Rattle Bowl, Really?

Everybody likes rattles. The first pottery rattle was probably made twenty minutes after the first pot.

Anyway, my wife, the museum conservator and part time archeologist, arrives for dinner. I give her the bad news about the rattle bowls I am finding. While she is unfailing polite with regards to the theories of her colleagues, she does manage to convey the absurdity of a Maya housewife serving a bowl of soup to her husband and telling him to give it a good shake. I'm forced to agree that having the brittle family cookware do double duty as a toy for the toddlers in the house is probably not reasonable either.

So, why do the hollow, bulbous, slotted legs in a telescope bowl have clay pellets inside them?

One possibility is that it's how you balance them so they rotate nicely: you make the coiled pottery paraboloid bowl. Let it dry. Then attach three or four hollow, slotted legs. Once those have dried, give the pot a trial hanging, and add small clay beads as needed until it hangs true. After firing, you can even add a little sand into the legs to fine tune the balance.