Writings From Around The World: Burmese pottery

This is our fourth day on the Irrawaddy. Today was relaxing except for a village visit this morning. This village was slightly different from others - in the village they make terra-cotta pots which is how the entire village makes it’s living. The pots are incredibly cheap. A 2 gallon water pot, could be only 50 cents. The currency here is kyats (pronounced ‘chats’) and there are 1000 kyats to a dollar. All of the pots are completely hand made and no machinery is used except for a manually turned pottery wheel which is made from a single piece of stone that has been chipped into a circular flat shape. It is a two person process and two people can make 50 two gallon pots each day or 100 flower vases. After a pot is shaped, it is dried in the sun for several hours and then patterns are added. Most villages have their own pattern. Once the pattern is on, the pots will dry for a couple of days until they are hard, and when the village has made 2500 two gallon pots, they make a single use kiln that can hold all of them. The villagers lay down straw and wood on the ground and then lay the pots in a dome shape on top of it. Then they will cover the pile with ashes of a previous fire, plus more straw and wood and then they will light fire to the kiln which will burn for two days. This kiln is colder than permanent kilns running at 500-600F. The pots don’t use glaze so they don’t need the kiln to be any hotter than that.

The school in this village was relatively small. All five grades are crammed into the space of all three 6th grade rooms with a total of approximately 100 children. The rule seems to be that as long as the teacher is talking, you must talk as well! Although I think that was because everyone was excited to see foreigners. Most villages seem to have a lot of animals, but this one seemed to have very few in comparison. Only a couple of fat pigs.

A couple of days ago we visited another village that also specializes in pottery. They use clay rather than terra-cotta and glaze on their pots. Also, their pots were huge 50 gallon ones. They are made by a different process and unlike the other village, it’s the man that does the shaping of the pot, not the woman and these pot’s do not have a pattern on them. One couple can make a maximum of 5 of these pots per day. After several days, once the pots have dried out, they are put in a permanent kiln that can hold 60 pots at a time and runs at a temperature of 1100F. A kiln is constantly being stoked with wood that is cut down by a two man saw and an axe. It is much more labor intensive than a chain saw! The only mechanical thing is a very old truck to carry the wood between locations.