful articles have very quaint 
forms, the potter having evidently modeled her jars after 
various kinds of fruit and other common objects. One — an 
oil vessel — evidently was intended to represent a cluster of 
oranges. A small bottle was fashioned after a specimen of 
bread-fruit with a slice of the rind removed. Carved wooden 
cups, too, are sometimes imitated in pottery, while other 
articles are modeled like canoes and other objects with which 
their minds are I'eadily associated. 
The process, which is about the same whatever may be the 
form of the object to be manufactured, is known as "coiling", 
and may be described as follows : The potter takes a lump of 
clamp clay in one hand and presses into it a round stone 
(which is to be the bottom of the jar) held in the other, molding 
the clay up over the sides of the stone with a flat, smooth piece 
of wood shaped like a spoon. Fresh claj^ is added in long 
sausage-shaped n)lls, the stone being still held inside, while he 
clay is patted and pressed with the piece of wood from the 
outside. In due course, the shoulders of the jar are rounded, 
the lip added, the first smoothing-over completed, and the jar 
is made. 
After being allowed to dry in the siui for some time, the 
pots are first baked on a light straw fire and afterwards with 
wood, and while still hot are glazed with the heated resin of the 
ndakua pine, very similar to the Kaviri pine of New Zealand, 
which yields a beautiful amber-like gum. 
The ware is generally yellowish red, the tint varying with 
the kind of clay used. 
In one or two districts, instead of building up a series of 
cla^^ sausages, the women beat out a flat piece of clay on their 
hand, and then gradually mold it into a cup-like form over a 
smooth stone with the aid of a wooden spoon. After drying 
for several days, the pot is taken to a sheltered nook, where a 
pile of light wood and sticks is built. On this the pot is laid, 
covered over with sticks. Fire is then applied and kept burn- 
ing for about half an hour. Then, while still hot, the pot is 
well rubbed with a dark red dye — an infusion of mangrove- 
bark — which gives it a slight glaze and a red color. Fiji pots 
are often decorated around the neck' and shoulders with dots 
and lines, which are incised in the clay while still moist. 
Yellow Mustard 
BLUE PRINT STUDIES— LETA HORLOCKER 
