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Ceramics (art)
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Ceramics is the art and science of making objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials by the action of heat. In art history, ceramics and ceramic art mean tableware, art objects and tiles made from clay and other ceramic materials by the process of pottery, so excluding glass and also mosaic, normally made from glass tesserae. Some ceramic products are regarded as fine art, while others are regarded as decorative, industrial or applied art objects, or as artifacts in archaeology.
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Ceramics is the art and science of making objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials by the action of heat. In art history, ceramics and ceramic art mean tableware, art objects and tiles made from clay and other ceramic materials by the process of pottery, so excluding glass and also mosaic, normally made from glass tesserae. Some ceramic products are regarded as fine art, while others are regarded as decorative, industrial or applied art objects, or as artifacts in archaeology. The identification of a ceramic object as art varies, and there is no agreed standard or definition. It may be made by one individual or in a factory where a group of people design, make and decorate the ware. Modern decorative ceramics are sometimes called "art pottery"
The word "ceramics" comes from the Greek keramikos (?e?aµ????), meaning "pottery", which in turn comes from keramos (?e?aµ??), meaning "potter's clay." Most traditional ceramic products were made from clay (or clay mixed with other materials), shaped and subjected to heat, and tableware and decorative ceramics are generally still made like that.
There is a very long history of ceramic art in almost all developed cultures, and often ceramic objects are all the artistic evidence left from vanished cultures, like that of the Nok in Africa over 2,000 years ago. Cultures especially noted for fine ceramics include the Chinese, Cretan, Greek, Persian, Mayan, Japanese, and Korean cultures, as well as the modern Western cultures.
Elements of ceramic art, upon which different degrees of emphasis have been placed at different times, are the shape of the object, its decoration by painting, carving and other methods, and the glazing found on most ceramics.
Prehistoric pottery
, 4,500-4,000 BCE]]
The earliest known ceramic objects are the Gravettian figurines from the Upper Paleolithic period, such as those discovered at Dolní Vestonice in the modern-day Czech Republic. The Venus of Dolní Vestonice (Vestonická Venuše in Czech) is a statuette of a nude female figure dating from some time between 29,000 and 25,000 BCE. It was made by moulding and then firing a mixture of clay and powdered bone. Similar objects in various media found throughout throughout Europe and Asia and dating from the Upper Paleolithic period have also been called Venus figurines. Scholars are not agreed as to their purpose or cultural significance.
The earliest known pottery vessels may be those made by the Incipient Jomon people of Japan around 10,500 BCE. The term "Jomon" means "cord-marked" in Japanese. This refers to the markings made on clay vessels and figures using sticks with cords wrapped around them. Pottery which dates back to 10,000 BCE have also been excavated in China. Early pots were made by the "coiling" method, working the clay into a long string which was wound round to form a shape and then modelled to form smooth walls. The potter's wheel was probably invented in Mesopotamia by the 4th millennium BC, but spread across nearly all Eurasia and much of Africa, though it remained unknown in the New World until the arrival of Europeans. Decoration of the clay by incising and painting is found very widely, and was initially geometric, but often included figurative designs from very early on.
So important is pottery to the archaeology of prehistoric cultures that many are known by names taken from their distinctive, and often very fine, pottery, such as the Linear Pottery culture, Beaker culture, Globular Amphora culture, Corded Ware culture and Funnelbeaker culture, to take examples only from Neolithic Europe (approximately 7,000-1,800 BCE).
Ancient ceramics
Ceramic art has generated many styles from its own tradition, but is often closely related to contemporary sculpture and metalwork. Many times in its history styles from the usually more prestigious and expensive art of metalworking have been copied in ceramics. This can be seen in early Chinese ceramics, such as pottery and ceramic-wares of the Shang Dynasty, in Ancient Roman and Iranian pottery, and Rococo European styles, copying contemporary silverware shapes.
Asia
There is Chinese porcelain from the late Eastern Han period (100 to 200 AD), the Three Kingdoms period (220 to 280 AD), the Six Dynasties period (220 to 589 AD), and thereafter. China in particular has had a continuous history of large-scale production, with the Imperial factories usually producing the best work. The Tang Dynasty (618 to 906 AD) is especially noted for grave goods figures of humans, animals and model houses, boats and other goods, excavated (usually illegally) from graves in large numbers. The restrained and timeless Imperial porcelain of the Song dynasty (960–1279), featuring very subtle decoration shallowly carved by knife in the clay, is regarded by many authorities as the peak of Chinese ceramics, though the large and more exuberantly painted ceramics of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) have a wider reputation.
Chinese emperors gave ceramics as diplomatic gifts on a lavish scale, and the presence of Chinese ceramics no doubt aided the development of related traditions of ceramics in Japan and Korea in particular.
Ancient Mediterranean
Tanagra figurine of ca. 320 BCE, probably just intended to represent a fashionable lady with a sun-hat.]]
Glazed Egyptian faience goes back to the third millennium BC, with painted but unglazed pottery developed even earlier in the Naqada culture. Faience became sophisticated and produced on a large scale, using moulds as well modelling, and later also throwing on the wheel. Several methods of glazing were developed, but colours remained largely limited to a range in the blue-green spectrum.
On the Greek island of Santorini are some of the earliest finds dating to the third millennium BC, with the original settlement at Akrotiri dating to the fourth millennium BC; excavation work continues at the principal archaeological site of Akrotiri. Some of the excavated homes contain huge ceramic storage jars known as pithoi.
Ancient Grecian and Etruscan ceramics are renowned for their figurative painting, especially in the black-figure and red-figure styles. Moulded Greek terracotta figurines, especially those from Tanagra, were small figures, often religious but later including many of everyday genre figures, apparently used purely for decoration.
Ancient Roman pottery, such as Samian ware, was rarely as fine, and largely copied shapes from metalwork, but was produced in enormous quantities, and is found all over Europe and the Middle East, and beyond. Monte Testaccio is a waste mound in Rome made almost entirely of broken amphorae used for transporting and storing liquids and other products. Few vessels of great artistic interest have survived, but there are very many small figures, often incorporated into oil lamps or similar objects, and often with religious or erotic themes (or both together - a Roman speciality). The Romans generally did not leave grave goods, the best source of ancient pottery, but even so they do not seem to have had much in the way of luxury pottery, unlike Roman glass, which the elite used with gold or silver tableware. The more expensive pottery tended to use relief decoration, often moulded, rather than paint. Especially in the Eastern Empire, local traditions continued, hybridizing with Roman styles to varying extents.
Ceramics as wall decoration
tiles, which would have originally formed part of a much larger group.]]
The earliest evidence of glazed brick is the discovery of glazed bricks in the Elamite Temple at Chogha Zanbil, dated to the 13th century BCE. Glazed and coloured bricks were used to make low reliefs in Ancient Mesopotamia, most famously the Ishtar Gate of Babylon (ca. 575 BCE), now partly reconstructed in Berlin, with sections elsewhere. Mesopotamian craftsmen were imported for the palaces of the Persian Empire such as Persepolis. The tradition continued, and after the Islamic conquest of Persia coloured and often painted glazed bricks or tiles became an important element in Persian architecture, and from there spread to much of the Islamic world, notably the Iznik pottery of Turkey under the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Transmitted via Islamic Spain, a new tradition of Azulejos developed in Spain and especially Portugal, which by the Baroque period produced extremely large painted scenes on tiles, usually in blue and white. Delftware tiles, typically with a painted design covering only one (rather small) tile, were ubiquitous in Holland and widely exported over Northern Europe from the 16th century on. Several 18th century royal palaces had porcelain rooms with the walls entirely covered in porcelain. Surviving examples include ones at Capodimonte, Naples, the Royal Palace of Madrid and the nearby Royal Palace of Aranjuez. Elaborate tiled stoves were a feature of rooms of the middle and upper-classes in Northern Europe from the 17th to 19th centuries.
There are several other types of traditional tiles that remain in manufacture, for example the small, almost mosaic, brightly coloured tiles of Morocco. With exceptions, notably the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, tiles or glazed bricks do not feature largely in East Asian ceramics.
America
, Larco Museum collection, Lima, Peru.]]
area, Southwestern US. Note the T-shaped cut-out in the left mug's handle. Ancestral Puebloan doorways often have this same shape.]]
The oldest ceramics known in the Americas — made from 5,000 to 6,000 years ago — are found in the Andean region, along the Pacific coast of Ecuador at Valdivia and Puerto Hormiga, and in the San Jacinto Valley of Colombia; objects from 3,800 to 4,000 years old have been discovered in Peru. Some archaeologists believe that ceramics know-how found its way by sea to Mesoamerica, the second great cradle of civilization in the Americas.
The best-developed styles found in the central and southern Andes are the ceramics found near the ceremonial site at Chavín de Huántar (800–400 B.C.) and Cupisnique (1000–400 B.C.). During the same period, another culture developed on the southern coast of Peru, in the area called Paracas. The Paracas culture (600–100 B.C.) produced marvelous works of embossed ceramic finished with a thick oil applied after firing. This colorful tradition in ceramics and textiles was followed by the Nazca culture (A.D. 1–600), whose potters developed improved techniques for preparing clay and for decorating objects, using fine brushes to paint sophisticated motifs. In the early stage of Nazca ceramics, potters painted realistic characters and landscapes.
The Moche cultures (A.D. 1–800) that flourished on the northern coast of modern Peru produced extraordinary modelled clay sculptures and effigies decorated with fine lines of red on a beige background. Their pottery stands out for its huacos portrait vases, in which human faces are shown expressing different emotions — happiness, sadness, anger, melancholy — as well for its complicated drawings of wars, human sacrifices, and celebrations.
The Mayans were a relative latecomer to ceramic development, as their ceramic arts flourished in the Maya Classic Period, or the second to tenth century AD. One important site in southern Belize is known as Lubaantun, that boasts particularly detailed and prolific works. As evidence of the extent to which these ceramic art works were prized, many specimens traced to Lubaantun have been found at distant Mayan sites in Honduras and Guatemala. Furthermore, the current Mayan people of Lubaantun continue to hand produce copies of many of the original designs found at Lubaantun.
The Hopi in Northern Arizona and several other Puebloan peoples including the Taos, Acoma, and Zuñi people (all in the Southwestern United States) are renowned for painted pottery in several different styles. Nampeyo and her relatives created pottery that became highly sought after beginning in the early 20th century.
Medieval and Modern Ceramics
Islamic pottery
From the eighth to eighteenth centuries, glazed ceramics was important in Islamic art, usually in the form of elaborate pottery, devoloping on vigorous Persian and Egyptian pre-Islamic traditions in particular. Tin-opacified glazing was developed by the Islamic potters, the first examples found as blue-painted ware in Basra, dating from about the 8th century. The Islamic world had contact with China, and increasingly adapted many Chinese decorative motifs. Persian wares gradually relaxed Islamic restrictions on figurative ornament, and painted figuratives scenes became very important.
Stonepaste ceramics, originating from 9th century Iraq, was also an important material in Islamic pottery. Glass and pottery was first produced on a large scale in Ar-Raqqah, Syria, in the 8th century. Other centers for innovative ceramics in the Islamic world were Fustat (near modern Cairo) from 975 to 1075, Damascus from 1100 to around 1600 and Tabriz from 1470 to 1550.
Lustreware, with its iridescent metallic colours, was invented in Iraq by the Persian chemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber) in the 8th century during the Abbasid caliphate.
The the albarello form, a type of maiolica earthenware jar originally designed to hold apothecaries' ointments and dry drugs, was first made in the Islamic Middle East. It was brought to Italy by Hispano-Moresque traders; the earliest Italian examples were produced in Florence in the 15th century.
Iznik pottery
Iznik pottery, made in western Anatolia, is highly decorated ceramics whose heyday was the late sixteenth century under the Ottoman sultans. Iznik vessels were originally made in imitation of Chinese porcelain, which was highly prized.
From the late 15th century, red earthenware from Iznik began to be replaced by a white body made of silica, glass and white clay. This was similar to the stonepastes already made in other parts of the Middle East, but far surpassing them in whiteness. Decoration was applied to the bisqued wares using seven colours: blue, purple, red, green, turquoise, grey and black. Before 1520, Iznik ware was decorated mainly in blue; from the 1520s turquoise was added; the polychrome palette developed from 1540-1560.
Jugs, hanging lamps, cups, bowls and dishes were made, inspired by metalwork and illuminated books as well as Chinese ceramics. Under Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–66), demand for Iznik wares increased. Many large dishes were made with looser designs, incorporating ships, animals, trees and flowers. Designs in the 1520s include the saz style in which a long, serrated saz leaf, dynamically arranged, is balanced by static rosette forms. In the later 16th century, the quatre fleurs style used a repertoire of stylised tulips, carnations, roses and hyacinths. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman sultans started a huge building programme. In these buildings, large quantities of tiles were used. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul (built 1609-16) alone contains 20,000 tiles and tiles were used extensively in the Topkapi Palace (commenced 1459). As a result of this demand, tiles dominated the output of the Iznik potteries.
The decline of Iznik pottery has been linked with the decline in Ottoman power and with the Sultans' imposition of fixed prices in a period of inflation. The reduction in imperial demand inevitably affected the Iznik economy. By the mid-17th century only twenty kilns remained and knowledge had been lost.
Tin-glazed pottery
Tin-glazed pottery, or faience, is covered in a white, shiny and opaque glaze that lends itself to further decoration. It originated in Mesopotamia in the ninth century, from where it spread to Egypt, Persia and Spain before reaching Italy in the Renaissance, Holland in the 16th century and England, France and other European countries shortly after. Important regional styles in Europe include: Hispano-Moresque, maiolica, Delftware, and English Delftware.
During the Middle Ages, geometrically or figuratively painted pottery (not tin-glazed) was produced all over Europe, in similar but generally less accomplished styles to that of the pottery of the Islamic world. By the High Middle Ages the Hispano-Moresque ware of Al-Andaluz, much of it produced for export to Christian Europe, and some of it lustreware, was the most sophisticated pottery being produced in Europe, with elaborate and largely geometric decoration. Crucially, they introduced to Europe tin-glazing to give a white background, which was developed in the Italian Renaissance in highly decorated Italian maiolica, which adapted compositions from painting and other media to produce figurative scenes in decorated surrounds that can be of superb quality.
The Florentine sculptor Luca della Robbia developed a style of large painted and glazed reliefs in terracotta, normally of religious subjects, which were easier to produce and more weather-resistant than stone, and so designed for placing on the outsides of buildings, though most are now inside museums. Two further generations of the family continued the workshop.
The tin-glazed pottery made in Moorish Spain and Renaissance Italy was taken up in the Netherlands from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries mainly at Delft. The Delft potters made simple household items, fancy vases and decorative pieces and tiles in vast numbers, estimated at eight hundred million over two hundred years, usually with blue painting on a white ground. Delftware became popular, was widely exported in Europe and reached China and Japan.
Dutch potters took Delftware to the British Isles, where it was made between about 1550 and 1800. The main centres of production were London, Bristol and Liverpool with smaller centres at Wincanton, Glasgow and Dublin. English Delftware pottery is similar to that from Holland, but its peculiarly English quality has been commented upon: ". . . there is a relaxed tone and a sprightliness which is preserved throughout the history of English delftware; the overriding mood is provincial and naive rather than urbane and sophisticated."
In France, tin-glaze was began in 1690 at Quimper in Brittany , followed in Rouen, Strasbourg and Lunéville. Faïence blanche was left undecorated. Faïence parlante bears mottoes often on decorative labels or banners, e.g. on apothecary pots Mottoes of fellowships and associations became popular in the 18th century, leading to the faïence patriotique that was a speciality of the years of the French Revolution.
In the 18th century, Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) formulated a white earthenware body from which he could make light and durable tablewares. As these were almost as white as tin-glazed pottery and better in other ways, they replaced it in the 19th century.
There has been a revival in the twentieth century by studio potters. Some twentieth-century artists painted on tin-glazed pottery, for example, Picasso (1881–1973), who produced much work of this kind in the 1940s and 1950s.
Early European porcelain
, Nymphenburg, 1756]]
Chinese porcelain reached Europe in a very expensive trickle, and the attempt to copy the process successfully began in the 16th century with the soft-paste Medici porcelain of Florence, produced in tiny quantities from 1575-1587. Not until the opening of the Meissen porcelain factory in Dresden in 1710 was a successful process, this time for hard-paste porcelain, developed in Europe. The Saxons were as unsuccessful as the Chinese had been in keeping the secrets of their technique, and within a few years other factories opened: Vincennes near Paris (1740), Chelsea in London (ca. 1743), Nymphenburg in Bavaria (1754), and Capodimonte in Naples (1743), and many others. Except for Chelsea, all of those named were financed by the local ruler, as Meissen was.
Porcelain was ideally suited to the energetic curves of the Rococo style of the day, and the products of these first decades of European porcelain remain generally the most highly regarded, with the Meissen modeller Johann Joachim Kaendler perhaps the most outstanding figure of the period. Like other leading modellers, Kaendler had trained as a sculptor, and produced models from which moulds were taken.
By the end of the 18th century porcelain tableware and decorative objects had become obligatory among the prosperous middle-classes of Europe, and there were factories in most countries, many of which are still producing. As well as tableware, early European porcelain revived the taste for purely decorative figures of people or animals, which had also been a feature of several ancient cultures, often as grave goods. These were still being produced in China as blanc de Chine religious figures, many of which had reached Europe. European figures were almost entirely secular, and soon brightly and brilliantly painted, often in groups with a modelled setting, and a strong narrative element (see picture).
Wedgwood and the North Staffordshire Potteries
From the 17th century, the English conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent in North Staffordshire emerged as a major centre of pottery making. Important contributions to the development of the industry were made by the firms of Wedgwood, Spode, Royal Doulton and Minton.
Wedgewood urn in jasperware, ca. 1820]]
The presence locally of abundant supplies of coal and of suitable clay for earthenware production led to the early but at first limited development of the local pottery industry. The construction of the Trent and Mersey Canal enabled the import of china clay from Cornwall together with other materials and facilitated the production of creamware and bone china. Other production centres had a lead in the production of high quality wares but the preeminence of North Staffordshire was brought about by methodical and detailed research and a willingness to experiment carried out over many years, initially by one man, Josiah Wedgwood. His lead was followed by other local potters, scientists and engineers.
Wedgwood is credited with the industrialization of the manufacture of pottery. His work was of very high quality: when visiting his workshop, if he saw an offending vessel that failed to meet with his standards, he would smash it with his stick, exclaiming, "This will not do for Josiah Wedgwood!" He was keenly interested in the scientific advances of his day and it was this interest that underpinned his adoption of its approach and methods to revolutionize the quality of his pottery. His unique glazes began to distinguish his wares from anything else on the market. His matt finish jasperware in two colours was highly suitable for the Neoclassicism of the end of the century, imitating the effects of Ancient Roman carved gemstone cameos like the Gemma Augustea, or the cameo glass Portland Vase, of which Wedgwood produced copies.
He also is credited with perfecting transfer-printing, first developed in England about 1750. By the end of the century this had largely replaced hand-painting for complex designs, except at the luxury end of the market, and the vast majority of the world's decorated pottery uses versions of the technique to the present day.
Stoke-on-Trent's supremacy in pottery manufacture nurtured and attracted a large number of ceramic artists including Clarice Cliff, Susie Cooper, Lorna Bailey, Charlotte Rhead, Frederick Hurten Rhead and Jabez Vodrey.
Studio pottery in Britain
Studio pottery is made by modern artists working alone or in small groups, producing unique items or short runs, typically with all stages of manufacture carried out by one individual. Studio pottery is represented by potters all over the world but has strong roots in Britain.
Leading trends in British studio pottery in the 20th century are represented by Bernard Leach, William Staite Murray, Dora Billington, Lucie Rie and Hans Coper. Bernard Leach (1887-1979) established a style of pottery influenced by Far-Eastern and medieval English forms. After briefly experimenting with earthenware, he turned to stoneware fired to high temperatures in large oil- or wood-burning kilns. This style dominated British studio pottery in the mid 20th century. Leach's influence was disseminated by his writings (e.g. A Potter's Book) and the apprentice system he ran at his pottery in St Ives, Cornwall, through which many notable studio potters passed. Leach taught intermittently at Dartington Hall, Devon from the 1930s.
Other ceramic artists exerted an influence through their positions in art schools. William Staite Murray, who was head of the ceramics department of the Royal College of Art, treated his pots as works of art, exhibiting them with titles in galleries. Dora Billington (1890-1968) studied at Hanley School of Art, worked in the North Staffordshire potteries and was latterly head of pottery at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. She worked in media that Leach did not, e.g. tin-glazed earthenware, and influenced potters such as William Newland, Margaret Hine, Nicholas Vergette and Alan Caiger-Smith.
Lucie Rie (1902-1995) came to London in 1938 as a refugee from Austria. She had studied at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule and has been regarded as essentially a modernist. Rie experimented and produced new glaze effects. The bowls and bottles which she specialised in are finely potted and sometimes brightly coloured. She taught at Camberwell College of Arts from 1960 until 1972.
Hans Coper (1920-1981), also a refugee, worked with Rie before moving to a studio in Hertfordshire. His work is non-functional, sculptural and unglazed. He was commissioned to produce large ceramic candlesticks for Coventry Cathedral in the early 1960s. He taught at Camberwell College of Arts from 1960 to 1969, where he influenced Ewen Henderson. He taught at the Royal College of Art from 1966 to 1975 where his students included Elizabeth Fritsch, Alison Briton, Jacqui Poncelet, Carol McNicoll, Geoffrey Swindell, Jill Crowley, and Glenys Barton, all of whom produce non-functional work.
After the Second World War, studio pottery in Britain was encouraged by the wartime ban on decorating manufactured pottery and the modernist spirit of the Festival of Britain. Studio potters provided consumers with an alternative to plain industrial ceramics. Their simple, functional designs chimed in with the modernist ethos. Several potteries were formed in response to this fifties boom, and this style of studio pottery remained popular into the nineteen-seventies.
Gallery
Image:Egypte louvre 180 pot.jpg|Ancient Egyptian ceramic art, Louvre Museum.
Image:NavdatoliGoblet1300BCE.jpg|Ceramic goblet from Navdatoli, Malwa, India, 1300 BCE.
Image:Funerary Urn from Oaxaca.jpg|A funerary urn in the shape of a "bat god" or a jaguar, from Oaxaca, Mexico, dated to AD 300–650. Height: 9.5 in (23 cm).
File:ChateaudUsseMadonna.jpg|Luca della Robbia, Virgin and Child with John the Baptist
File:Ming-Schale1.jpg|Ming Dynasty plate depicting dragons, in the classic blue on white
File:Catherine Palace heater.jpg|18th century tiled stove in the Catherine Palace, St Petersburg
Image:Hopi canteen p1070217.jpg|Hopi olla, 19th century, artist unknown, Stanford Museum collections.
Image:Meissen-Porcelain-Korean.Girl.JPG|Industrial art example: "Korean girl." Meissen porcelain museum.
Image:Angel by Deborah Halpern 01a.jpg|"Angel", public art in Melbourne, Australia by Deborah Halpern.
Further reading
- de Waal, Edmund. File retrieved February 10, 2007.
External links
- by Victor Bryant
- Online catalogue & more from the Ashmolean Museum
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- from the Victoria & Albert Museum
- - see "ceramics" for many features
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