Maney Publishing

SLIP CASTING: A CERAMIC TECHNIQUE INVENTED IN ANCIENT PERU

Author(s): Lawrence E. Dawson
Source: Ñawpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology, No. 2 (1964), pp. 107-111
Published by: Maney Publishing
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27977577 .
Accessed: 27/10/2014 11:01

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Maney Publishing is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ñawpa Pacha:
Journal of Andean Archaeology.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 192.188.55.3 on Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:01:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 107

SLIP CASTING: A CERAMIC TECHNIQUE INVENTED IN ANCIENT PERU

Lawrence E, Daws on

Slip casting (French coulage) is a potter1s term for a technique

which, on the one hand, permits the precision manufacture of ceramic objects
and, on the other, lends itself to mass production. This technique was
invented in Europe in the 18th century and became an important industrial
process in the 19th. I propose to show that slip casting had been invented

independently some eighteen hundred years earlier in ancient Peru, where it

was applied to the precision manufacture of panpipes.1

In slip casting, pottery objects are formed by pouring slip, a

syrupy suspension of clay in water, into absorbent molds of fired clay or

plaster. Water is drawn by capillary action out of the slip into the pores
of the absorbent mold, forming a shell of hardened clay on the inner surface
of the mold. After a
few minutes, when the shell of clay reaches the desired

thickness, the remaining slip is poured out, and the shell is left to dry
enough to shrink and pull away from the mold. Then it is easily removed,
provided there are no snags or projections in the formed piece.2

The invention of slip casting in Europe is generally stated to

have taken place between about 1730 and 1750, but little is known of the
circumstances. An English potter, Ralph Daniel of Corbridge, is said to
have learned the method of slip casting in
plaster of Paris molds somewhere
in France and to have introduced it to England about 1745.3 I have been able
to find no French records of the beginnings of slip casting, but there is no
reason to suppose that the method had been in use long when
Ralph Daniel
learned it. In the English potters developed porous claya mold
17301s,
suitable for either press molding or slip casting; whether the clay mold was

actually used for slip casting before the introduction of the French process
is not clear.4

The industrial possibilities of the slip casting process were slow

to be recognized in France.5 In England, however, slip casting was quickly
applied to the production of stoneware quantity in to meet an expanding
market resulting from the growing popularity of tea drinking. In the 19th

century slip casting became an important process in the mass production of

English white earthenware imitations of porcelain for an enormous market in

cheaper domestic crockery and dinnerware. Slip casting has become somewhat
less important in the ceramic industry of the present day, because of the

development of machine extrusion and stamping processes.

In Peru, slip cast panpipes begin to appear in archaeological sites

on the coast sometime in the latter part of the Early Horizon. On the south

coast, where we have the most precise dating and the best documentation of
the specimens, slip cast panpipes first appear in the ninth of the ten epochs
into which the Early Horizon is subdivided, associated with pottery of Phase

This content downloaded from 192.188.55.3 on Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:01:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 108

9 of the Ocucaje style ("Paracas Cavernas11 of the older literature). This

association implies a date not later than the turn of the Christian era.
Present evidence is not adequate to determine the place of origin of slip

casting, but the elaborate development of slip cast panpipes at an early date
on the south coast suggests a certain probability that the invention was made
there.

Ancient Peruvian pottery panpipes consist of a series of tubes which

are made separately and stuck together by adding clay on the outside (fig. 1).
In some periods the tubes were perfectly straight and of uniform diameter from
one end to the other, while at other periods they were segmented, consisting of
sections of different diameters (fig. 2). The slip casting process was used

only to make the tubes; the joining and finishing was a separate operation done

by hand.

My conclusion that the Peruvian panpipe tubes were slip cast is based
upon investigations in the field and museum laboratory, in the course of which
I observed minute details of fabrication with a microscope and experimented with

duplication of the process. There are two characteristics of the tubes which
show that they were made by slip casting: untouched inner surfaces and thin
walls of uniform thickness. These features are incompatible with the explanation,
suggested by some casual observers of panpipes, that the tubes were modeled
around canes. They are effects which could be produced only by the slip casting
process.

The tubes of many panpipes, especially those belonging to Phase 10 of

the Ocucaje style at show extensive inner surfaces without a trace of con
lea,
tact with anyobject. Untouched clay surfaces, such as are found on the interior
face of slip cast pieces, are uniform, matte, and slightly nubbly due to uneven

shrinkage around fine particles of sand or impurities contained in the slip

(fig. 3). The exterior of a casting, in contrast to the interior, shows marks
from having been shaken out of the mold and handled. Each method of finishing
pottery leaves its characteristic traces; a surface that has been rubbed with a
smooth stick or a pebble is flat and while a surface wiped with a cloth
glossy,
shows striations.

Not all panpipe tubes have untouched interior surfaces, for some

appear to have been swabbed out with a bit of cotton on a stick. Also, where

segmented tubes with sections of different diameter have been joined, distinct
marks show where a tool was inserted through the end of the tube to smooth the
inside of the joint.

All pottery panpipe tubes have relatively thin walls of uniform thick
ness. The thickness varies from one style to another but in extreme cases may
be a little thicker than a stout Thin walls of uniform thickness are
eggshell.
a normal feature of
slip cast pottery. It would be virtually impossible to

duplicate this effect in tubes by any process of modeling or press molding.

In his excavations of terminal Early Horizon habitation refuse at

This content downloaded from 192.188.55.3 on Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:01:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 109

Jahuay on the south coast in 1956, Edward P. Lanning found not only many panpipe
fragments but also tubular pottery molds appropriate for the fabrication of
panpipe tubes. These molds are hand modeled, of uneven and for this
thickness,
reason easily distinguishable from the slip castings made in them 4). I
(fig.
have succeeded in obtaining slip castings from one of these molds which resemble
the ancient panpipe tubes in every detail.

It is possible that some tubular bottle spouts were made by slip cast
ing, but there is no evidence that the use of the
technique was extended in
ancient Peru to the formation of whole vessels or
other pottery objects. It was
primarily a specialized technique for the manufacture of panpipe tubes. As such,
however, it had a considerable distribution in space and time. Panpipes with
slip cast tubes were made all along the south and central coasts of Peru from
Acari to Supe, beginning in Epoch 9 of the Early Horizon and ending on the south
coast with Epoch 7 of the Early Intermediate a span of six or seven
Period,
hundred years. After Epoch 7 of the Early Intermediate Period pottery panpipes
were no longer and slip casting became a lost art.
made,

The first pottery panpipes on the south coast appear at the same time
that several other pottery musical instruments are first the others being
found,
drums, trumpets, ocarinas, and whistles. Examples of some of these
instruments,
in the Nasca style of the Early Intermediate are illustrated in fig. 5.
Period,
Making musical instruments out of pottery was not just a matter of idle fashion;
the plastic medium made it easier to control pitch and produce instruments in
matched sets. The manufacture of panpipe tubes by slip casting facilitated the
production of tubes of uniform diameter.

William W. Suggs, at the College Conservatory of Music, University of

Cincinnati, has made a study of the musical characteristics of south coast pan
pipes which documents the concern of the instrument
precision makers with of
pitch.6 Suggs found that a series
improvements was made
of in the form of pan
pipes from Phase 9 of the Ocucaje style to Phase 3 of the Nasca style including
modification of the apertures and number of tubes. By the time of Phase 3 of
the Nasca style panpipes were produced which could play several modes of the
pentatonic many pipes
scale, were made
and in graduated sets of two or three

instruments, presumably to be played in some polyphonic combination. Suggs1

study of the scales produced by these panpipes led him to suggest that ancient
Peruvian music at that time may have been more sophisticated in several ways
than the contemporary music of Europe.

Slip casting in ancient Peru, then, had for its context the technology
of musical instruments. It was the possibilities of the technique for precision
manufacture that were exploited by the ancient Peruvians rather than those for
mass production.

This content downloaded from 192.188.55.3 on Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:01:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
110

NOTES

"'"An earlier version of this paper was read at the 62nd Annual Meeting
of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, November 1963.
21,

2
A more extended account of the technique of slip casting may be found
in Kenny, 1949, pp. 106-111.

3
Haggar, 1960, p. 104; Hughes, 1961, pp. 51-52.
4
Hughes, 1961, p. 51.

5Brongniart, 1844, vol. 1, p. 149.

60 ms.
Suggs,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brongniart, Alexandre
1844 Traite des arts c?ramiques ou des poteries, consid?r?es dans leur

histoire, leur pratique et leur th?orie. B?chet Jeune, Mathias

(Augustin), Paris. 3 vols.

Haggar, Reginald George

1960 The concise encyclopedia of continental pottery and porcelain.
Hawthorn Books Inc., New York.

Hughes, George Bernard

1961 English and Scottish earthenware, 1660-1860. Lutterworth Press,
London.

Kenny, John B.
1949 The complete book of pottery making. Greenburg: Publisher.
New York.

Suggs, William W.
ms. The musical art of pre-conquest Peru. Typescript, 14 pp0, 1962.

KEY TO ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate X

Fig. 1. Broken panpipe, showing construction with separately made

slip cast tubes. The greatest measurement across the broken surface is 5 cm.
The specimen was collected by Max Uhle in 1904 from the surface of a site at
San Nicolas, Supe. Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, no.
4-7408 o.

This content downloaded from 192.188.55.3 on Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:01:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Ill

Fig. 2. Ocucaje style panpipes and an ocarina from lea. The two

panpipes on the right with tubes of uniform diameter are Ocucaje Phase 9; the
two on the left with segments of different diameters are Phase 10. The largest
specimen is about 25 cm. long. Paul Truel Collection, Ocucaje, lea.

Fig. 3. Interior of a panpipe tube, showing untouched clay surface.

The specimen is from Ocucaje, lea, and is Ocucaje Phase 10; it is 5.8 cm. long.
Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, no. 16-8933.

Fig. 4. Fragment of a pottery mold for making panpipe tubes from a

site at Jahuay, north of Chincha, excavated by Edward P. Lanning in 1956. The
associated pottery is terminal Early Horizon in date. Length, 7.2 cm. Field
no. 101-1, S-II.

Fig. 5. Pottery musical instruments in the Nasca style; a straight

trumpet, a whistle in the form of a bird, four panpipes, two drums. The speci
mens are probably all from Nasca. The trumpet in the upper left is Nasca Phase

4; the panpipe in the lower right belongs somewhere between Phase 1 and Phase 3.
The rest of the objects are Nasca Phase 3. The panpipe in the lower left is
about 28 cm. long. Museo Regional de Ica.

This content downloaded from 192.188.55.3 on Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:01:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 m.:N
...
..

... .....
.......
. ;

.
>.. ..

-^...
.
.. ~....>.

+.:::
*
++':
-..
...
<5 38
>1~
>
.-.
..
>.
.
t-:
u
777
...
. <.
.......
.
*...
....>.
<..
~.<.1.
>...
u. .* +:: .+..
.
..
> x.
~....

This content downloaded from 192.188.55.3 on Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:01:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions