POTTERY MAKING
POTTERY MAKING
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard, durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain.
The place where such wares are made by a potter is also called a pottery
The definition of pottery used by the American Society for Testing and Materials is "all fired ceramic wares that contain clay when formed, except technical, structural, and refractory products. In archaeology, especially of ancient and prehistoric periods, "pottery" often means vessels only, and figures of the same material are called "terracottas." Clay, as a part of the materials used, is required by some definitions of pottery, but this is dubious.
Pottery from Székely Land, Romania, on sale in Budapest.
Pottery is one of the oldest human inventions, originating before the Neolithic period, with ceramic objects like the Gravettian culture Venus of Dolní Věstonice figurine discovered in the Czech Republic dating back to 29,000–25,000 BC, and pottery vessels that were discovered in Jiangxi, China, which date back to 18,000 BC.
Early Neolithic and pre-Neolithic pottery artifacts have been found, in Jōmon Japan the Russian Far East (14,000 BC), Sub-Saharan Africa (9,400 BC), South America (9,000s-7,000s BC), and the Middle East
Pottery is made by forming a ceramic (often clay) body into objects of the desired shape and heating them to high temperatures (600-1600 °C) in a bonfire, pit, or kiln and induces reactions that lead to permanent changes including increasing the strength and rigidity of the object.
Much pottery is purely utilitarian, but much can also be regarded as ceramic art. A clay body can be decorated before or after firing.
Clay Pot (Ghaila) in Nepal
Traditional pottery, Bangladesh
The pottery market in Bourbon, Niger.
Clay-based pottery can be divided into three main groups: earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. These require increasingly more specific clay material, and increasingly higher firing temperatures. All three are made in glazed and unglazed varieties, for different purposes.
All may also be decorated by various techniques. In many examples, the group a piece belongs to is immediately visually apparent, but this is not always the case.
The fritware of the Islamic world does not use clay, so technically falls outside these groups. Historic pottery of all these types is often grouped as either "fine" wares, relatively expensive and well-made, and following the aesthetic taste of the culture concerned, or alternatively "coarse", "popular", "folk" or "village" wares, mostly undecorated, or simply so, and often less well-made.
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