this is so easy it is pice of cake, you see, you just count words basically

Kinds, processes, and techniques

Clay, the basic material of pottery, has two distinctive characteristics: it is
plastic (i.e., it can be molded and will retain the shape imposed upon it); and it
hardens on firing to form a brittle but otherwise virtually indestructible material
that is not attacked by any of the agents that corrode metals or organic materials.
Firing also protects the clay body against the effects of water. If a sun-dried
clay vessel is filled with water, it will eventually collapse, but, if it is
heated, chemical changes that begin to take place at about 900 °F (500 °C) preclude
a return to the plastic state no matter how much water is later in contact with it.
Clay is a refractory substance; it will vitrify only at temperatures of about 2,900
°F (1,600 °C). If it is mixed with a substance that will vitrify at a lower
temperature (about 2,200 °F, or 1,200 °C) and the mixture is subjected to heat of
this order, the clay will hold the object in shape while the other substance
vitrifies. This forms a nonporous opaque body known as stoneware. When feldspar or
soapstone (steatite) is added to the clay and exposed to a temperature of 2,000 to
2,650 °F (1,100 to 1,450 °C), the product becomes translucent and is known as
porcelain. In this section, earthenware is used to denote all pottery substances
that are not vitrified and are therefore slightly porous and coarser than vitrified
materials.

"Self-Portrait Etching at a Window" etching (drypoint and burin in black on ivory

laid paper) by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1648; in the collection of the Art Institute of
Chicago.
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The line of demarcation between the two classes of vitrified materials—stoneware
and porcelain—is extremely vague. In the Western world, porcelain is usually
defined as a translucent substance—when held to the light most porcelain does have
this property—and stoneware is regarded as partially vitrified material that is not
translucent. The Chinese, on the other hand, define porcelain as any ceramic
material that will give a ringing tone when tapped. None of these definitions is
completely satisfactory; for instance, some thinly potted stonewares are slightly
translucent if they have been fired at a high temperature, whereas some heavily
potted porcelains are opaque. Therefore, the application of the terms is often a
matter of personal preference and should be regarded as descriptive, not
definitive.

Kinds of pottery
Earthenware
Earthenware was the first kind of pottery made, dating back about 9,000 years. In
the 21st century, it is still widely used.

creamware vase
creamware vase
Creamware vase, Luxembourg, late 18th century; in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London.
Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The earthenware body varies in colour from buff to dark red and from gray to black.
The body can be covered or decorated with slip (a mixture of clay and water in a
creamlike consistency, used for adhesive and casting as well as for decoration),
with a clear glaze, or with an opaque tin glaze. Tin-glazed earthenware is usually
called majolica, faience, or delft (see below Decorative glazing). If the clear-
glazed earthenware body is a cream colour, it is called creamware. Much of the
commercial earthenware produced beginning in the second half of the 20th century
was heat- and cold-proof and could thus be used for cooking and freezing as well as
for serving.
Stoneware
Stoneware is very hard and, although sometimes translucent, usually opaque. The
colour of the body varies considerably; it can be red, brown, gray, white, or
black.

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Fine white stoneware was made in China as early as 1400 BCE (Shang dynasty). In
Korea, stoneware was first made during the Silla dynasty (57 BCE–935 CE); in Japan,
during the 13th century (Kamakura period). The first production of stoneware in
Europe was in 16th-century Germany. When tea was first imported to Europe from
China in the 17th century, each chest was accompanied by a red stoneware pot made
at the Yixing kilns in Jiangsu province. This ware was copied in Germany, the
Netherlands, and England. At the end of the 17th century, English potters made a
salt-glazed white stoneware that was regarded by them as a substitute for porcelain
(see below Decorative glazing). In the 18th century, the Englishman Josiah Wedgwood
made a black stoneware called basaltes and a white stoneware (coloured with
metallic oxides) called jasper. A fine white stoneware, called Ironstone china, was
introduced in England early in the 19th century. In the 20th century, stoneware was
used mostly by artist-potters, such as Bernard Leach and his followers.

Yixing ware teapot

Yixing ware teapot
Dome-shaped Yixing ware teapot with a six-lobed body, by Gongchun, 1513, Ming
dynasty; in the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong.
Reproduction by permission of the Urban Council Hong Kong from the Hong Kong Museum
of Art
Porcelain
Porcelain was first made in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). The kind
most familiar in the West was not manufactured until the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368
CE). It was made from kaolin (white china clay) and petuntse (a feldspathic rock
also called china stone), the latter being ground to powder and mixed with the
clay. During the firing, which took place at a temperature of about 2,650 °F (1,450
°C), the petuntse vitrified, while the refractory clay ensured that the vessel
retained its shape.

In medieval times isolated specimens of Chinese porcelain found their way to

Europe, where they were much prized, principally because of their translucency.
European potters made numerous attempts to imitate them, and, since at that time
there was no exact body of chemical and physical knowledge whereby the porcelain
could be analyzed and then synthesized, experiments proceeded strictly by analogy.
The only manufactured translucent substance then known was glass, and it was
perhaps inevitable that glass made opaque with tin oxide (the German Milchglas, or
milk glass, for example) should have been used as a substitute for porcelain. The
nature of glass, however, made it impossible to shape it by any of the means used
by the potter, and a mixture of clay and ground glass was eventually tried.
Porcelain made in this way resembles that of the Chinese only superficially and is
always termed soft, or artificial, porcelain. The date and place of the first
attempt to make soft porcelain are debatable, but some Middle Eastern pottery of
the 12th century was made from glaze material mixed with clay and is occasionally
translucent (see below Islamic: Egyptian). Much the same formula was employed with
a measure of success in Florence about 1575 at workshops under the patronage of
Duke Francesco de’Medici. No further attempts of any kind appear to have been made
until the mid-17th century, when Claude and François Révérend, Paris importers of
Dutch pottery, were granted a monopoly of porcelain manufacture in France. It is
not known whether they succeeded in making it or not, but, certainly by the end of
the 17th century, porcelain was being made in quantity, this time by a factory at
Saint-Cloud, near Paris.

The secret of true, or hard, porcelain similar to that of China was not discovered
until about 1707 in Saxony, when Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus, assisted by an
alchemist called Johann Friedrich Böttger, substituted ground feldspathic rock for
the ground glass in the soft porcelain formula. Soft porcelain, always regarded as
a substitute for hard porcelain, was progressively discontinued because it was
uneconomic; kiln wastage was excessive, occasionally rising to nine-tenths of the
total.

The terms soft and hard porcelain refer to the soft firing (about 2,200 °F, or
1,200 °C) necessary for the first, and the hard firing (about 2,650 °F, or 1,450
°C) necessary for the second. By coincidence they apply also to the physical
properties of the two substances: for example, soft porcelain can be cut with a
file, whereas hard porcelain cannot. This is sometimes used as a test for the
nature of the body.

In the course of experiments in England during the 18th century, a type of soft
porcelain was made in which bone ash (a calcium phosphate made by roasting the
bones of cattle and grinding them to a fine powder) was added to the ground glass.
Josiah Spode the Second later added this bone ash to the true, hard porcelain
formula, and the resulting body, known as bone china, has since become the standard
English porcelain. Hard porcelain is strong, but its vitreous nature causes it to
chip fairly easily and, unless especially treated, it is usually tinged slightly
with blue or gray. Bone china is slightly easier to manufacture. It is strong, does
not chip easily, and the bone ash confers an ivory-white appearance widely regarded
as desirable. Generally, bone china is most popular for table services in England
and the United States, while hard porcelain is preferred on the European continent.

Forming processes and techniques

Raw clay consists primarily of true clay particles and undecomposed feldspar mixed
with other components of the igneous rocks from which it was derived, usually
appreciable quantities of quartz and small quantities of mica, iron oxides, and
other substances. The composition and thus the behaviour and plasticity of clays
from different sources are therefore slightly different. Except for coarse
earthenwares, which can be made from clay as it is found in the earth, pottery is
made from special clays plus other materials mixed to achieve the desired results.
The mixture is called the clay body, or batch.

To prepare the batch, the ingredients are combined with water and reduced to the
desired degree of fineness. The surplus water is then removed.

Shaping the clay

The earliest vessels were modeled by hand, using the finger and thumb, a method
employed still by the Japanese to make raku teabowls. Flat slabs of clay luted
together (using clay slip as an adhesive) were employed to make square or oblong
vessels, and the slabs could be formed into a cylinder and provided with a flat
base by the same means. Coiled pottery was an early development. Long rolls of clay
were coiled in a circle, layer upon layer, until the approximate shape had been
attained; the walls of the vessel were then finished by scraping and smoothing.
Some remarkably fine early pots were made in this way.

It is impossible to say when the potter’s wheel, which is a difficult tool and
needs long apprenticeship, was introduced. A pot cannot be made by hand modeling or
coiling without the potter’s either turning it or moving around it, and, as turning
involves the least expenditure of human effort, it would obviously be preferred.
The development of the slow, or hand-turned, wheel as an adjunct to pottery
manufacture led eventually to the introduction of the kick wheel, rotated by foot,
which became the potter’s principal tool. The potter throws the clay onto a rapidly
rotating disc and shapes his pot by manipulating it with both hands. This is a
considerable feat of manual dexterity that leads to much greater exactness and
symmetry of form. Perhaps the most skillful of all potters have been the Chinese.
Excellent examples of their virtuosity are the double-gourd vases, made from the
16th century onward, which were turned in separate sections and afterward joined
together. By the 18th century the wheel was no longer necessarily turned by the
potter’s foot but by small boys, and since the 19th century the motive power has
been mechanical. Electrical power was common in the 20th century, but many artisans
continued to prefer foot power.

Jollying, or jiggering, is the mechanical adaptation of wheel throwing and is used

where mass production or duplication of the same shape—particularly cups and plates
—is required. The jolly, or jigger, was introduced during the 18th century. It is
similar to the wheel in appearance except that the head consists of a plaster mold
shaped like the inside of an object, such as a plate. As it revolves, the interior
of the plate is shaped by pressing the clay against the head, while the exterior,
including the footring, is shaped by a profile (a flat piece of metal cut to the
contour of the underside of the plate) brought into contact with the clay. Machines
that make both cups and plates automatically on this principle were introduced in
the 20th century. Small parts, such as cup handles, are made separately by pressing
clay into molds and are subsequently attached to the vessel by luting.

One of the earliest methods of shaping clay was molding. Pots were made by smearing
clay around the inside of a basket or coarsely woven sack. The matrix was consumed
during firing, leaving the finished pot with the impression of the weave on the
exterior. A more advanced method, used by the Greeks and others, is to press the
pottery body into molds of fired clay. Though the early molds were comparatively
simple, they later became more complex, a tendency best seen in those molds used
for the manufacture of pottery figures. The unglazed earthenware figures of Tanagra
(Boeotia, central Greece) were first modeled by hand, then molds of whole figures
were used, and finally the components—arms, legs, heads, and torsos—were all molded
separately. The parts were often regarded as interchangeable, so that a variety of
models could be constructed from a limited number of components. No improvement on
this method of manufacture had been devised by the 20th century: the European
porcelain factories make their figures in precisely the same way.

Plaster of paris molds were introduced into Staffordshire about 1745. They enabled
vessels to be cast in slip, for when the slip was poured into the mold the plaster
absorbed the water from it, thus leaving a layer of clay on the surface of the
mold. When this layer had reached a sufficient strength and thickness, the surplus
slip was poured off, the cast removed and fired, and the mold used again. This
method is still in common use.

Drying, turning, and firing

Newly shaped articles were formerly allowed to dry slowly in the atmosphere. In
20th century pottery factories, this stage was speeded up by the introduction of
automatic dryers, often in the form of hot, dry tunnels through which the ware
passes on a conveyor belt.

unfired whiteware
unfired whiteware
Unfired whiteware entering a kiln.
Courtesy of Syracuse China Company, unit of Libbey, Inc.
Turning is the process of finishing the greenware (unfired ware) after it has dried
to leather hardness. The technique is used to smooth and finish footrings on wheel-
thrown wares or undercut places on molded or jiggered pieces. It is usually done on
the potter’s wheel or jigger as the ware revolves. Lathe turning, like most hand
operations, was tending to disappear in the mid-20th century except on the more
ornamental and expensive objects.

"Self-Portrait Etching at a Window" etching (drypoint and burin in black on ivory

laid paper) by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1648; in the collection of the Art Institute of
Chicago.
BRITANNICA QUIZ
Artistic Styles and Techniques Quiz
Do you know how etching works? What was used in ancient China for drawing and
lettering? Learn this and more in this quiz about artistic styles and techniques.
The earliest vessels, which were sun-dried but not fired, could be used only for
storing cereals and similar dry materials. If a sun-dried clay vessel is filled
with water it absorbs the liquid, becomes very soft, and eventually collapses; but
if it is heated, chemical changes that begin to take place at about 900 °F (500 °C)
preclude a return to the plastic state.

After thorough drying, the pottery is fired in a kiln. In early pottery making, the
objects were simply stacked in a shallow depression or hole in the ground, and a
pyre of wood was built over them. Later, coal- or wood-fired ovens became almost
universal. In the 20th century both gas and electricity were used as fuels. Many
improvements were made in the design of intermittent kilns, in which the ware is
stacked when cold and then raised to the desired temperature. These kilns were
extravagant of fuel, however, and were awkward to fill or empty if they did not
have time to cool completely. For these reasons they were replaced by continuous
kilns, the most economical and successful of which is the tunnel kiln. In these
kilns, the wares were conveyed slowly from a comparatively cool region at the
entrance to the full heat in the centre. As they neared the exit after firing, they
cooled gradually.

The atmosphere in the kiln at the time of firing, as well as the composition of the
clay body, determines the colour of the fired earthenware pot. Iron is ubiquitous
in earthenware clay, and under the usual firing conditions it oxidizes, giving a
colour ranging from buff to dark red according to the amount present. In a reducing
atmosphere (i.e., one where a limited supply of air causes the presence of carbon
monoxide) the iron gives a colour varying from gray to black, although a dark
colour may also occur as a result of the action of smoke. Both of the colours that
result from iron in the clay can be seen in the black-topped vases of predynastic
Egypt.

Decorating processes and techniques

Impressing and stamping
Even the earliest pottery was usually embellished in one way or another. One of the
earliest methods of decoration was to make an impression in the raw clay. Finger
marks were sometimes used, as well as impressions from rope (as in Japanese Jōmon
ware) or from a beater bound with straw (used to shape the pot in conjunction with
a pad held inside it). Basketwork patterns are found on pots molded over baskets
and are sometimes imitated on pots made by other methods.

Jōmon pottery
Jōmon pottery
Jōmon earthenware vessel, Japan, c. 10,500–300 BCE; in the Honolulu Academy of
Arts.
Photograph by mochichick. Honolulu Academy of Arts, gift of Kenneth G. Kingrey, in
memory of Miss Alyce Hoogs, 1976 (4434.1)
The addition of separately modeled decoration, known as applied ornament (or
appliqué), such as knops (ornamental knobs) or the reliefs on Wedgwood jasperware,
came somewhat later. The earliest known examples are found on Mediterranean pottery
made at the beginning of the 1st millennium. Raised designs are also produced by
pressing out the wall of the vessel from inside, as in the Roman pottery known as
terra sigillata, a technique that resembles the repoussé method adopted by
metalworkers. Relief ornament was also executed—by the Etruscans, for example—by
rolling a cylinder with the design recessed in intaglio over the soft clay, the
principle being the same as that used to make Babylonian cylinder seals.

Incising, sgraffito, carving, and piercing

The earliest decoration was incised into the raw clay with a pointed stick or with
the thumbnail, chevrons (inverted v’s) being a particularly common motif. Incised
designs on a dark body were sometimes filled with lime, which effectively accents
the decoration. Examples can be seen in some early work from Cyprus and in some
comparatively modern work. Decoration engraved after firing is much less usual, but
the skillful and accomplished engraving on one fine Egyptian pot of the predynastic
period (i.e., before c. 3100 BCE) suggests that the practice may have been more
frequent than was previously suspected.

Originally, defects of body colour suggested the use of slip, either white or
coloured, as a wash over the vessel before firing. A common mode of decoration is
to incise a pattern through the slip, revealing the differently coloured body
beneath, a technique called sgraffito (“scratched”). Sgraffito ware was produced by
Islamic potters and became common throughout the Middle East. The 18th-century
scratched-blue class of English white stoneware is decorated with sgraffito
patterns usually touched with blue.

Related to the sgraffito technique is slip carving: the clay body is covered with a
thick coating of slip, which is carved out with a knife, leaving a raised design in
slip (champlevé technique). Slip carving was done by Islamic and Chinese potters
(Song dynasty).

Much pierced work—executed by piercing the thrown pot before firing—was done in
China during the Ming dynasty (reign of Wanli). It was sometimes called “demon’s
work” (guigong) because of the almost supernatural skill it was supposed to
require. English white molded stoneware of the 18th century also has elaborate
piercing.

Slip decorating
In addition to sgraffito and carving, slip can be used for painting, trailing,
combining, and inlay. The earliest forms of decoration in ancient Egypt, for
example, were animal and scenic motifs painted in white slip on a red body; and in
the North American Indian cultures coloured slips provided the material for much of
the painted freehand decoration.

Slip, too, is sometimes dotted and trailed in much the same way as a confectioner
decorates a cake with icing sugar. The English slipwares of the 17th and 18th
centuries are typical of this kind of work. Earthenware washed over with a white
slip and covered with a colourless glaze is sometimes difficult to distinguish from
ware covered with a tin glaze (see below Decorative glazing). In consequence it has
sometimes been wrongly called faience. The term for French earthenware covered with
a transparent glaze (in imitation of Wedgwood’s creamware) is faience fine, and in
Germany it is called Steingut. Mezza-Maiolica (Italy) and Halb fayence (Germany)
refer to slip-covered earthenware with incised decoration.

Slip is also used for combed wares. The marbled effect on Chinese pottery of the
Tang dynasty, for example, was sometimes achieved by mingling, with a comb, slips
of contrasting colours after they had been put on the pot.

The Koreans used slip for their punch’ŏng (buncheong) inlay technique, which the
Japanese called mishima. The designs were first incised into the clay, and the
incisions were then filled with black and white slip.
Burnishing and polishing
When the clay used in early pottery was exceptionally fine, it was sometimes
polished or burnished after firing. Such pottery—dating back to 6500 and 2000 BCE—
has been excavated in Turkey and the Banshan cemetery in Gansu province, China.
Most Inca pottery is red polished ware.

Decorative glazing
Early fired earthenware vessels held water, but, because these vessels were still
slightly porous, the liquid percolated slowly to the outside, where it evaporated,
cooling the contents of the vessel. Thus, the porosity of earthenware was, and
still is, sometimes an advantage in hot countries, and the principle still is
utilized in the 21st century in the construction of domestic milk and butter
coolers and some food-storage cupboards.

Porosity, however, had many disadvantages; e.g., the vessels could not be used for
storing wine or milk. To overcome the porosity, some peoples applied varnishes of
one kind or another. Varnished pots were made, for example, in Fiji. The more
advanced technique is glazing. The fired object was covered with a finely ground
glass powder often suspended in water and was then fired again. During the firing
the fine particles covering the surface fused into an amorphous, glasslike layer,
sealing the pores of the clay body.

Kara Walker: A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby

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sculpture: Modeling for pottery sculpture
To withstand the stresses of firing, a large pottery sculpture must be hollow and
of an even thickness. There are two main...
The art of glazing earthenware for decorative as well as practical purposes
followed speedily upon its introduction. On stoneware, hard porcelain, and some
soft porcelain, which are fired to the point of vitrification and are therefore
nonporous, glazing is used solely for decoration.

Except for tin-glazed wares (see below Painting), earthenware glaze was added to
the biscuit clay body, which was then fired a second time at a lower temperature.
Soft porcelain glaze was always applied in this way. Hard porcelain glaze was
usually (and stoneware salt glaze, always) fired at the same time as the raw clay
body at the same high temperature.

Basically, there are four principal kinds of glazes: feldspathic, lead, tin, and
salt. (Modern technology has produced new glazes that fall into none of these
categories while remaining a type of glass.) Feldspathic, lead, and salt glazes are
transparent; tin glaze is an opaque white. Hard porcelain takes a feldspathic
glaze, soft porcelain usually a kind of lead glaze and can be classified according
to the kind of glaze used.

There are two main types of glazed earthenware: the one is covered with a
transparent lead glaze, and the other with an opaque white tin glaze.

Tin glaze was no doubt employed in the first place to hide faults of colour in the
body, for most clays contain a variable amount of iron that colours the body from
buff to dark red. Tin-glazed wares look somewhat as though they have been covered
with thick white paint. These wares are often referred to as “tin-enameled.” As
noted above, other terms in common use are maiolica, faience, and delft.
Unfortunately, these are variously defined by various authorities. The art of tin-
glazing was discovered by the Assyrians, who used it to cover courses of decorated
brickwork. It was revived in Mesopotamia about the 9th century CE and spread to
Moorish Spain, whence it was conveyed to Italy by way of the island of Majorca, or
Majolica. In Italy, tin-glazed earthenware was called majolica after the place
where it was mistakenly thought to have originated. The wares of Italy,
particularly those of Faenza, were much prized abroad, and early in the 16th
century the technique was imitated in southern France. The term faience, which is
applied to French tin-glazed ware, is undoubtedly derived from Faenza. Wares made
in Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia are known by the same name. Early in the 17th
century a flourishing industry for the manufacture of tin-glazed ware was
established at the town of Delft, the Netherlands, and Dutch potters brought the
art of tin-glazing to England together with the name of delft, which now applies to
ware manufactured in the Netherlands and England. Some misleading uses of these
terms include that of applying majolica to wares made outside Italy but in the
Italian style, and faience to Egyptian blue-glazed ware and certain kinds of Middle
Eastern earthenware.

Although glazed stoneware does not fall into such definite categories as glazed
earthenware, to some extent it can be classified according to the kind of glaze
used. The fine Chinese stonewares of the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE) were covered
with a glaze made from feldspar, the same vitrifiable material later used in both
the body and glaze of porcelain. Stoneware covered with a lead glaze is sometimes
seen, but perhaps the majority of extant glazed wares are salt-glazed. In this
process a shovelful of common salt (sodium chloride) is thrown into the kiln when
the temperature reaches its maximum. The salt splits into its components, the
sodium combining with the silica in the clay to form a smear glaze of sodium
silicate, the chlorine escaping through the kiln chimney. Salt glazes have a pitted
appearance similar to that of orange peel. A little red lead is sometimes added to
the salt, which gives the surface an appearance of being glazed by the more usual
means.

Some fusion usually occurs between glaze and body, and it is therefore essential
that both should shrink by the same proportion and at the same rate on cooling. If
there is a discrepancy, the glaze will either develop a network of fine cracks or
will peel off altogether. This crazing of the glaze was sometimes deliberately
induced as a decorative device by the Chinese.

One method of applying colour to pottery is to add colouring oxides to the glaze
itself. Coloured glazes have been widely used on earthenware, stoneware, and
porcelain and have led to the development of special techniques in which patterns
were incised, or outlined with clay threads (cloisonné technique), so that
differently coloured glazes could be used in the same design without intermingling;
for example, in the lakabi wares of the Middle East.

Earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain are all found in unglazed as well as glazed
forms. Wares fired without a glaze are called biscuit. Early earthenware pottery,
as discussed above, was unglazed and therefore slightly porous. Of the unglazed
stonewares, the most familiar are the Chinese Ming dynasty teapots and similar
wares from Yixing in Jiangsu province, the red stoneware body made at Meissen in
Saxony during the first three decades of the 18th century and revived in modern
times, and the ornamental basaltes and jaspers made by Josiah Wedgwood and Sons
since the 18th century. Biscuit porcelain was introduced in Europe in the 18th
century. It was largely confined to figures, most of which were made at the French
factories of Vincennes and Sèvres. Unglazed porcelain must be perfect, for the
flaws cannot be concealed with glaze or enamel. The fashion for porcelain biscuit
was revived in the 19th century and called Parian ware.