MOULD FOR
A CUP.
And do you know what the potter’s-wheel is? It’s as old as the hills and it’s in the Bible, but I guess everybody don’t know what it is. It looks as if it was made of hard, smooth, baked white clay, and is something like a grindstone, only not half as thick. The grindstone stands up, but this lays flat, with its round side turned up, like the head of a barrel. And it’s set on a pivot, like the needle of the compass in our geographies.
The moulds are like Miss Fanny’s wax-fruit moulds. They’re made of plaster Paris, and they’re round outside, and they have the shape of what the man wants to make on the inside, and they’re in two pieces. Little things like cups are made in one mould; but big things like pitchers are made in two or three pieces, in two or three moulds, and then put together. Handles and spouts and such things are made separately in little moulds and put on afterwards.
HANDLE
MOULD.
Here’s the way. First the man cuts off a piece of the biscuit, and kneads it on the plaster Paris slab. Then he takes one piece of the mould, fixes the clay in nicely, shaves off what he don’t want, then puts on the other piece of the mould, and sets it on the wheel. He gives it a shove and sets it spinning. It stops itself after a while, then he opens the mould, and there is the dish. The clay keeps the same thickness all through, and fills both pieces of the mould.
