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Tools and Equipment

Potter's Wheel

Also Known As Potter's Lathe
Ceramics and Pottery Tools

The rotating platform on which clay is centered and thrown into round vessels. One of the earliest machines to exploit rotary motion, it turned pottery from a coiled handcraft into a fast, precise trade, and centering clay on a spinning wheel head remains the defining skill every new potter must win. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Introduced When (Circa)
In use in Mesopotamia by the fourth millennium BC, with slower turntables earlier 1
Origin
The oldest known potter's wheel, from the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture in western Ukraine, has been dated to the middle of the 5th millennium BC. 1
Introduced era (class)
Classical Antiquity 1
Connections

Used In

Pottery, Crafts
Source Potter's Wheel (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Potter's Wheel (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • History section
    A potter's wheel in western Ukraine, from the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture, has been dated to the middle of the 5th millennium BC, and is the oldest ever found
  • Lead section
    A potter's wheel may occasionally be referred to as a 'potter's lathe'
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