To make the clay take on the desired shape, man has used different techniques. Moorcroft Pottery consists of preparing sticks or strips of clay that come in fresh, one on top of the other, to form a container. The strips are then well mixed together with the fingers and the exterior carefully smoothed.
Matrix piece. It consists in preparing a model (matrix) of inverse form and contrary to the type of object to be obtained. The very fresh clay is compressed on the matrix so that it occupies all the empty spaces. The two parts can then be easily separated after drying thanks to the significant reduction in clay volume, due to the evaporation loss of the water contained in it.
The lathe piece. Already at the end of the fourth millennium BC man invented the lathe that saves a lot of time in making clay pots. The lathe, as well as being remarkably precise, allows the mass production of objects of the same size on a circular basis.
Before the discovery of electricity, man’s strength was used to move lathes into ancient furnaces used for Moorcroft Pottery. Already in the Middle Ages the potter’s lathe assumed the aspect that it maintained until a few years ago; this lathe is still widely used in countries where modern technology is less common.
The antique lathe is a very simple machine, which consists of two wheels of different sizes, one of which is much larger and heavier than the other, connected by means of a shaft.
The larger wheel is placed at the bottom, in such a way that, by pushing it with the foot, it causes an identical rotation in the small one for Moorcroft Pottery.
The inertia of the lower wheel, due to its greater weight, allows the potter not to continuously push the machine and above all to work the clay without the rotation braking abruptly. This simple mechanism was inserted in a counter where the attendant, called a lathe, could sit. The coatings used in European medieval and post-medieval ceramics (Renaissance, modern) were basically of three types:
Ceramics with transparent or semi-transparent coating, also called glazed ceramic, obtained with simple lead oxide or with the addition of dyes. Ceramics with an opaque earth-based coating, called ceramic, protected by a layer of glossy glass. Ceramics with coating based on silica, tin oxide and lead, with a glossy white background.
Once the clay or Moorcroft Pottery works have been shaped, they must be cooked after gradually allowing them to dry. Clay firing, if not of such quality as to allow the achievement of very high temperatures, returns a porous product (the biscuit), which absorbs liquids, but can be made impermeable by applying one of these types of coating.
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