Glossary Pottery and vessels
Leather-hard
The stage in drying when clay is firm enough to hold its shape but still damp enough to be trimmed, joined, incised or burnished.
At the leather-hard stage a pot can be handled without distorting it. Potters used this window to attach handles, spouts, feet and modelled figures, to cut decoration into the surface and to burnish it. Once the clay dries fully, joins fail and burnishing no longer takes.
Descriptions of Cypriot pottery refer to it often. The heads, horns and handles of Red Polished zoomorphic vessels were made separately and joined while the body was leather-hard, and Iron Age snowman figurines were thrown hollow like a pot and then given arms, noses and beards at this stage.
Related terms
- Slip
A thin coat of fine clay mixed with water, brushed or dipped over a pot before firing to give it a smoother surface and a different colour.
- Burnishing
Rubbing the surface of an unfired pot with a smooth pebble, bone or tool to compact the clay and give it a sheen after firing.
- Incised decoration
Lines or patterns cut into a surface with a sharp point; on pottery this is usually done before firing, while the clay is still soft.
- Coil-building
Building the walls of a pot from rolls of clay laid one on another in rings or a spiral, then pressed together and smoothed.