Baldred ðe Crocwyrhta

A pot being built up using the coiling method

Pottery was a universal medium used to manufacture a wide variety of cooking, eating and storage vessels in Viking Age Britain. Once the raw materials have been sourced and processed, the potter could make a number of vessels very quickly by comparison to a woodworker, who may have carved or turned his wooden bowls. You can place a pot directly in the fire to cook with, and it didn't shrink or swell and split. The only real disadvantage was the pot's likelihood of breakage if dropped, or carelessly used in the cooking fire. It goes without saying that pottery was valued quite highly, even the most mundane of examples. The simplest method of making a pot was to 'coil' build it, as you can see above, with the various coils of clay being smeared together bit by bit with a smooth stone or bone tool. The wheel was in widespread use in Anglo-Saxon England, so that to witness a pot being 'thrown' as happens today in most potteries, wasn't that uncommon.