I.

Introduction

Pottery, clay that is chemically altered and permanently hardened by firing in a kiln. The nature and type of pottery, or ceramics (Greek keramos, “potter's clay”), is determined by the composition of the clay and the way it is prepared; the temperature at which it is fired; and the glazes used.

II.

Types, Procedures, and Techniques

Earthenware is porous pottery, usually fired at the lowest kiln temperatures (900°-1200° C/1652°-2192° F). Depending on the clay used, it turns a buff, red, brown, or black color when fired. To be made waterproof, it must be glazed. Nearly all ancient, medieval, Middle Eastern, and European painted ceramics are earthenware, as is a great deal of contemporary household dinnerware. Stoneware—water-resistant and much more durable—is fired at temperatures of 1200°-1280° C (2191°-2336° F). The clay turns white, buff, gray, or red and is glazed for aesthetic reasons. (Pottery fired at about 1200° C/2192° F is sometimes called middle-fire ware; its earthenware or stoneware traits vary from clay to clay.) Stoneware was made by the Chinese in antiquity and became known in northern Europe after the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century). Porcelain is made from kaolin, a clay formed from decomposed granite. Kaolin is a white primary clay—that is, a clay found in the earth in the place where it was formed and not transported there by rivers; secondary clays, borne by rivers to the site of deposit, contain impurities that give them various colors. Porcelain is fired at 1280°-1400° C (2336°-2552° F); it is white and often translucent. Porcelaneous ware was first made in China, hence its common name china. Chinese porcelain is less vitrified (and therefore softer) than its modern European counterpart, which was developed in Germany in the early 18th century. European imitations of Chinese porcelain are also made; called soft-paste or frit porcelains, they are fired at about 1100° C (about 2012° F). In the mid-18th century, English potters invented bone china, a somewhat harder ware that gained whiteness, translucency, and stability through the inclusion of calcium phosphate in the form of calcined (fired, chemically altered) ox bones.

A.

Preparing and Shaping the Clay

The potter can remove some of the coarse foreign matter natural to secondary clays, but coarse matter can also be used in varying quantities to achieve particular effects. A certain amount of coarse grain in the clay helps the vessel retain its shape in firing, and potters using fine-grained clays often “temper” the clay by adding coarser materials such as sand, fine stones, ground shells, or grog (fired and pulverized clay) before kneading the clay into a workable condition. The plasticity of clay allows pottery to be shaped in several traditional ways. The clay can be flattened and then shaped by being pressed against the inside or outside of a mold—a stone or basket, or a clay or plaster form. Liquid clay can be poured into plaster molds. A pot can be coil built: Clay is rolled between the palms of the hands and extended into long coils, a coil is formed into a ring, and the pot is built up by superimposing rings. Also, a ball of clay can be pinched into the desired shape. The most sophisticated pottery-making technique is wheel throwing.

The potter's wheel, invented in the 4th millennium bc, is a flat disk that revolves horizontally on a pivot. Both hands—one on the inside and the other on the outside of the clay—are free to shape the pot upward from a ball of clay that is thrown and centered on the rotating wheel head. Some wheels are set in motion by a stick that fits into a notch in the wheel (often activated by an assistant); called a handwheel, this is the classical wheel of Japanese potters. In 16th-century Europe, with the addition of a flywheel separate from the wheel head and mounted in a frame, the potter could control the wheel by kicking the flywheel. A kick bar, or foot treadle, was added in the 19th century. In the 20th century the electric wheel with a variable-speed motor allowed greater and better regulated rotating speed.

B.

Drying and Firing

To fire without breaking, the clay must first be air dried. If the clay is thoroughly dry, porous and relatively soft, the pottery can be baked directly in an open fire at temperatures of 650°-750° C (1202°-1382° F); primitive pottery is still made in this way. The first kilns were used in the 6th millennium bc. Wood fuels—and, later, coal, gas, and electricity—have always required careful control to produce the desired effect in hardening the clay into earthenware or stoneware. Various effects are achieved by oxidizing the flames (giving them adequate ventilation, to produce a great flame) or by reducing the oxygen through partially obstructing the entrance of air into the kiln. For example, a clay high in iron will typically burn red in an oxidizing fire, whereas in a reducing fire it will turn gray or black; chemically, in reduction firing the clay's red iron oxide (FeO₂, or with two molecules, Fe₂O₄) is converted to black iron oxide (Fe ₂O₃) as the pot gives up an atom of oxygen to the oxygen-starved fire.

C.

Decoration

A pot can be decorated before or after firing. When the clay is partially dry and somewhat stiffened (“leather hard”), bits of clay can be pressed into the pot; the body of the vessel can be incised, stamped, or pressed with lines and other patterns; or clay can be cut out and the body pierced. The vessel walls can be smoothed by burnishing, or polishing, so that rough particles are driven inward and the clay particles are aligned in such a way that the vessel surface is shiny and smooth. (Some clays can be polished after firing.) Slip (liquefied clay strained of coarse particles) may be used: The bone-dry (completely dry) or partially dry pot can be dipped into slip of creamy consistency (to which color is sometimes added); or the slip can be brushed on or trailed on with a spouted can or a syringe. Designs can be drawn with a pointed tool that scratches through the slip to reveal the body, a technique known as sgraffito.

D.

Glazes

Historically, unglazed pottery has always been more common than glazed pottery. Glaze is a form of glass, consisting basically of glass-forming minerals (silica or boron) combined with stiffeners (such as clay and fluxes) and melting agents (such as lead or soda). In raw form, glaze can be applied either to the unfired pot or after an initial unglazed, or biscuit, firing. The pot is then glaze fired; the glaze ingredients must melt and become glasslike at a temperature that is compatible to that required for the clay. Many kinds of glazes are used. Some heighten the color of the body; others mask it. Alkaline glazes, popular in the Middle East, are shiny and frequently transparent. These glazes are composed mostly of silica (such as sand) and a form of soda (such as nitre). Lead glazes are transparent, with traditional types made of sand fused with sulfide or oxide of lead. These glazes were used on earthenware by Roman, Chinese, and medieval European potters and are still used on European earthenware. Tin glazes, opaque and white, were introduced by medieval Islamic potters and were used for Spanish lusterware, Italian majolica, and European faience and delftware. Eventually the Chinese and Japanese made such glazes for the European market.

Metal oxides give color to glazes. Copper will make a lead glaze turn green and an alkaline glaze turquoise; a reduction kiln will cause the copper to turn red. Iron can produce yellow, brown, gray-green, blue, or, with certain minerals, red. Feldspars (natural rocks of aluminosilicates) are used in stoneware and porcelain glazes because they fuse only at high temperatures. The effects of specific glazes on certain clay bodies depend both on the composition of each and on the potter's control of the glaze kiln.

E.

Underglaze and Overglaze Decoration

Pottery can also be painted before and after firing. In Neolithic times, ochers and other earth pigments were used on unglazed ware. Metal oxides used in or under glazes require somewhat higher temperatures in order to fix the colors to the glaze or body—they include copper green, cobalt blue, manganese purple, and antimony yellow. If enamels (fine-ground pigments applied over a fired glaze) are used, the pot must be refired in a muffle (covered, indirect-flame) kiln at low temperatures to fuse the enamel and glaze. Decals and transfer prints (designs printed on paper with oxides and, while wet, transferred to the pot, the paper burning away in the firing) are often used to decorate commercially manufactured pottery. In the 18th century the print plate was hand engraved, but now lithography and photography are used.

Potters' marks have been used to identify ware in China since the 15th century, and in Europe since the 18th century, and famous pottery marks have always been easily forged. Greek potters and painters signed their work, as is true of a few Islamic potters and most 20th-century potters.

III.

East Asia

The leading pottery centers in East Asian history were China, Korea, and Japan. See Japanese Art and Architecture; Chinese Art and Architecture; Korean Art and Architecture.

A.

China

In Neolithic China, pottery was made by coil building and then beating the shapes with a paddle; toward the end of the period (2nd millennium bc) vessels were begun using the handbuilt technique, then finished on a wheel. At Gansu, in northwestern China, vessels from the Pan-shan culture, made from finely textured clay and fired to buff or reddish-brown, were brush painted with mineral pigments in designs of strong S-shaped lines converging on circles. They date from 2600 bc. The early Chinese kiln was the simple updraft type; the fire was made below the ware, and vents in the floor allowed the flames and heat to rise. Lung-shan pottery, from the central plains, was wheel made. Chinese Neolithic vessels include a wide variety of shapes—tripods, ewers, urns, cups, amphorae, and deep goblets.

A.1.

The Shang Period

The Neolithic prototypes became the basis for bronze vessels during the Shang period (1570?-1045? bc), and Shang ceramic molds for bronze casting, made of high-quality clay, have been found. Shang pottery had four basic types, most of them found at the capital at Anyang, in present-day Henan (Ho-nan) Province. The first continued the Neolithic functional tradition in coarse gray clay, decorated with impressed cords or incised geometric patterns; the second consisted of dark gray imitations of bronze vessels; the third, white pottery with finely carved decoration resembling bronze designs; the last, glazed stoneware.

A.2.

Zhou Period Through the Six Dynasties

Except for the white pottery, all the Shang types continued in the Zhou period (1045?-256 bc). Coarse red earthenware with lead glazes was introduced in the Warring States era (403-221 bc); this ware also resembled bronzes. In the south, stoneware with a pale brown glaze was fashioned into sophisticated shapes.

The discovery in 1974 of the terra-cotta army of Shihuangdi (Shih-huang-ti), the first emperor of the Qin (Ch’in) dynasty (221-206 bc)—an imperial legion of more than 6000 life-size soldiers and horses buried in military formation—added new dimensions to modern knowledge of the art of the ancient Chinese potters. These handsome idealized portraits, each with different details of dress, were modeled from coarse gray clay, with heads and hands fired separately at high earthenware temperatures and attached later. Afterward, the assembled, fired figures were painted with bright mineral pigments (a procedure called cold decoration), most of which have now flaked.

Tomb figures and objects with molded and painted decoration continued to be made in the Han dynasty (206 bc-ad 220); these included houses, human figures, and even stoves. Bricks sometimes were decorated with scenes of everyday animal and human activity. Gray stoneware with a thick green glaze and reddish earthenware were also produced.

During the Six Dynasties period (ad 220-589), celadon-glazed stoneware, a precursor of later porcelain celadons, began to appear. (Celadons are transparent iron-pigmented glazes fired in a reducing kiln that yield gray, pale blue or green, or brownish-olive.) Called Yüeh (or green) ware, they were less influenced than earlier pottery by the shapes of cast bronzes. Jars, ewers, and dishes became more delicate of line and classical in contour, and some had simple incised or molded ornamentation.

A.3.

Tang (T’ang) and Song Dynasties

Tomb figures and stoneware continued to be made during the Tang dynasty (618-907) and display stylistic influences from Central Asia. Bowls and basins with carved decoration were exported to India, Southeast Asia, and the Muslim Empire. Two important ceramic types characterized this period. One was a fine white earthenware covered with a lead glaze of glowing yellow and green tints, often in mottled patterns. The other, the most significant innovation of the Tang potters, was porcelain—made into thin, delicate bowls and vases with clear, bluish or greenish glazes.

Porcelain was further refined in the Song dynasty (960-1279), the age in which all art flourished, and the greatest era of Chinese pottery. Potters became adept at controlling glazes, a trend that began in the Tang period. Vessels were elegantly shaped. Decoration—molded, carved, or painted—included dragons, fish, lotuses, and peonies. These were scholarly subjects of the court painters and each represented a virtue. Kilns were established throughout China, each kiln site having its own style.

In the Northern Song, three outstanding styles emerged: Ting, Ju, and Chün. Ting ware was decorated with the previously mentioned motifs and covered with a smooth ivory glaze. It was admired by courtly patrons but was also used as everyday pottery. Ju was a coarse stoneware covered with a celadonlike light bluish-gray glaze with a subtle crackle. Chün glazes, thickly applied, ranged from blue to lavender, with added splashes of copper red or purple. Later, in the 12th century, Northern Song celadons reached their height, with a gray stoneware body covered in transparent olive or light brown. Tz'u-chou, a popular stoneware used by all social classes, combined transparent glazes with bold slip painting, sgraffito, carving, incising, impressing, and molding, as well as polychrome overglaze enameling, all in a great variety of motifs. The Lung-ch'üan celadons of the Southern Song—white porcelain with light bluish-green jadelike crackled glazes—were of even higher quality. The shapes were varied, some inspired by ancient bronzes, some by Middle Eastern metalwork and glass. Many were exported. Other famous wares were Chi-chou, white porcelain with a slightly bluish or greenish glaze (similar to the white Ch'ing-pai made later in the Song era), exported to Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines; and Chien ware, dark-bodied stoneware with a blackish-brown glaze scattered with metallic blue and black spots.

A.4.

Yuan and Ming Dynasties

The Mongol conquests of the mid-13th century brought new foreign influences. Under the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) potters adjusted to produce for an expanding export market. The size of vessels increased, and potters experimented with bright enamel overglaze colors. Ch'ing-pai and Lung-ch'üan wares became heavier. White porcelain vases with blue underglaze painting were produced.

This blue-and-white ware became a major export item in the Ming period (1368-1644). Under its clear glaze the porcelain body was painted with designs of great vigor and freedom of line in cobalt oxide (imported from Iran until a local source was substituted). These pieces became the favorites of 16th-century Europe, although Ming potters also made polychrome stoneware and monochromatic and white wares. New in the Ming era was the delicate Tou-ts'ai ware, a glassy porcelain with overglaze enamel painting. The court provided potters with a wide variety of new designs: scrolls, fruit, flowers, and scenes with people. Pottery was marked with dates of the emperors' reigns; the marks of successful pieces were imitated in later times.

Export to Europe reached its height in the late 17th century, when artistic standards were still high. A new enamel style, introduced from Europe and called famille rose, had as its principal color a delicate opaque pink, the metallic pigment for which was derived from colloidal gold. The famille rose colors could be mixed for shading and allowed miniature precision in drawing.

A.5.

Qing Period

A vast number of fine porcelain vessels were produced in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), for both domestic and foreign markets, with potters concentrating on the refinement of glazes. Popular polychrome enamel styles were famille verte (green, yellow, and aubergine purple) and its derivatives, famille noir (black ground) and famille jaune (yellow ground). Monochromatic copper red glazes popular in Ming—both oxblood (sang de boeuf) and the paler peach bloom—were revived, as were Song celadons. In the 18th century, European collecting of Chinese porcelain was at its peak. By the end of the century, however, the endless repetitions of old motifs and forms led to sterility, and the Chinese could no longer compete with European mass-produced porcelain.

B.

Korea

Chinese pottery and porcelain always exerted a strong influence in Korea, but Korean potters introduced subtle variations on Chinese models. Gray stoneware, found in tombs, was typical of the Silla dynasty (4th to 10th century ad ). Song-influenced celadons characterize pottery of the Koryŏ (Goryeo) dynasty (918-1392). Later work, although less refined, was admired for its straightforward dignity. Koreans, in turn, introduced Korean and Chinese pottery into Japan.

C.

Japan

The earliest ceramics of Neolithic Japan, those from the Jōmon period (10,000?-300? bc), were shaped by hand, usually by the coil method. Decorated with impressions of cords and mats, they were baked in an open fire at a low temperature. Colors were reddish or ranged from gray to black. Some cult figures and utilitarian vessels were highly burnished or covered with a red iron oxide. The pottery of the Yayoi culture (300? bc-ad 250?), made by a Mongol people who came from Korea to Kyūshū, has been found throughout Japan. The Yayoi used the wheel for their yellow and light brown earthenware, the smooth surface of which was at times painted bright red.

Two basic kiln types—both still in use—were employed in Japan by this time. The bank, or climbing, kiln, of Korean origin, is built into the slope of a mountain, with as many as 20 chambers; firing can take up to two weeks. In the updraft, or bottle, kiln, a wood fire at the mouth of a covered trench fires the pots, which are in a circular-walled chamber at the end of the fire trench; the top is covered except for a hole to let the smoke escape.

From the later Kofun, or Tumulus (Grave Mound), period (about ad 300 to 552), pottery was found in the enormous tombs of the Japanese emperors. Called Haji ware, it resembled Yayoi pottery. More truly unique were the haniwa, delightful unglazed reddish earthenware figures that surrounded the tombs—houses, boats, animals, women, hunters, musicians, and warriors. Although the haniwa lack the grandeur of the Qin emperor's army, they compensate for it with their rustic vitality. Sué was another pottery of this period, a gray stoneware fired in a climbing kiln and decorated with a natural ash glaze (formed during the firing as ash from the wood fuel fell on the pots). Originating in Korea, the natural ash glaze became characteristic of later Japanese wares made at Tamba, Tokoname, Bizen, and Shigaraki. Jars, bottles, dishes, and cups were made, some with sculpted figures. Sué ware continued to be made in the Asuka period (552-710), when Chinese cultural and religious influences were just beginning.

C.1.

Nara Through Kamakura Periods

With the Nara period (710-784), Japan's first historical epoch, the full impact of Tang China ware became obvious in Japan's production of high-fire pottery. Some glazes were monochromatic green or yellowish-brown; some were two-color, green and white; a few had three of these colors on rough grayish bodies. The glaze patterns were streaks and spots, not quite as refined as Tang ceramics. Most examples of this work are preserved at the Shōsōin imperial treasury at Nara.

In the early Heian period (794-894), natural ash glazes were further developed, and celadons were introduced to Japan. Then, because of disruptions in relations with China in the late Heian, or Fujiwara, period (894-1185), the quality of the pottery declined. Once contact with Song China was renewed in the Kamakura period (1185-1333), the ceramics industry flourished, this time centered at Seto, near Nagoya. Ki-seto, or yellow Seto—still made today—was influenced by the popular Song celadons; the Japanese equivalents, however, were fired in oxidizing kilns, which gave their glazes yellow and amber hues. Tokoname, a rustic pottery for everyday use, was also made in the Fujiwara period, as were other types that retain their primitive appeal.

C.2.

Muromachi and Momoyama Periods

Although the Ashikaga shoguns of the Muromachi period (1338-1573) did not encourage ceramic arts, the Chinese-influenced tradition of the tea ceremony, which began at that time, stimulated the manufacture of the beautiful vessels used in this elaborate ritual. The tea cult spread to the military and merchant classes in the Momoyama period (1573-1603). Its stoneware and porcelain implements reflected the tasteful, subtle beauty and elegance of the ceremony. Each shape had a specific function and name.

One sought-after variety of stoneware tea bowl, related to the Chien ware of China, was temmoku, with a thick purplish-brown glaze that is still popular. Seto kilns produced such fine pottery that the works of other kilns also came to be called Seto ware. Even more famous were the Raku wares, still made today by the 14th generation of the same family. Raku ware—tea-ceremony vessels, other pottery, and tiles—is shaped by hand; its irregular forms follow a prescribed aesthetic of asymmetry. The glaze is brushed on in several thin layers, and the pot is fired at low temperatures. When the glaze is molten, the pot is pulled from the kiln with tongs; it cools quickly, and the glaze crackles under the thermal shock. Raku ware is admired by potters throughout the world for its rugged shapes and soft, somber lead glazes that sometimes drip downward in globs. Also prized for the tea ceremony was Oribe ware, typified by brown iron-oxide painted designs derived from motifs of textile decoration, juxtaposed with an irregular splash of runny, transparent green glaze.

Another Momoyama ware was Karatsu, influenced by Korean Chosŏn (Joseon) ware. In e-Karatsu, or picture Karatsu, freehand geometric patterns, grasses, and wisteria were painted in iron oxide on a whitish slip. Karatsu ware had several other styles, with different kinds of decoration. Bizen ware was at its best in the Momoyama period. Still made, it is a hard stoneware, basically brick red, but subject to irregular changes of color resulting from alternating oxidation and reduction in the firing. It is unglazed except for glaze formed by falling ash or by ash or straw packed around the pots in the kiln.

C.3.

The Edo Period and After

At the beginning of the Edo period, kaolin was discovered near Arita, in northern Kyūshū, which is still a major pottery center. This discovery enabled Japanese potters to make their own hard, pure white porcelain. One type, Imari ware (named for its port of export), was so popular in 17th-century Europe that even the Chinese imitated it. Its bright-colored designs were inspired by ornate lacquerwork, screens, and textiles. By the late Edo period (1800-1867) Imari ware declined. Kakiemon (persimmon) porcelain, made in Arita, was a far more refined, classically shaped ware, even when its motifs were similar to Imari ware. Both wares used overglaze enamels. Nabeshima ware, also of high quality and similar to silk textiles in its designs, was reserved for members of that family and their friends; only in the Meiji era (1868-1912) was it sold commercially and imitated. The designs were first drawn on thin tissue, and then in underglaze blue lines; the enamel colors were added and heat-fused after the glaze firing. In eastern Japan in the Edo period, Kutani was the porcelain center. Kutani vessels were grayish in color because of impurities in the clay, and their designs were bolder than those of Arita and Imari wares. Kyōto, formerly a center for enameled pottery, became famous for its porcelain in the 19th century. In the Edo period, some 10,000 kilns were active in Japan.

Contemporary taste esteems the utilitarian works of folk potters as highly as the export items of earlier centuries. New influences from Europe came with the Meiji pottery, but native folk traditions were still appreciated within the country. Potters at the old centers remain active in the 20th century, working in the same styles as their ancestors, with the same local clays. Japan's most famous 20th-century potter is Hamada Shoji, important not only for his pottery but also as a forceful figure in the revival of folkcraft. Hamada favored iron and ash glazes on stoneware, producing shades of olive green, gray, brown, and black, and did not sign his pots (although he signed their wooden containers). In 1955 the Japanese government declared Hamada an Intangible Treasure of the country.

IV.

Pre-Columbian Americas

Ancient American pottery—put to ritual, funerary, and domestic use—developed distinctive, sophisticated shapes and decorative styles, wholly unrelated to those of the Old World and executed on a high artistic level. Pots were built by coiling, hand modeling, and molding; the potter's wheel was unknown. Painted decoration was in clay slips colored with vegetable and mineral pigments. See Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture.

A.

South America

Pottery from about 3200 bc has been found at Ecuadorian sites, but the foremost styles appeared in Peru. There, the Chavín style (which reached its height from about 800 bc to about 400 bc), with its jaguar motifs, was succeeded in the Classic period (1st millennium ad) by one of the finest pre-Columbian potteries, that of the Mochica culture of the north coast. Molded buff-colored vases were painted in red with vivid narrative scenes; portraitlike jars were modeled in relief with great subtlety. Both had the characteristic Peruvian stirrup spout, a hollow handle with a central vertical spout. To the south the Nazca culture produced double-spouted polychrome jars with complex stylized animal motifs. The later Tiwanaku and Inca polychrome styles were well crafted but were less dazzling.

B.

Middle America

The earliest domestic Mexican ceramics date from the Formative period (1500-1000 bc) in the Valley of Mexico. On the Gulf coast the Olmec culture produced hollow, naturalistic figurines. During the Classic period (ad 300? to 900?), pottery figurines from the east showed lively freedom of expression; those from the west were often grouped in impressionistic scenes of daily life. At Teotihuacán in the central plateau, polychrome three-footed vessels were produced in molds. In the Post-Classic era the Toltecs occupied the central plateau, producing typical ceramics painted red on cream or orange on buff. Later, the Aztecs first assimilated earlier abstract decoration, then turned to red and orange bowls ornamented with birds and other life forms (see Aztec Empire:Tools and Crafts). Farther south, the Zapotecs and Mixtecs resisted Aztec influence. Besides modeled animals, humans, and gods, they made a highly burnished polychrome ware that influenced later Mexican pottery.

Maya ware attained a variety and quality unique in Mesoamerican ceramics. Maya ware of the Classic period included delicate figurines, polychrome cylindrical vases with scenes and glyphs resembling those in Mayan manuscripts, and plaques containing whistles, with molded and modeled scenes of everyday life.

C.

North America

In the Mississippi Valley the Mound Builders of the 1st millennium bc produced painted, modeled, and incised ware. In the Southwest, fine pottery was made by the ancestors of the Pueblo peoples—notably the red-on-buff ware (ad600?-900?) of the Hohokam and the polychrome ware (1300 and later) of the Anasazi, both adorned with human and animal figures; and the delightful, distinctive Mimbres pottery (1000-1200) of the Mogollon culture, with black-on-white geometric designs, birds, bats, frogs, and ceremonial scenes. The ancient tradition has been carried on into modern Pueblo pottery, notably in the work of Maria Martinez, who is widely known for her burnished black ware.

V.

Western Pottery

The historical styles of Western pottery include those of the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean as well as those of the medieval Muslim world and medieval and modern Europe.

A.

Ancient Middle East

The earliest Middle Eastern pottery yet discovered comes from Çatal Hüyük, in Anatolia, and dates from 6500 bc. In addition to terra-cotta cult statues and painted clay statuettes, the ware from this site (near modern Çumra, Turkey) includes pieces painted in red ocher on a body covered with cream slip. Other pottery was monochromatic—buff, light gray, beige, or brick red. It was coil built and paddled, then burnished; some pots were incised with simple horizontal lines. The ware was fired either in a bread oven or in a closed kiln with a separate firing chamber. Other Neolithic pottery from the Middle East, primarily from Syria, had impressed designs or was combed with the edge of a cardium shell. See Iranian Art and Architecture; Mesopotamian Art and Architecture.

A.1.

Persia and Mesopotamia

The earliest painted ceramics of northern Mesopotamia date from just before the 5th millennium bc. At Sāmarrā’, stylized human and animal figures were painted with colors ranging from red to brown and black on a buff background. Shortly thereafter, polychrome pottery of higher quality was made at Tell Halaf, where potters had learned more thorough control of their kilns.

At about the same time, Persian potters painted geometric designs on pots covered with light-colored slip. By the 4th millennium the potter's wheel was in use. People from the north migrated to Persia and introduced red and gray monochromatic pottery. At the height of the Ubaid period (4th millennium bc) a pottery industry around Sūsa produced many drinking vessels and bowls from refined clay. Coated with a greenish-yellow slip, they were decorated in a free style with painted geometric shapes, plants, birds, other animals, and stick-figure people.

Glazed pottery began to be produced about 1500 bc. The finest Mesopotamian ceramic work was not in domestic pottery, but rather in glazed brickwork used for architectural ornamentation. The tradition began in the 3rd millennium at Erech (Uruk), where columns and niches were covered with a geometric mosaic of colored nail-like ceramic cones. In Babylonia during the Kassite rule (mid-2nd millennium bc), unglazed terra-cotta was used to face temples and palaces. During the 8th century bc, at Khorsabad, the capital of the Assyrian monarch Sargon II, a temple entrance was decorated with molded glazed brickwork depicting animals in procession. This tradition reached its climax in Babylon in the 6th century bc. There the famous processional way was lined with glazed bricks on which more than 700 bulls, dragons, and lions were carved and molded, then glazed in a palette ranging from white to yellow to brownish-black against a blue or greenish-blue ground. The facade of the royal throne room was decorated with lions on walls and with columns crowned and surrounded by stylized palmettos and lotus buds.

A.2.

Egypt

In the 5th millennium bc Egyptian potters made graceful, thin, dark, highly polished ware with subtle cord decoration. The painted ware of the 4th millennium, with geometric and animal figures on red, brown, and buff bodies, was not of the same high standard. Dynastic Egypt was famous for its faience (to be distinguished from the later European ceramics of that name). First made about 2000 bc, it is characterized by a dark green or blue glaze over a body high in powdered quartz, somewhat closer to glass than to true ceramics. Egyptian artisans made faience beads and jewelry, elegant cups, scarabs, and ushabti (small servant figures buried with the dead).

B.

The Mediterranean, Greece, and Rome

Pottery from the islands of the Mediterranean and Aegean during the late Bronze Age (1500-1050 bc) and early Iron Age (1050-750 bc), especially from Crete (Kríti) and Cyprus, showed great imagination on the part of the artists, who painted bichrome ware with geometric, abstract, and figurative designs. At times, pottery shapes were fanciful and seemingly nonfunctional; at other times, in vessels used for ointments and cosmetics, the shapes were quite delicate. See Aegean Civilization; Greek Art and Architecture; Roman Art and Architecture.

B.1.

Greece

The fashioning and painting of ceramics was a major art in classical Greece. Native clay was shaped easily on the wheel, and each distinct form had a name and a specific function in Greek society and ceremonial: The amphora was a tall, two-handled storage vessel for wine, corn, oil, or honey; the hydria, a three-handled water jug; the lecythus, an oil flask with a long, narrow neck, for funeral offerings; the cylix, a double-handled drinking cup on a foot; the oenochoe, a wine jug with a pinched lip; the crater, a large bowl for mixing wine and water. Undecorated black pottery was used throughout Greek and Hellenistic times, the forms being related either to those of decorated pottery or to those of metalwork. Both styles influenced Roman ceramics.

Even in the Bronze Age, the Greeks took advantage of oxidizing and reducing kilns to produce a shiny black slip on a cream, brownish, or orange-buff body, the shade depending on the type of clay. At first, decorative designs were abstract. By the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 bc), however, stylized forms from nature appeared. By the Late Bronze Age, plants, sea creatures, and fanciful animals were painted on pots of well-conceived shape by the Mycenaeans, who were initially influenced by Cretan potters. Athenian geometric style replaced the Mycenaean about 1000 bc and declined by the 6th century bc. Large craters in the Geometric style, with bands of ornament, warriors, and processional figures laid out in horizontal registers, were found at the Dipylon cemetery of Athens; they date from about 750 bc.

Attic potters introduced black-figure ware in the early 6th century. Painted black forms adorned the polished red clay ground, with detail rendered by incising through the black. White and reddish-purple were added for skin and garments. Depictions of processions and chariots continued; animals and hybrid beasts were also shown (particularly in the Orientalizing period, roughly 700 to 500 bc), at times surrounded by geometric or vegetal motifs. Such decoration was always well integrated with the vessel shapes, and the iconography of Greek mythology is clear. Beginning in the 6th century, the decoration emphasized the human figure far more than animals. Favorite themes included people and gods at work, battle, and banquet; musicians; weddings and other ceremonies; and women at play or dressing. In some cases, events or heroes were labeled. Mythological and literary scenes became more frequent. Potters' and painters' names and styles have been identified, even when they did not sign their works.

Red-figure pottery was invented about 530 bc, becoming especially popular between 510 and 430. The background was painted black, and the figures were left in reserve on the red-brown clay surface; details on the figures were painted in black, which allowed the artist greater freedom in drawing. The paint could also be diluted for modulating the color. Secondary colors of red and white were used less; gold sometimes was added for details of metal and jewelry. Anatomy was rendered more realistically, and after 480, so were nuances of gesture and expression. Although Athens and Corinth were centers for red-figure pottery, the style also spread to the Greek islands. By the 4th century bc, however, it declined in quality. Another Greek style featured outline drawing on a white ground, with added colors imitating monumental painting; these vessels, however, were impractical for domestic use.

B.2.

Rome

The Romans admired highly polished red-gloss earthenware—possibly in reaction against Greek and Hellenistic black pottery. The red-gloss technique developed in the eastern Mediterranean in the late Hellenistic period (323-31 bc). This ware was made by dipping the pot in a suspension of fine particles of high-silica clay (which gave a higher gloss when polished) and firing it in an oxidizing kiln. Decoration was in raised designs: The pots were formed in clay molds that had been impressed along the edges with roulettes in repeat motifs, stamped with other designs and figures, and given further details that were hand-carved in the mold—hence the term terra sigillata (“stamped earth”) for this ware. (The term is often also applied by extension to the clay suspension in which the pots were dipped.) Many designs and shapes were inspired by metalwork and cut glass. Arretium (modern Arezzo) was the center for red-gloss ware with relief decoration, and the best of this pottery, from the 1st centuries bc and ad , is thus called Arretine ware. Several areas of the Roman Empire made Arretine ware, but as manufacture moved farther from the capital, the quality of the red-gloss ware declined. The best was from southern France from the 1st century ad.

The BLAck-gloss ware that the Greeks had made also spread through the Roman Empire. In England it resembled Celtic metalwork. At times the wet clay was pinched out to create a dotted effect; other pots were decorated with white slip or pigment. Roman potters also made lead glazes, a procedure that enabled them to add metal oxides for color. Lead-glazed earthenware became the major pottery of medieval Europe.

C.

Islamic Pottery

The first Muslim potters of the Umayyad dynasty (ad 661-750) inherited the traditions of the Middle East: the blue- and green-glazed quartz fritwares known in Egypt since Roman times; the alkaline-glazed pottery of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran, known since Achaemenid times (7th-4th century bc); and the Roman lead-glazed ware, continued by Byzantine potters. Three successive waves of Chinese influence inspired change in Islamic pottery: from the 9th century to 11th century, Tang stoneware; from the 12th century to 14th century, Song white ware; and from the 15th century to 19th century, Ming blue-and-white ware. See Islamic Art and Architecture.

C.1.

Medieval Arabic Styles

In the 9th century, caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty encouraged local artisans to imitate imported Tang pottery with local clay and glazes. The Arab potters soon developed their own style—first in unglazed pottery with molded, stamped, and applied-relief decoration, then in underglaze sgraffito designs and in opaque white tin-glazed bowls with painted flowers and inscriptions, and finally in luster painting. Lusterware was earthenware with an opaque white tin glaze, fired once, then painted with metallic pigments and refired in a reduction kiln. The designs reflected metallic hues of red, bronze, lime, and yellow.

When potters emigrated from Iraq to the western Muslim world in the 10th century, the luster technique moved with them. As with tin glazes, lusterware ultimately influenced Europe by way of the Arab residence in Spain. It was also popular in Fatimid Egypt (969-1171) and Iran.

C.2.

Iran and Turkey

The Seljuk dynasty that ruled Iran, Iraq, Asia Minor, and Syria in the 12th and 13th centuries found substitutes for porcelain, and the Iranian cities of Rayy and Kāshān became centers for this white ware. Another fine Seljuk type was Mina'i ware, an enamel-overglaze pottery that, in its delicacy, imitated illuminated manuscripts. Kāshān potters, after the 13th-century Mongol conquests, used green glazes influenced by Chinese celadons. Cobalt-blue glazes appeared in Iran in the 9th century but later fell out of use. They were taken up again in the 14th to the 18th century in response to the popularity of blue-and-white ware with Chinese and European clients.

İznik was the center for Turkish pottery. There slip-painted pieces influenced by Persian and Afghanistani ware predated the Ottoman Turks' conquest of the region. Later, between 1490 and 1700, İznik ware displayed decorations painted under a thin transparent glaze on a loose-textured white body; in its three stages the designs were in cobalt blue, then turquoise and purple, then red.

During the Safavid dynasty, Kubachi ware, contemporary to İznik pottery, was probably made in northwestern Iran, and not at the town of Kubachi where it was found. Characteristic Kubachi pieces were large polychrome plates, painted underneath their crackle glazes. Gombroon ware, exported from that Persian Gulf port to Europe and the Far East in the 16th and 17th centuries, featured incised decorations on translucent white earthenware bodies. Copper-colored Persian lusterware was fashionable in the 17th century, as was polychrome painted ware.

In general, Islamic pottery was made in molds. Shapes were either Chinese inspired or were the basic shapes of metalwork. In addition to lusterware, the most creative work was the manufacture of tiles for mosques.

D.

Europe to 1800

Islamic tin-glazed pottery and lusterware became the ceramics of Spain from the 13th through the 15th century. At times called Hispano-Moresque ware, it had its center of manufacture at the Valencian town of Manises. It was exported from Mallorca, and thus the extremely popular Italian Renaissance ceramics that it influenced were known as maiolica, from the Italian name for Mallorca.

D.1.

Maiolica, Faience, and Delftware

In maiolica, painting over the white glaze was further developed, in yellow, orange, green, turquoise, blue, purplish-brown, and black. Frequently a transparent overglaze was added, as well as incised and molded-relief decoration. Made in many Italian cities in the 15th to 16th century, this ware bore little resemblance to its Spanish namesake. After 1600 the name faience was applied to the French variation of this tin-glazed ware, as well as to 16th- and 17th-century French and Belgian majolica-influenced pottery. In Germany, where it flourished until the 18th century, it was called fayence. After the center of its manufacture shifted from Antwerp to Delft in the mid-17th century, the name delftware, even for its English variation, came into use. The English delftware was made in London, Liverpool, and Bristol and in Dublin, until creamware (see Stoneware and Lead-Glazed Earthenware, below) began to replace it in the 1770s.

Tin-glazed ware remained popular in Europe until the early 19th century. It was made by dipping the biscuit-fired pot into a basic lead glaze to which tin oxide (an opacifier and whitener) had been added. This produced a dense white that completely covered the color of the clay body, providing a surface for painting any glaze color successful at moderate to high earthenware temperatures. Silver and gold were used for Spanish lusterware, painted over the fired glaze and refired in a low-temperature reduction kiln. In the 18th century, the fired tin glaze was painted with overglaze enamels and the pottery refired in a muffle kiln.

The full impact of Ming porcelain was felt throughout Europe in the first half of the 17th century, particularly in the golden age of delftware (1630-1700). The pottery became thinner, its decoration more delicate. Manganese purple outlines were drawn on the clay before the biscuit firing; then the underglaze blue and the final lead-and-tin glaze were applied. Tiles, plates, jugs, and vases were made, and the different Delft factory marks were imitated, even by the Chinese.

D.2.

Stoneware and Lead-Glazed Earthenware

European stoneware was developed in Germany at the end of the 14th century. It was salt-glazed: Common salt (an alkali) was thrown into the kiln, and soda from the salt created a glassy layer on the pot's surface. Hafner ware, a lead-glazed earthenware, was popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, with many vessels imitating metal jugs and tankards. Traditional English earthenware was decorated with slips and lead glazed, as was central European peasant pottery, taken to America by emigrants.

English stoneware was made on a large scale only after the late 17th century. The best of Staffordshire white salt-glazed stoneware was made between 1720 and 1760. Staffordshire was also a center for creamware, a popular lead-glazed earthenware made of Devonshire white clay mixed with calcined flint. In 1754 the English ceramist Josiah Wedgwood began to experiment with colored creamware. He established his own factory, but often worked with others who did transfer printing (introduced by the Worcester Porcelain Company in the 1750s). He also produced red stoneware; basaltes ware, an unglazed black stoneware; and jasperware, made of white stoneware clay that had been colored by the addition of metal oxides. Jasperware was usually ornamented with white relief portraits or Greek classical scenes. Wedgwood's greatest contribution to European ceramics, however, was his fine pearl ware, an extremely pale creamware with a bluish tint to its glaze.

D.3.

European Porcelain

The first soft-paste porcelains, cream rather than white in color, were made in Italy in the 16th century. The technique of making hard-paste porcelain was developed by the German ceramist Johann Friedrich Böttiger in 1708 or 1709. A factory was established in Meissen, Germany, in 1710. Because Böttiger did some of his early work near the city of Dresden, Meissen porcelain is sometimes known as Dresden porcelain. The early success of Meissen was due in part to the high artistic level of its decoration. Meissen was the preferred European porcelain until about 1756, when Sèvres became increasingly popular.

Sèvres, the most celebrated French porcelain, was first produced in Vincennes in 1738. Through the influence of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV, the factory was moved from Vincennes to Sèvres in 1756. Sèvres porcelain is renowned for its richly colored backgrounds and white panels decorated with birds. The production of hard-paste porcelain began in Limoges in 1771, when deposits of kaolin were discovered near that city. In 1784 the Limoges factory became a subsidiary of the royal factory in Sèvres.

The best early English porcelain was made in Chelsea in 1745. After its factory was sold to one in Derby in 1769, neoclassical style dominated domestic ware and figurines. In the 1740s a patent was taken out by porcelain makers at Bow in London, using bone ash in the clay body. The Lowestoft factory in Suffolk (established about 1757) used a similar formula. Glassy soft-paste porcelain was made in Staffordshire in the 18th century; Josiah Spode of that town was credited with having introduced the Staffordshire variety of Bow bone china.

E.

19th and 20th Centuries

Inexpensive transfer-printed wares for mass sale were popular in 19th-century England and on the Continent, as were relief-decorated wares. These spread to the United States, along with the manganese-brown Rockingham glazes developed in England in the early 19th century; the latter were popular with New Jersey and Ohio potteries. Mass-produced ware gradually displaced the dominant U.S. folk pottery, a vigorous salt-glazed stoneware.

Commercially produced ceramics after 1860 were of high quality. Some of the finest were and still are made by the Royal Porcelain factory in Copenhagen. The introduction of the art nouveau style, the Paris Exhibition of 1900, and the ideals of the Bauhaus school in the 1920s all influenced industrial ceramic design.

The individual studio or artist potter has been as important to the history of modern pottery as the industrial potter. The English Arts and Crafts movement of the 1860s influenced such potters as William De Morgan and (after 1871) the salt-glazed stoneware of the Doulton factories in Lambeth. In the United States the Rookwood factory (1880, Cincinnati, Ohio), the Grueby Faience Company (1897, Boston), and the Pewabic Pottery Works (1900, Detroit) brought prestige to the artist-potter. The international reputation of the English potters Bernard Leach—trained in Japan and inspired by Japanese and English folk potters—and Michael Ambrose Cardew—a leader in the 20th-century revival of pottery—further enhanced the contemporary tradition of the artist-artisan in clay. Pottery is also produced for a wide range of industrial purposes, including for use as plumbing fixtures and aerospace components.

See also Ceramics.