The group was composed of six people, each with a specific skill. The leader of the group was the
mastoras
(master craftsman), who made pithoi and other large objects, The
sottomastoras
(under-master) only made the smaller vessels such as plates, jugs, cups, bowls, pitchers etc. The
homatas
(clay digger) extracted and prepared the clay. The
kaminiaris
(kiln minder) gathered the firewood to stoke the kiln and controlled the fire in the kiln. The
troharis
(wheel turner) worked the small hand-driven potter’s wheel, the
trohi
, on which the vessel was thrown. Finally the
kouvalitis
(carrier) with his donkey carried the clay and firewood and took the new vessels to sell in the nearby villages.
The location of a suitable worksite for the group each year was undertaken by the mastoras in the winter. He would travel to different areas of Crete looking for places where there would be a good olive harvest the following autumn, bearing in mind that olive trees bear fruit every two years.
Once a suitable spot was found, he had to rent a
kiln
from its owner. There was a special tradition for this in Crete. Let’s say that a group has found a suitable site but there is no kiln. The mastoras chooses a spot near a clay deposit, a water source and on ground suitable to build a kiln, which is usually quite large. He negotiates permission to build the kiln with the owner of the land, and comes back with his group in the early spring to construct it, in two to three weeks. The kiln then becomes the property of the farmer on whose land it is. He rents it to the group who built it or other potters each year. Thus the kilns of the migratory groups belong to the owners of the land rather than the potters. Over the years, many kilns were built across Crete and the guild groups had little difficulty in finding and using this essential structure.
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