The potter Grga Župan at Oteš in Lika, Croatia in 1993

At the time of filming in Autumn, 1993 the potter Grga Župan of Oteš in Lika had not been making pots for many years, but when asked was very keen to demonstrate his craft. He located his wheel on a wood pile where it had been abandoned, then whittled a wooden knife and prepared the clay which the author had brought with him. He then made a small milk pot, or padela, watched by his wife and some neighbours. Later he made a small cooking pot, or rukatka, using a better-functioning wheel brought by the author from Potravlje in Dalmatia. These were almost-certainly the last pots he ever made.
Oteš is one of several dispersed settlements on the right bank of the Lika where pots were once made using composite hand-wheels and similar techniques to those used at nearby Kaluderovac, on the left bank of the Lika, where a non-composite wheel was used. The last working potter in this region where, in the early 20th century, hundreds of potters operated, was Franjo Arbanas who worked until the mid-1990s when he was around 90 years old. The pots made by potter-farmers in all these settlements were predominantly used for cooking, cheese-making and storage, inlcuding jar-shaped cooking ots, portable bread-ovens, strainers and large storage jars. Unusually amongst hand-wheel potters, some glazed wares were produced, latterly fired in single-chambered ovens or kilns. These pots were sold or exchanged over a wide range extending from Slavonia to Dalmatia in Croatia as well as Bosnia to the north-east, with the potters themselves setting out to trade their wares by cart, often after the Summer harvest when they had spare time and customers had surplus crops to trade.
U vrijeme snimanja u jesen 1993. lončar Grga Župan iz Oteša u Lici godinama nije izrađivao lonce, ali je na upit vrlo rado pokazao svoj zanat. Smjestio je svoj kotač na gomilu drva gdje je bio napušten, zatim je zabrusio drveni nož i pripremio glinu koju je autor donio sa sobom. Zatim je napravio mali mliječni lonac ili padelu, a promatrali su ga njegova žena i neki susjedi. Kasnije je izradio mali lonac za kuhanje ili rukatku od boljeg kotača koji je autor donio iz Potravlja u Dalmaciji. Ovo su gotovo sigurno bile posljednje posude koje je napravio.
Oteš je jedno od nekoliko disperziranih naselja na desnoj obali Like gdje su se nekoć lonci izrađivali kompozitnim ručnim kolom i tehnikom sličnom onima u obližnjem Kaluderovcu, na lijevoj obali Like, gdje se koristilo nekompozitno kolo. . Posljednji aktivni keramičar na ovim prostorima gdje je početkom 20. stoljeća radilo na stotine keramičara bio je Franjo Arbanas koji je radio do sredine devedesetih godina prošlog stoljeća kada je imao oko 90 godina. Posude koje su izrađivali lončari u svim ovim naseljima uglavnom su služile za kuhanje, spravljanje sira i skladištenje, uključujući posude za kuhanje u obliku tegle, prijenosne krušne peći, cjedila i velike posude. Neobično među lončarima na ručnom kolu, proizvodili su se neki glazirani proizvodi, koji su se kasnije pekli u pećnicama s jednom komorom ili peći. Ti su se lonci prodavali ili mijenjali u širokom rasponu od Slavonije do Dalmacije u Hrvatskoj kao i Bosne na sjeveroistoku, pri čemu su sami lončari krenuli u trgovinu svojom robom kolima, često nakon ljetne žetve kada su imali slobodnog vremena a kupci su imali višak usjeva za trgovinu.