For modern Europeans the wheel is the most characteristic implement used in the making of pottery. The history of the potter’ wheel, which has lately been described briefly and clearly by the German, Adolf Rieth,l evidently goes back several thousands of years. In southern Mesopotamia the potter’s wheel can be traced continuously from at least the fifth millennium before Christ, and the Egyptians ado ted the technique 3000 years before our era. It is characteristic t 1 at pottery-making with the help of the wheel is man’s work, and that it nearly always seems to belong to an advancing urban culture with its associated specialization of labour. It stands, as a rule, for greater efficiency, and indicates, on the whole, artistic degeneration—at any rate in early times, until man has learnt to bring his implement o perfection. At the same time the old technique survived and took on hybrid forms with the new. A similar relation can be observed throughout the history of Danish pottery.