Potter's wheel

“ Yet some people who have it not are happy; for instance, the two hundred and odd millions of India--but then to them Birth and Death are alike the pivot on which the wheel of life spins.
So thought the potter of Hodinuggur. So had thought his fathers who lay buried in the dust beside him, and though the old man had no son to step on to the treadles when his feet slipped from them, the wheel span steadily, and the women of the village, as they rung the temper of the water-jars before they bought them, nodded their heads saying--'Fuzl is a good potter. Look you, it comes with a man's birth. ”

“ If a potter’s wheel be meant, I consider it as certainly possible for a person to stand upon it whilst it revolves with the greatest velocity, and even to read or write; but it would be necessary to lift up the legs, in turn, with the utmost quickness. ”

“ No further advance seems to have been made before the 17th century, when the wheel was spun by means of a cord working over a pulley; and though a steam-driven wheel was introduced in the middle of the 19th century, this form remains the best for the production of fine pottery.
A prevalent misconception with regard to the potter’s wheel needs correction. For anything beyond very simple shapes it is impossible to carry the work to completion on the wheel at one operation as is generally imagined. ”

“ To obtain a perfectly round form, we need the potter’s wheel, whose rotation makes up for our want of skill; to enlarge his snowball and make it into the enormous sphere which he will end by being unable to move, the schoolboy rolls it in the snow: the rolling gives it the regularity which the direct work of the hands, guided by an inexperienced eye, would not. ”

“ If a potter's wheel is an upright spindle with a little wheel on it turned by a band that goes over a big wheel, and my mother's wheel is a level spindle with a little wheel on it turned by a band that goes over a big wheel, then what's the reason, if my mother's wheel is turned upside down, the spindle won't be upright, just as Uncle Seth said [Pg 247] a potter's wheel was? And then if there was a round piece put on top to put the clay on, and you turned the big wheel, it would turn the clay. ”

“ The wheel-pottery was as sacred to some cults as the hand-made was to others. Even the potter’s wheel was sacred. In Egypt the Ptah cult adopted it, as has been stated; in India it was a symbol of the Creator; in China (as in ancient Egypt) the idea originally prevailed that the Creator was a potter who turned on his wheel the sun and the moon, man and woman, although in time this myth became a philosophical abstraction. The symbolism of Jeremiah has similarly a history:
“O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? ”

“ Now, this potter's wheel is one of the most ancient instruments of human industry, one of the earliest inventions by which man utilized and economized his labour. It consists of a large disc of wood, to which a rotatory motion is given by the workman's foot. A second and smaller disc, on which is placed the paste for working, is fixed upon the upper extremity of the vertical axis to which the larger and inferior disc is attached. ”

“ A little farther on is a potter spinning a wheel with his feet, while the soft lump of dull-coloured clay takes shape beneath his clever thumb as it races round. It seems to grow and swell and curve exquisitely as if it were a living thing. There are few sights more fascinating than a potter at work. ”

“ Wheel head with detached bat.
Throwing is not an easy operation to describe but the following instructions in the form of lessons will, with a large amount of practice, enable the student to become fairly expert. Every opportunity should be taken to watch a good potter at work. There are a thousand and one little tricks in the position of the arms, hands, thumbs and fingers which are impossible to describe but which can easily be copied. If a kick wheel be used some time must be given to practicing the motion without using clay. ”

“ If you didn't twist the bit of brown worsted stolen from your sister's work-basket, then the birds slackened--slackened like the potter's wheel. Oh! it was a lifetime of twisting, or there you were plumb, burning with a horrid smell. When the factotum sat in the room the blackbirds didn't; but then he breathed. Wasn't it rough that a man could not stop breathing for half-an-hour just to oblige a friend? Yet if the breathing beast sat outside, a 'whittering, beast came in its place. 'Whitter! Whitter!' under the bed ”

“ The wheel is the true fountain head of all beautiful shapes, and the student who would become a potter cannot get “on the wheel” too soon. Throwing, sometimes spinning, is the term applied to the making of shapes on the wheel. Interesting and really fine pots may be built or cast, but the ultimate appeal rests with the thrown shape. ”

“ Thou spring'st a leak already in thy crown;
A flaw is in thy ill-baked vessel found;
'Tis hollow, and returns a jarring sound.
Yet thy moist clay is pliant to command,
Unwrought, and easy to the potter's hand:
Now take the mould; now bend thy mind to feel
The first sharp motions of the forming wheel. ”

“ This is the only place in ancient literature in which the action of the foot in wheelwork is referred to. In the second century B.C., therefore, we might assume the knowledge of the kick-wheel, though it may well have been in use long before then, since it is a simple and obvious device. Where labor, however, was cheap and plentiful, as in fifth-century Athens, a slave boy turning the wheel for the potter, whose whole strength and attention could then be expended on his work, would be preferable; and this is the manner in which wheelwork is depicted in Athenian vase paintings (cf. pp. 64 ff) . ”

“ All that the potter can do while the clay is soft enough to “throw” on the wheel is to get a rough shape of even thickness. This operation completed, the piece is removed from the wheel and set aside to dry. ”

“ Even such a Potter were Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and lie at ease, that would not work and spin! Of an idle unrevolving man the kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can bake and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what expensive coloring, what gilding and enameling she will, he is but a botch. ”

“ So is the potter sitting at his work, and turning the wheel about with his feet, who is always anxiously set at his work, and all his handiwork is by number; he will fashion the clay with his arm, and will bend its strength in front of his feet ”

“ Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure. ”

“ But if the Huzoor wants songs he must come to the outer court. The wheel is there now. Will not the Huzoor come?'
He moved away like a plover luring an intruder from its nest, but George paused again to listen to a repetition of the quick, low cough.
'Who is that ill?' he asked unwarily. The potter echoed the sound instantly.
'It is I who cough, Huzoor,' he went on, still moving away. Pity of God, how I cough! And I have fever, too. Mercy of the Most High! fever always with mutterings hard to understand. But 'tis no matter. The potters of Hodinuggur do not die ”

“ The simplest wheel is that used by the Chinese. A circular plate with a heavy rim is set upon a spindle so that it will revolve freely and run steadily. As the workman sits or kneels upon the floor the surface of the wheel is about at the floor level. Around the periphery and upon the upper surface four holes are sunk and the workman, inserting a short stick into [75] one of these, gives the wheel a rapid motion. Then while it is revolving by its own momentum the clay is centered and shaped. As the motion is lost the stick is again inserted and the wheel spun. ”

“ The stones in the road soon begin to work up to the surface, and remain there like so many footballs for every horse to kick as he passes over them. A horse-path naturally forms in the centre of the road, and wheel-ruts upon either side, which make excellent channels for the water to run in during every rain-storm. ”

“ If a gas engine or a water motor or electric current be available, every effort should be made to obtain a wheel of this description. The prime motion is imparted to a short horizontal shaft which moves at a constant speed. Then the operator, seated in comfort, regulates the speed of the wheel itself by pressure upon a treadle. No action is required but a simple pressure, light for a slow speed and heavy for rapidity. Where the electric current is available, nothing could be better. Self-contained motor-driven wheels are available but are rather expensive. ”

“ The regular operation performed upon the wheel is termed either throwing or turning according to the industry in which it is employed, but in this description the word "throwing" will be used because the subsequent operation in which tools are employed is best described as turning. ”

“ Potters turn the wheel which moves neither backward nor forward and at the same time imitates the rotation of the universe, and on this same wheel as it whirls they make things of all kinds, no one of them like another, from the same materials with the same tools. ”

“ La Place does not explode the boiler to make his planets, but merely runs his train so fast as to break an axle every now and then, when the wheel runs off with the velocity it has got, and keeps its track as well as if it had an engineer to guide it, grows into a little locomotive by dint of running, and after a while breaks an axle too—breaking is a hereditary failing of these suns and planets that had no God to make them—and the wheels thus thrown off supply it with moons and rings, like Saturn's. ”

“ All such elements tend to diminish simple efficiency. They are like the additional and solely-ornamental wheels introduced into the clocks of the Middle Ages, which tell the then age of the moon or the supreme constellation;—which make little men or birds come out and in theatrically. All such ornamental work is a source of friction and error; it prevents the time being marked accurately; each new wheel is a new source of imperfection. ”

“ But all this is a part of that equilibration of thought and action by which we conquer the universe in conquering ourselves.
I finally concluded that all failure was from a wobbling will rather than a wobbling wheel. I felt that indeed the will is the wheel of the mind—its perpetual motion having been learned when the morning stars sang together. When the wheel of the mind went well then the rubber wheel hummed merrily; but specters of the mind there are as well as of the wheel. ”

“ There is nothing like a wheel in nature. Levers we have in our own physical frame. But a wheel is something that is distinctly a human creation. Whoever invented it must have been a real genius, a James Watt or a Thomas Edison of his day. Certainly we owe more to the invention of the wheel than we do even to so revolutionary a machine as the steam engine, or the flying machine. ”

“ I am what is known as a fifth wheel—a useless piece of paraphernalia carried along as necessary impedimenta on other people's journeys.
There are lots of fifth wheels in the world. Some are old and rusty and out of repair, and down in their inmost hubs they long to roll off into the gutter and lie there quiet and undisturbed. These are the old people—silver-haired, self-effacing—who go upstairs to bed early when guests are invited for dinner. ”

“ In outlining the necessary mechanism, as he conceived it, he was gradually led to consider the general and more fascinating problem of perpetual motion itself, with the result that he waxed somewhat enthusiastic when he thought that he saw the possibility of constructing an ever-turning wheel in which the motive power would be magnetic attraction, the attraction of a lodestone for a number of iron teeth arranged at equal distances on the periphery of a wheel. ”

“ Ah! how true to nature and yet how grand. How broad and sweeping. How melodious and yet how real. Hone but the true poet would have thought to compare the close of life to the sudden and unfortunate chuck of the off hind wheel of a lumber wagon into a rut.
In fancy we can see it all. We hear the low, sad kerplunk of the wheel, the loud burst of earnest, logical profanity, and then all is still.
How and then the swish of a mule's tail through the air, or the sigh of the rawhide as it shimmers and hurtles through the silent air, and then a calm falls upon the scene. ”

“ And as for writing and reading on a wheel that all the while keeps whirling, I do not deny the wonder of it, but what pleasure such a marvel can present, I cannot for the life of me discover. Nor do I see how it is a whit more charming to watch these fair young people twisting about their bodies and imitating wheels than to behold them peacefully reposing. ”

“ Begetting once again the wheel that yearns—
Sick with its speed—for the terrible stillness
Of the adamant core and the steel-hard chain.
And so once more
Shall the wheel revolve till its anguish cease
In the iron anguish of fixity ”

“ He expatiates on the exquisite order in which wheel rotates within wheel, but not having heard, he cannot be shocked by the grating of each as it turns upon its axis for discord sets the primary wheel in motion, and its jarring is felt through the whole machine. ”

“ The tramp walks. His road is one that may only be walked upon. People on wheels are never on it: at least, I never met a wheel person who had seen on either side of the road what the tramp sees—and a road is not only a path, but that which is about it. The wheel is the great enemy of Nature, whether it be the wheel of a machine or of a vehicle. Nature abhors wheels. She will not be wooed by cyclists, motorists, goggled motor-cyclists, and the rest: she is not like a modern young lady who, despite ideals, must marry, and will take men as they are found in her day and generation. ”