The wheel now takes two forms: a stone potters' wheel and a cartwheel made from a single solid piece of wood.

Hand-turned tournettes, or turntables, date from about 3250 in the Near East.

Many early ceramics were hand-built using a simple coiling technique in which clay was rolled into long threads that were then pinched and beaten together to form the body of a vessel.

In the coiling method of construction, the hands of the potter supply, indirectly, all of the energy required to form the main part of a piece.

Early ceramics built by coiling were often placed on mats or large leaves to allow them to be worked more conveniently.

The evidence of this lies in mat or leaf impressions left in the clay of the base of the pot.

This arrangement allowed the potter to turn the vessel under construction, rather than walk around it to add coils of clay.

The earliest forms of the potter's wheel (tournettes or slow wheels) were probably developed as an extension to this procedure.

Tournettes were turned slowly by hand or by foot while coiling a pot.

The tournette was used to fashion only a small range of vessels, suggesting that it was used by a limited number of potters.

The introduction of the slow wheel increased the efficiency of hand-powered pottery production.

These early forms of the potter’s wheel are among the first mechanical devices, and stimulate manufacture of objects for trade.