Preparing clay in Thanh Hà village

The clay goes through a repetitive process to be smoothed out. From the storage pile of clay, big chunks are cut out using the nê and thrown on a big plastic bag that has been laid on the floor. When two or three of these are piled up, they are repetitively cut with the theo into fine messy slices. At this point, the clay is sprinkled with water if necessary. Finally, the worker steps heavily on it to compress it and smooth it out. Once the whole pile has been compressed, some more chunks are added to the pile and the process is repeated. When enough clay has been smoothed for the potter to work for at least the following day, another plastic bag is laid on the floor and the pile of clay goes through the exact same process again, twice.