Jomon Pottery

Jomon potter women

Let's go back to women potters about 10500 years bc...or maybe as late as 300 bc.

Cording suggests pottery originally copied net or roped vessels.

"All Jomon pots were made by hand, without the aid of a wheel, the potter building up the vessel from the bottom with coil upon coil of soft clay. As in all other Neolithic cultures, women produced these early potteries."

Source: Jomon Culture (ca. 10,500–ca. 300 B.C.) 

This is incredible detail of using coils, leaving them as decorative functions.



You may have little interest in all the archaeological data, but look at the pictures.  They are worth a thousand words.  These were made between 10,500 bc and 300 bc...before people there used a pottery wheel.  I love this picture of a rendition of how a potter might have looked working on one of these beautiful pots.

Their goddesses looked like....

"The people of the middle and late Jomon period also used clay to fashion small human figures. These figures were never fully realistic but rather were distorted into fascinating shapes. Called 'dogu,' they tend to have large faces, small arms and hands, and compact bodies.

Here is an article with some great photos about the potters from the Jomon period in Japan.

http://www.e-yakimono.net/html/jcn-11.html#tour

Isn't it great that women have made utilitarian pottery that included beautiful design for all these years?