Economic Botany Collection

Record Detail

Specimen Notes:

Label Source: Used for heating milk, boiling eggs and other purposes. Made of equal parts of clay and burnt bark of caraipe or pottery tree. Kew Journal of Botany Vol 2, 1850, p.73.

Source: Spruce, R. (1855) Domestic Uses. Plantae Amazonicae. Domestic Uses. (pp31-61) and miscellaneous notes, p38: Seems to give it peculiar qualities, to silen content in the bark, which supplies lack of sand in clay, renders pottery fireproof, thus yielding to a lighter than European crockery. There is a caraipe on Uaupes which when burnt leaves scarcely any of it's ? . Pottery of Uaupes especially large panellas and ganabas (called tingas in Venezuela) are superior to any other and its excellence is attributed to quality of clay but part of it is due to caraipe. The best cooking pottery on Manica, Crig and even at Fesno in Uaupes, that a good many pots are also used.