MAT: Ceramics and Pottery

Ceramics / Pottery

Artifacts made of heated earth or earthenware.

Keramos

meaning potter's clay and is used to describe a whole body of ware made of clay.

The Clay State / Greenware

The ware is formed but hasn't gone under firing. They are very brittle and are often sanded with fine grade sandpaper to ensure a smooth finish in the completed item.

The Biscuit State / Bisque

Means "half-baked". The ware has undergone preliminary low range firing through an oven or a kiln. Normally a plain red, white or brown.

The Glazed State

done to make wares sanitary.

Glaze

a mixture of silica, water, colorants, and a suspension agent allowing the chemicals to stick together and not separate like oil and water.

Tin oxide

white colorant used in glazes.

Cobalt oxide

grayish blue to pure sapphire colorant used in glazes.

Ferric Iron oxide

pale yellow to black (earth tones) also iron red colorant used in glazes.

Ferrous Iron oxide

celadon green colorant used in glazes. Also known as weathered iron, it produces a range of green shades in glazes.

Manganese oxide

from bright red purple to a dark purplish brown colorant used in glazes.

Antimony oxide

yellow colorant used in glazes.

Cupric oxide

distinctive blues colorant used in glazes.

Cuprous oxide

series of greens colorant used in glazes.

Earthenware

soft pottery. The oldest and also most universal. Natural clays fired at temperatures around 900-1200 degrees C/1652-2192 degrees F. usually porous and opaque, pale tan to red and brown in color, and has a tendency to chip and break. Southwest Indian work, French cooking utensils, Mexican ware and a great deal of Pennsylvania Dutch tableware are currently prized examples of this kind of pottery.

Stoneware

contains a higher percentage of sand and fired from 1200-1280 C/2191-2336 F. extremely hard, usually vitrified and impermeable to water. Available both in dull and glazed forms either white or colored. Made by the Chinese. Usually used for pickle storage and preserve jars.

Porcelain

aristocrat of the potter's wheel. Contains kaolin as base. Petunste, or china stone, a less decayed, more fusible feldspathic material was also used in this classification of pottery. Fired at 1280-1400 C and has a clear white color and is extremely hard and translucent. Originated in China. Used for electrical insulators and laboratory equipments, figurines and other decorative objects. Produces a bell-like ring when struck.

Hard Porcelain

Porcelain fired between 2390-2570 F. Considered the best kind of porcelain and is called "true porcelain". Made of kaolin.

Soft Porcelain

Porcelain fired below 2300 F. More translucent, not white in color nor does it have the clear ringing tune of true porcelain. Suffers more damage through time.

Bone China

white hard translucent ceramic ware. It gained the whiteness, translucency, and stability through the inclusion of calcium phosphate in the form of calcined ox bones. Requires at least 2 or more firings at different temperatures. Opaque but not as hard as porcelain.

Slip

pottery ornamentation

engobe; thick semi-solid fluid. The ware was dipped when it was dry enough to be fired. Various colors were obtained for the slip by the use of oxides.

Decalcomania

applied decoration; the art of transferring designs from specially prepared paper to a wood, glass or metal surface.

Lithographed

uses a process wherein the image areas and the non-image areas are treated to accept or repel the oily ink

Terra Sigillata

means sealed earth; type of Roman pottery mass produced during the 1st Century AD

Sgrafitto

designs that are drawn with a pointed tool that scratches through the slip to reveal the contrasting ground/color underneath

Overglaze

fired first before painting

Underglze

patters are painted before firing and glazing.

Primitive

period when pottery served as storage for grain and water with patterns of zigzag and chevron.

Egyptian

period when potteries are used in ritualistic rites that are geared towards the burial ceremony.

Black figure ware

greek ceramics where figures are painted black on a red background.

Red figure ware

greek ceramics where figures are painted red on a black background.

White ground

greek ceramics where ware figures are painted either red or black on a white background.

Italian Ceramics

period when pottery became a vehicle of artistic expression. Early Renaissance first utilized ceramics and were usually utilitarian in nature.

Majorca wares

Italian ceramics that were tin-glazed earthenware from Majorca, Spain.

Istoriato

rich decorative style of Italian ceramic.

Bianchi di Faenza

lightly decorated white wares made in Faenza.

Passeri

Italian antiquity of distinction. He claimed the discovery and introduction of the ware for Pesaro. Wrote about majolica pottery.

Lucca della Robia

Italian successful goldsmith and sculptor. Discovered the use of stanniferous enamel, the hardest glaze then in use. He was created to be the one to raise the production of Majolica from a craft to high art in Italy.

Master Giorgio Andreoli

Italian who perfected the luster technique.

Francesco de Medici

Italian who produced an inferior type of soft-paste porcelain. 19 pieces only of this strange ware exist, making up the whole number of pieces of the rarest European porcelain known to exist.

Doccia Ware

founded at Doccia, near Florence. It is an admirable imitation of the Majolica and successful reproduction of the bas-reliefs of Lucca della Robia in porcelain. Its factory excelled in the production of porcelain sculpture. The principal mark of this ware is 2 triangles crossed, forming a sixpointed star.

Tulipiano

stylized floral pattern.

Capo di Monte

founded by Charles III of which many pieces was constructed with his own hands. Produced many creamy color and an unusually glossy clear glaze making its soft paste a particularly successful medium for undecorated porcelain sculpture. Their mark is an N surmounted by a crown, in blue.

Commedia del'arte

improvisational street theater. Provided a seemingly limitless source of objects for both porcelain modelers and painters in the 18th C.

Pulcinella

has a costume of a loose tunic, tall conical hat, and black mask with a prominent hooked nose.

Dutch Ceramics

place where ceramics were influenced by the tin-glazing techniques those artists had brought with them.

Delft ceramics

well-known for its Dutch blue and white style. Soft-boiled earthenware fired at a relatively low temperature and covered with a tin-based glaze. Decorated with windmills and fishing boats. Produced polychrome (multi-colored) ceramics copying Chinese Kang-shi and Japanese Imari wares. Often ornamented with oriental and occidental motifs and forms would mingle, with tea caddies, teapots, vases, and tiles. Delft table and ornamental ware usually were of blue colored patterns and landscapes on a white background. They also produced apothecary jars, drug pots, small flat tiles for fireplace facings and other architectural uses. Their logo is a stylized jar.

Delftblue Daybreak

Delft ceramic's most widely used design and was applied to 17 aircrafts.

French Ceramics

faience potteries, or tin-enameled earthenwares. "Faience" comes from Faenza, a town in Italy. These ceramics had close alliance with religious events and projected by crowned heads or royal houses. Has a historic connection and an ultra and effective beauty of design. Has a love for detail and nice appreciation of completeness, and has a more elegant and artistic pottery work than Germany or Holland.

Huguenot

untiring and successful French potter.

Terre de Pipe

pure whiteness and fineness affording excellent qualities which went far towards perfecting the French styles of decoration.

Bernard Palissy

Appointed as royal potter to Catherine de' Medici and created platters, ewers, and other ornamented pottery for the French court. Noted for pieces reproducing scriptural and mythological subjects in low relief and for his rustic pieces decorated with sharply modeled forms copied from nature—like reptiles, insects, and plastics. Has a smooth glaze in rich colored enamels. Palissy ware

Rouen Faience Factory

by the Poterat family. Their experiments resulted in some of the earliest examples of soft-paste porcelain made in France. Has bluish and distinctive underglaze blue decoration.

Saint-Cloud

imitated Chinese blue-and-white porcelain but soon decorated with French prints of 16th and 17th C. The underglaze blue decorative scheme of Chinese porcelain was retained but the subject matter was typically French and the vocabulary of foliage, scrollwork, and animals or human heads.

Chantilly Factory

established by Louis Henry. A soft-paste porcelain factory. Copied Japanese pieces while others were executed in a style reminiscent of Japanese porcelain.

French Factory of Mennecy

founded by Francois Barbin. Produced utilitarian ware of considerable originality and somewhat naïve charm.

Vincennes Factory

developed a superior soft-paste porcelain body that was whiter and freer of imperfections than any of its French rivals, as well as hiring the most talented French artists to design shapes and provide drawings and prints for the factory's painters. Louis XV provided their financial banking and purchased their first dinner service.

Sèvres Factory

Vincennes factory owned by Louis XV. Flourished because of their constant innovation and new forms were always in development.

Limoges Factory

French factory that produced the first hand paste porcelain. Made the finest, purest white porcelain in the world. Known for their quality and innovation in the universal expositions organized in various parts of the world.

German Ceramics

period when figures were characters from the Italian commedia del'arte. Porcelain figures depicting Harlequin, Columbine, Mezzetin, Isabella, and numerous others would have been instantly identifiable because of their costumes.

Salt-glazed

German technique where common salt used as an alkali was thrown into the kiln, and soda from the salt created a glassy layer on the pot's surface.

Hafner ware

German lead-glazed earthenware with many vessels imitating metal jugs and tankards.

Poterie deluxe

german ceramic that is exceedingly fine in color, form and ornament.

Johann Friedrich Bottger

German who discovered the materials required to produce a white, translucent, high-fired porcelain body.

Meissen / Dresden ware

produced creamy white porcelain called Böttger porcelain. They developed a new and extensive range of enamel colors, and excelled in chinoiserie scenes. Produced large-scale vases decorated with ground colors in imitation of Chinese porcelain and chinoiserie scenes continued to be in vogue. Their mark is a crossed sword.

Spanish Ceramics

Perio when Moorish potters produced wares decorated in a hybrid style, in blue and white, and blue enriched with gold luster. Arabesques and inscriptions in Arabic gradually merged with Christian emblems and epigraphs in gothic lettering with bold heraldic devices and foliate patterns of great power and distinction.

Hispano-Mosque

Spanish heavy earthenware decorated with crude patterns in green-blue, yellow, white and lusterware.

Luster Earthenware

also called Hispano Mauresque.

Spanish wares with Arabic inscriptions, beautifully executed arabesques and stylized animal forms. Characterized by indescribable sheen and iridescence. The successor to the much earlier Arabian pottery. Has a rich, iridescent brown color, sometimes relieved in blue.

Majolica

Spanish tin glazes and enameled earthenware. Glazed floors and wall tiles decorated with flower and abstract motifs showing fusion of Renaissance and Moorish motifs.

Azulejos

Spanish wares produced in Catalonia. Painted with groups of people engaged in sports, amusements, dancing or drinking or incidents associated with Don Quixote. Usually wall tiles with a generally bluish hue.

Beun Retrio/El Retiro

Spanis counterpart of the Carpo di Monte factory in Italy. Consists of beautiful figurines and groups of soft-paste porcelain, plaques for wall in the Rococo spirit. Their ware is a soft-paste of a delicate white and more than usually translucent. The most costly and most technically perfect of any 18th C porcelain.

Bristol ware

English ceramics that is milk white with a cool glittering glaze, hard and durable, often decorated in the Chinese manner. Imitated Delft for a long period, and Dresden ware although Chinese ware was obviously copied in color and design.

Bow Ware

founded in 1744 at Stratford-le-Bow, East London. Where the first soft-paste porcelain in England was made from a white clay (kaolin) brought from North Carolina.

Subjects: bamboo or plum branches, partridges and grotesque animals. Eventually became part of the Derby factory. The anchor and dagger in red is their mark. Remarkably soft and delicate style of flower painting is quite peculiar to this and printed decoration was also used to some extent.

Chelsea Ware

English goat and beam cream jugs. Had an uneven body, and the glaze on the earliest pieces is thick and was applied unevenly, and heavily ornamented in the French style. Under the direction of Nicholas Sprimont who later became owner of the works. Had gorgeous costumes and handsome gilding, so rich and decorative. Has a dark blue ground and rich claret color.

Chelsea toys

the most valued of all Chelsea ware productions.

Chelsea-Derby period

period in Chelsea ware where very beautiful products were made.

Derby Ware

English white, fine, and soft porcelain. Beauty of form, purity of body, excellence of gilding and delicacy of painting distinguish their work.

Crown Derby

Derby ware period where the products are lighter in weight than any other ceramic, although very thin, it is strong.

Lowestoft

founded by Robert Browne. English ware that produced soft-paste porcelain similar to Chelsea ware and Bow Ware. One of the most famous names in English pottery. Inscribed with "A trifle from Lowestoft". Products were tableware and small objects called trifles which were decorated with mostly after Chinese patterns with blue and white underglaze which was of a bluish-green tinge. Resembles old Bow and Worcester.

Worcester

English ceramic known for their superb beauty of forms, colors and decorations and for the immense variety of its designs.

Frit paste

English past that is dense and has a greenish tint.

Dr. Wall period

the best period of Worcester china. Commands very high prices today. The salmon-scale blue ground was one of the characteristics of that period, and the gilding was of superlative quality.

Transfer printed pottery

discovered by John Sadler in 1754. A method of transferring a design to paper from an engraved copper plate coated with pigment, and from the paper to the pottery.

Royal Worcester

Type of Worcester ware where gilding is the most important feature of the decoration.

Straffordshire

An English generic term applying to the products of many potteries in Stoke-on Trent, Hanley, Cobridge, Erturia, Burslem, Fenton, Tunstall, Longport, Shelton, Land End and some other lesser known places where for centuries potteries and potters have flourished.

Can be identified from the design on the border. Border designs are composed of graceful combinations of sea shells and mosses, roses and scrolls, acorns and oak leaves, grapes and vines or fruit, birds and flowers.

Josiah Wedgwood

one of the first English men to unite art and industry.

Thomas Whieldon

all of his works are comparatively rare and commands high prices. He was one of England's greatest potters.

Josiah Spode

English man who produced the willow pattern

John Turner

English man who introduced underglaze blue transfer printing.

Lithographic method

cheaper method than transfer-printing.

Wedgwood Ware

by Josiah Wedgwood. Produced a cream ware and black basalt ware.

Jasper ware

fine, hard, unglazed white bisque by Wedgwood. Used for making vases, medallions, plaques, and many other articles. Known for its smoothness and color of the background, the sharpness and translucency of the ornament, and the undercutting in which certain parts are relieved.

Dip jasper

surface colored jasper ware.

Solid jasper

blue, colored clear through jasper ware.

Queen's ware

cream-colored earthenware named after Queen Charlotte.

Cream ware

all light-colored English earthenware. The body is white due to the invention of ironstone china. Perfected by Wedgwood.

Basalt ware

solid black stoneware of great hardness, unglazed, which takes its name from a black Egyptian rock.

Agate ware

earthenware made either solid or in surface decoration to resemble the veining of agate or other natural stones.

Whieldon ware

tortoise-shell ware made by Thomas Whieldon. Also called Cloud ware. Soft, light in weight, with an excellent glaze and it was extremely rich in effect.

Spode ware

established by Josiah Spode. Produced underglaze blue-printed cream ware of excellent quality, stone china, black and jasper ware. Known for its comparative cheapness and its beautiful decoration. Transfer-printing in blue and other colors was one of the foundations of their prosperity. Porcelain is soft and white with a fine glaze and is decorated in the Oriental manner.