Pottery in Iranian civilization has a prominent place and SiStan and BaluchiSlan’s pottery can be traced back to the Paleolith¬ic and prehistoric times. Kalpouregan pottery’s productions are similar to obtained potteries from archeological excavations of third millennium B. 0in various part of Iran.
What separate Kalpouregan Pottery from the other kind of potteries is its unique properties. All delicate processes are done by women, while men only do works like preparing clay or baking of the potteries. All potteries are made by hand in the tradi¬tional and exquisite methods without using Pottery Wheel. No glazing is used to make potteries like prehistoric potteries. The method of painting on the surface is used to decorate pottery dishes. This method of painting and decoration is the most impor¬tant decoration factor in potteries from the appearance of the pottery (Seventh Millen¬nium B.C.) to the Third Millennium B.C. Kalpouregan village located about 25Km eastof Saravan city in the Si§lan and Bal¬uchiSlan province of Iran. This village is lo¬cated in 365Km of Capital of SiSlan & Bal¬uchistan Province (city of Zahedan) and 25Km of East of Sa ravan Township.
Production process The Pottery soil is a kind of special clay with high adhesion called Hajok soil in local dialect. To produce clay, first, the soil is riddled to separate impurities from soil. Then they are poured into pools for leach¬ing. The obtained clay will be kneaded with riddled soil to be prepared for work. The color of this mixture is light greenish gray but this color change to orange after being baked in kiln. These gages of work are done by men, the rest which need accu¬racy and delicacy is done by the artistic hands of Kalpouregan’s women. There are two main technics for making potteries. 11The first one is Pinch, in this method a ro-tating disk or tray in form of a plate is used to make pottery, this disk called bono in local dialect and it is made of pottery. Firgt, a piece of cloth is put on surface of Bono to prevent clay from sicking to the Bono then a chunk of kneaded clay is placed on Bono and a hole is made in the middle of the clay by fingers.
As the clay is rotating on the Bono, the created hole will gradually become wider using fingers of both hands. In this way, the wall of dish will become thinner. Then, a piece of wood with maxi¬mum length of 20Cm is used to move the dish wall to the suitable directions. Therefore, the walls of dish will be balanced in all directions. This piece of wood is called Gel Moush in the local dialect Li Pipe or coil technic is the second technic to make Kalpouregan Pottery. In this technic at first, a piece of cloth is put on surface of Bono then the bottom piece of intended vessel is placed on this cloth, after this the rolled clay pieces are put above each other and by use of Gel moush, surface is smoothened. Finally, the raw potteries are placed under sunshine to be dried and this may take several days. After the pottery is dried, its external surface will be scrubbed and furnished with a special none (Saenok) and this process prepares the raw pottery surface to be painted.
Patterns and decoration methods Titok Stone is used to paint and decorate Kalpouregan Potteries. Firgt, Titok Stone will be chafed againgt a big caved rock (Wank) with small quantity of water until it turns to ink. Then the pottery is painted using a piece of match size wood mainly made from wood of wild palm(daz(.
The patterns are mainly rooted in nature and are very simple and somewhat abstract. These patterns are
dotted and traditional.