The manufacturing of this article, as said, is exclusively the work of women. They sit in groups of two or three under the houses, surrounded by big clumps of clay and the implements of their craft, and produce in these very shabby and mean conditions, veritable masterpieces of their art. Personally I had only the opportunity of seeing groups of very old women at work, although I spent about a month in the Amphletts.
With regard to the technology of pot-making, the method is that of first roughly moulding the clay into its form and then beating with a spatula and subsequently scraping the walls to the required thinness with a mussel-shell. To give the description in detail, a woman starts first by kneading a certain amount of clay for a long time. Of this material she makes two semi-circular clumps, or several clumps, if a big pot is to be made. These clumps are then placed in a ring, touching one another upon a flat stone or board, so that they form a thick, circular roll (Plate XLIV, top). The woman now begins to work this roll with both hands, gradually pressing it together, and at the same time bringing it up all round into a slanting wall (see Plate XLIV, bottom). Her left hand works as a rule on the inside, and her right on the outside of this wall; gradually it begins to shape into a semi-spherical dome. On the top of the dome there is a hole, through which the woman thrusts her left hand, working with it on the inside of the dome (see Plate XLV, top). At first the main movements of her hands were from downward up, flattening out the rolls into thin walls. The traces of her fingers going up and down on the outside leave longitudinal furrows (see details on Plate XLV, top). Towards the end of this stage her hands move round and round, leaving concentric, horizontal marks on the dome. This is continued until the pot has assumed a good curvature all round.