Processing clay in Thanh Hà village: Slicing clay 1/2

A pile of clay (on the right) has already been processed once and is going through the treatment a second time. Nguyễn Thị Thủy has taken some clay from that pile to make a second one. It can be seen that the bottom of that pile as already been smashed into pieces and steped on for the second time. She is now cutting a newly added chunk of clay into fine messy slices with the tool, called "nê". After that, she will steps heavily on the clay to compress it and smooth it out. The whole process will be repeated a third time for the whole pile to ensure it is smooth enough to worked with.