The custom of pressing textiles against the wet clay in the process of pottery making has a wide distribution, extending from the Eastern Woodlands in the United States to the heart of Asia. The archaeological specimens of this type of pottery enable us to reconstruct the textile technics where the textiles themselves no longer exist.

In my attempts to do such textile reconstructions from pottery impressions I have used a number of different methods: (1) water-based clay, (2) clay made with similar temper and color as the original pottery, (3) plasticene, and (4) latex mold. For the present I will limit myself to the last of these, the latex-mold method of textile reproduction. Due to the special qualities a of the latex the mold that is produced can be stretched to twice its original sire; this has the advantage of making the textile impression easier to study.