The operator sits on the ground with his feet on the lower end of the wheel, revolving it rapidly or slowly as he likes, while the vessel is being formed from the lump of clay which has been placed on the top of the wheel. Our village people use many sorts of this pottery, varying in size from a jar which holds forty gallons to a small bowl which is used on the table. These earthen jars are much used about every house; they take the place of buckets in other countries. They are used for storing grain and all sorts of supplies that must be kept about the place. After the pots and jars leave the wheel, they are dried in the sunshine and then placed in a kiln, where they are baked till hard. The best quality are glazed, though many of them are left unglazed.
The blacksmith shop is an interesting place to all who take notice of such things. It is not much like the "smithy under a spreading chestnut tree" of which Mr. Longfellow has written so beautifully, though it is a smithy just the same, and cuts no small figure in the village where it stands. The forge is constructed of mud and stone, mostly of mud, with a bellows made like a box, with a few valves and doors which take in and let out the wind at every stroke of a piston which is pulled back and forth for this purpose. If it be a large shop, the bellows is constructed after the pattern of the one used in the foundry, described in another chapter. The anvil is a block of iron little larger than a man's fist, and is fastened in a block of wood only a few inches high. The smith sits or squats on the ground while he is doing his work.
