Museum Day

Today we visited the the Ancient Kiln Museum. It was not your typical museum filled with relics from the past, it was more of a living-history type of deal. They had studios set up with the traditional wheels what potters were throwing and trimming on. The wheels have a counter weight on the bottom. The potter would use a stick placed in a hole in the top of the wheel and spin the wheel as fast as necessary. He would then remove the stick and throw each pot using the momentum of that one bit of turning. In addition to the thrower and the trimmer there were also decorators and carvers, and even a shrine to the kiln god. Were were able to walk inside of the large egg-shaped kiln that had to have had a15-20 foot ceiling (but don't quote me on that). I'm not sure how it would compare area wise to the dragon kiln, but it was pretty huge. This is a picture of one of the trimmers working in the traditional method of dry trimming.