Fashioning cooking pots in Thanh Hà village 1/2

Nguyễn Thị Thủy sits in front of the wheel. She has already flatten a patty in the center and rolled a coil on top of it. When this is done, Nguyễn Thị Bê sets the wheel in motion with her right foot. Nguyễn Thị Thủy takes a wet piece of cloth and presses it on the rough out from bottom to top to smooth out the joins of the coil. This also reduces the diameter of the form. She then places her cloth on top of the rough out and pushes it at the centre to open it up and create the hollow shape of the rough out. Doing so, she pushes down the clay making the whole shape shorter but the walls thicker. She opens the shape, allowing her to go down to the bottom, to smooth out the joins of the coil on the inside. When the joins are smoothed out, Nguyễn Thị Thủy uses her right hand with the cloth on the inside and her index knuckle on the outside to draw up the wall in a slow movement from bottom to top. She also makes sure that the upper part is thick enough to shape the rim. Starting from the bottom, Nguyễn Thị Thủy presses the clay out against the wooden tool to round out the shape. She then uses her fingers to pull out and flatten the rim. She takes bake the wooden tool on her left hand and the metallic scraper on her right hand. With her left hand on the outside and her right hand on the inside, she pushes out the clay a second time, trimming it slighting with the scraper inside. Finally, she perfects the shape of both the rim and the body with her fingers, before using a wire to cut off the pot from the wheel. Nguyễn Thị Bê will take the pot away to dry.