Want a kitchen utensil, a pot, or something to decorate your home? Come to the potters they make all that. Do you want to be a potter? Do you have good hands? You need to or else you'll ruin the pots. Potters worked hard to create detail and do the same pots over and over again.

Some tools they used were:

• Potter's Wheel - a wheel that turns the pottery while it is shaped by hand
• Slip cup - used to decorate the pottery with paint
• Coggle wheel - to make squares on the pottery
• Incisor - to make straight lines
• Kiln - baking oven for the pottery
• Clay cutter - to cut the clay

The potter usually worked alone. The Colonial American potters worked with many different kind of clays. The colors of the clay were reddish, brownish, or grayish. A potter's wheel was used to shape the clay. A potter's wheel is a horizontal, circular worktable that moves around a central point just like your bicycle tires turns around the hub. When the potter was satisfied with his work they would pass a tight wire under the base to remove the pot from the wheel. Then the potter would put it on a drying board. Once the drying board was filled it was put out in the sun to dry.

Now you know about the colonial potters. Maybe at your home you have something made by a potter from today!