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vessels turned to the same height and volume would have an equivalent
and uniform wall thickness —an important consideration in
burning. It bears noting that Cheever would, on occasion, test the
volume capacity of his ware using half-gallon glass jars for a standard.
(Lanier presently uses one-gallon plastic milk jugs for the same
purpose.) Thus, when a customer complained that he was being
shorted on volume, Cheever could safely offer to prove the worth in
his ware — provided the skeptic was willing to pay for overage.
After weighing, the potter would next begin to work his clay into an
airless ball, kneeding it like bread dough and slicing it repeatedly over
a taut wire. Called wedging the clay, mis energetic process commonly
fell in earlier years to a ball boy, who worked up several oblate spheres
at a time, placing them to the potter's left as he turned at the wheel. As
the potter set the finished vessels off to his right, the same ball boy
would also remove them for drying to a separate part of the shop.
Wetting the headblock, the Meaders potter threw one of the
prepared balls down as close to dead-center as he could. "The main
thing about turning a churn or any kind of pot," offered Lanier, "is
learning how to center the clay on the wheel. Unless that is done to start
with, well, you might as well not try it." Both Lanier and his father
could shift a smaller ball to the center of the revolving wheel by hand
pressure, but a large ball had to be more nearly centered to begin
with.
Once in position, the potter opened the clay mass with his hand and
wim a contrivance known as a ball opener, a hinged wooden lever
attached to the wheel crib. In addition to drilling a center hole in the
spinning clay, the device also served as a bottom gauge, mat is, its action
was halted one-half inch above the headblock. Potters who eschewed
using a ball opener/bottom gauge were courting trouble, in Cheever's
estimation: "That's to give me the thickness of the bottom. If the
bottoms is too thin or too thick, they will crack in drying and then in
firing" (fig. 19).
In pulling up or running up a cylinder, the potter made several
smooth motions, contouring and shaping the sides of the cylinder with
each pull. All vertical pottery started in this fashion with the potter's
hands, one inside and the other outside the cylinder, carefully
drawing it higher. A rule of thumb at this stage, according to Lanier,
was to maintain a top diameter narrower than the bottom diameter:
"If the top of it ever gets larger than the bottom, you'll usually lose it."
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