Description:Lantern slide showing a thrower and assistant at work.
This lantern slide appears to be one of a group used for a presentation or slide show by Blake entitled “Staffordshire Pottery.”
A small folder containing approximately sixty reader cards was found in the same box as the slides. The cards contain information about the images. The cards that appear to correspond to this slide read;
"The Potters Wheel. Women as the motive power in the Throwing Shop are now entirely superseded by steam and electricity. Thrown ware is so called because a ball of clay is thrown down on the horizontal wheel to which it adheres. It is then shaped, while revolving, by the potters hand. In factory practice a mould is placed on the wheel & lined with clay by hand. Uniformity in shape and size is secured thereby".
"The Potters Wheel. In hand formed ware the joints of the workers [sic] fingers inevitably leave grooves round [sic] the plastic material. This grooving can usually be detected in the finished article and are characteristic."