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crafts: Europe 259 Funerary sculpture of a double-courtyard residential compound; molded earthenware with green glaze, middle Ming Dynasty, China, ca 1450–ca 1550 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Mrs Blanche Wilbur Hill, Photograph © 2006 Museum Associates/LACMA) imitated Chinese techniques to create gray stoneware, but during the 1100s Korean potters mastered a blue-green glaze that resembled a serenely beautiful sky Only the Japanese, who began producing celadon ware in the 1600s, have come close to the quality the Koreans achieved for about 200 years The best pieces may have been the incised celadon ware After shaping a pot, the potter painted it with iron oxide, coated it with celadon glaze, and then fired it The potter would then incise images into the sides of the pot and fill the cuts with white, black, or reddish brown slip The pot would be fired again, recoated with celadon glaze, and fired a third time at temperatures hot enough to make stoneware Korean masters taught the technique to Japanese potters in Kyoto The production methods of Indian potters were different from those of eastern Asian cultures because of a fundamental difference between their cultures’ views of pottery Unlike eastern Asians, Indians did not intend their pottery to last a long time In many Indian households ceramic wares were broken at the start of a new year and then replaced As a result Indian potters always had plenty of work They tended to work quickly They gathered clay from shores of ponds or lakes, mixed it with cow dung and ashes, and then shaped it on a potter’s wheel The products were fired at low temperatures Indian potters and metalsmiths were Shudras and held in about equal esteem Smiths worked at anvils, near furnaces The smith served other crafts by making tools for carpenters, weapons for hunters, needles for tailors, and razors for barbers as well as weapons and armor for soldiers In Japan metal usually had to be imported from other countries, and Japanese smiths tended to specialize in making weapons Japanese sword makers may have brought medi- eval steelmaking to its apex in Asia and the Pacific They were held in somewhat higher esteem than most Japanese craftspeople, partly because they worked in a religious atmosphere Their work was ritualized and worshipful, and those who purchased their swords had a spiritual attitude toward the product that could save their lives Swords were made by folding white-hot iron with carbon and pounding it and folding it over and over again, dozens of times The result was a sword that when burnished would have a lasting shine and a very fine edge Prices for swords were often set by the government according to their length, without regard to quality Another group of craftspeople were the sword sharpeners, who devoted their days to keeping the weapons shining and keen Europe by Kirk H Beetz During the thousand or so years of the medieval era innovations and changing economic conditions altered the practices of craftspeople and their living conditions The status of crafts and the particular crafts that flourished in a given region differed according to the supply of natural resources in each area As trade routes improved during the medieval era, raw materials became much more widely available outside the areas where they were found, allowing for towns and cities to have ever-greater varieties of craftspeople By the time the Western Roman Empire officially ended with the abdication of the last Roman emperor in 476, crafts people in Roman Europe were almost universally suffering Their taxes were high, and customers had become rare For many European craftspeople the supplanting of Roman authority with the authority of Germanic invaders may have come as a relief The invaders were interested in employing craftsmen to build houses, churches, and palaces as well as make domestic goods Even so, as late as the age of Charlemagne in the 800s blacksmiths remained rare Blacksmiths had been so important in the Roman Empire that nearly every village had at least one During the 800s foundries were uncommon and mines even more so For centuries iron had been dug in surface pits, but those pits were depleted, and the digging of passages to follow deposits of iron ore deep underground was yet to become common enough to supply many foundries Iron was so valuable in warfare that European governments tried to regulate where iron ore went and who was allowed to possess smelted iron Much iron was made into armor and weapons and also agricultural tools The shortage of blacksmiths affected the productivity of other craftspeople For instance, nails were hard to come by, which limited the kind of work carpenters could
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