Imagine yourself at one of the regions pottery factories in years gone by. The craftsmen have plied their trade, carefully hand turning pots on a potter’s wheel, and now the wet clay needs to be placed into a traditional bottle kiln and fired for days at an incredibly high temperature.

Loading the kiln was itself a skilled task - placing as many items as possible into the kiln and avoiding breakages. To help them with this unenviable task items were placed into containers called saggers both to aid carriage and make stacking easier. Not surprisingly, the base of a sagger was pummelled from clay - the only inexpensive material capable of tolerating such high temperatures - and it was the responsibility of the sagger maker’s assistant to complete this menial task, perpetually pounding the clay, and his official job title? A sagger maker’s bottom knocker!