Ceramic art

 ( Art ) 

Glazed wares first appear in the archaeological record at the end of the 9th century at the Roluos temple group in the Angkor region, where green-glazed pot shards have been found. A brown glaze became popular at the beginning of the 11th century and brown-glazed wares have been found in abundance at Khmer sites in northeast Thailand. Decorating pottery with animal forms was a popular style from the 11th to 13th century. Archaeological excavations in the Angkor region have revealed that towards the end of Angkor period production of indigenous pottery declined while there was a dramatic increase in Chinese ceramic imports.

Direct evidence of the shapes of vessels is provided by scenes depicted on bas-reliefs at Khmer temples, which also offer insight into domestic and ritualistic uses of the wares. The wide range of utilitarian shapes suggest the Khmers used ceramics in their daily life for cooking, food preservation, carrying and storing liquids, as containers for medicinal herbs, perfumes and cosmetics.

Some experts believe the first true porcelain was made in the province of Zhejiang in China during the Han dynasty period. Sherd recovered from archaeological Eastern Han kiln sites estimated firing temperature ranged from .He Li, (1996). Chinese Ceramics. The New Standard Guide. Thames and Hudson, London. . As far back as 1000 BCE, the so-called "porcelaneous wares" or "proto-porcelain wares" were made using at least some kaolin fired at high temperatures. The dividing line between the two and true porcelain wares is not a clear one. Archaeological finds have pushed the dates to as early as the Han dynasty (206BCE220CE).Temple, Robert K.G. (2007). The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention (3rd edition). London: André Deutsch, pp. 103–6.

The 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 (13681644) 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.

Until the 16th century, small quantities of expensive Chinese porcelain were imported into Europe. From the 16th century onwards attempts were made to imitate it in Europe, including soft-paste and the Medici porcelain made in Florence. None was successful until a recipe for hard-paste porcelain was devised at the Meissen factory in Dresden in 1710. Within a few years, porcelain factories sprung up at Nymphenburg in Bavaria (1754) and Capodimonte in Naples (1743) and many other places, often financed by a local ruler.

In the 17th century, conditions in China drove some of its potters into Japan, bringing with them the knowledge to make refined porcelain. From the mid-century, the Dutch East India Company began to import Japanese porcelain into Europe. At this time, Kakiemon wares were produced at the factories of Arita, which had much in common with the Chinese Famille Verte style. The superb quality of its vitreous enamel decoration was highly prized in the West and widely imitated by the major European porcelain manufacturers. In 1971 it was declared an important "intangible cultural treasure" by the Japanese government.

In the 20th century, interest in the art of the village potter was revived by the Mingei folk movement led by potters Shoji Hamada, Kawai Kajiro and others. They studied traditional methods in order to preserve native wares that were in danger of disappearing. Modern masters use ancient methods to bring pottery and porcelain to new heights of achievement at Shiga, Iga, Karatsu, Hagi, and Bizen. A few outstanding potters were designated living cultural treasures ( mukei bunkazai 無形文化財). In the old capital of Kyoto, the Raku ware family continued to produce the rough Chawan that had so delighted connoisseurs. At Mino Province, potters continued to reconstruct the classic formulas of Momoyama-era Seto-type tea wares of Mino, such as Oribe ware. By the 1990s many master potters worked away from ancient kilns and made classic wares in all parts of Japan.

The albarello form, a type of maiolica earthenware jar originally designed to hold Apothecary 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, made in western Anatolia, is highly decorated ceramics whose heyday was the late 16th century under the Ottoman Empire sultans. Iznik vessels were originally made in imitation of Chinese porcelain, which was highly prized. Under Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–66), demand for Iznik wares increased. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire sultans started a programme of building, which used large quantities of Iznik tiles. 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.

On the Greek island of Santorini are some of the earliest finds created by the Minoans dating to the third millennium BCE, with the original settlement at Akrotiri dating to the fourth millennium BCE; excavation work continues at the principal archaeological site of Akrotiri. Some of the excavated homes contain huge ceramic storage jars known as pithoi.

Ancient Greek and Etruscan art ceramics are renowned for their figurative painting, especially in the black-figure and red-figure styles. Moulded Greek terracotta figurines, especially Tanagra figurine, 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 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.

Soft-paste porcelain was made at Rouen in the 1680s, but the first important production was at St.Cloud, letters-patent being granted in 1702. The Duc de Bourbon established a soft-paste factory, the Chantilly porcelain, in the grounds of his Château de Chantilly in 1730; a soft-paste factory was opened at Mennecy; and the Vincennes factory was set up by workers from Chantilly in 1740, moving to larger premises at Sèvres in 1756. The superior soft-paste made at Sèvres put it in the leading position in Europe in the second half of the 18th century. The first soft-paste in England was demonstrated in 1742, apparently based on the Saint-Cloud formula. In 1749 a patent was taken out on the first bone china, subsequently perfected by Josiah Spode. The main English porcelain makers in the 18th century were at Chelsea, Bow, St James's, Bristol, Derby and Lowestoft.

Porcelain was ideally suited to the energetic Rococo curves of the day. The products of these early decades of European porcelain are generally the most highly regarded, and expensive. The Meissen modeler Johann Joachim Kaendler and Franz Anton Bustelli of Nymphenburg are perhaps the most outstanding ceramic artists of the period. Like other leading modelers, they trained as sculptors and produced models from which moulds were taken.

By the end of the 18th century owning 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).

The local presence of abundant supplies of coal and 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 allowed the easy transportation of Kaolinite 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 engraved gem 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. The perfecting of underglaze transfer printing is widely credited to Josiah Spode the first. The process had been used as a development from the processes used in book printing, and early paper quality made a very refined detail in the design incapable of reproduction, so early print patterns were rather lacking in subtlety of tonal variation. The development of machine made thinner printing papers around 1804 allowed the engravers to use a much wider variety of tonal techniques which became capable of being reproduced on the ware, much more successfully.

Far from perfecting underglaze print Wedgwood was persuaded by his painters not to adopt underglaze printing until it became evident that Mr Spode was taking away his business through competitive pricing for a much more heavily decorated high quality product.

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.

• Royal Porcelain Factory, Berlin
• Meissen porcelain
• Nymphenburg porcelain
• Hutschenreuther

The best-developed styles found in the central and southern Andes are the ceramics found near the ceremonial site at Chavín de Huántar (800400BCE) and Cupisnique (1000400BCE). During the same period, another culture developed on the southern coast of Peru, in the area called Paracas culture. The Paracas culture (600100BCE) 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 (1600CE), 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 culture ceramics, potters painted realistic characters and landscapes.

The Moche cultures (1800CE) that flourished on the northern coast of modern Peru produced 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 emotionshappiness, sadness, anger, melancholyas well for its complicated drawings of wars, human sacrifices, and celebrations.Born of Clay – Ceramic from the National Museum of the American Indian, 2005 Smithsonian Institution

The Maya were relative latecomers to ceramic development, as their ceramic arts flourished in the Maya Classic Period, or the 2nd to 10th century. 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 Maya sites in Honduras and Guatemala.C.M. Hogan, Comparison of Mayan sites in southern and western Belize, Lumina Technologies (2006) Furthermore, the current Maya people of Lubaantun continue to hand produce copies of many of the original designs found at Lubaantun.

In the United States, the oldest pottery dates to 2500BCE. It has been found in the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in Jacksonville, Florida, and some slightly older along the Savannah River in Georgia.

The Hopi in Northern Arizona and several other Puebloan peoples including the Taos Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo, and Zuni people people (all in the Southwestern United States) are renowned for painted pottery in several different styles. Nampeyo A Nampeyo Showcase , a display of some of Nampeyo's work and her relatives created pottery that became highly sought after beginning in the early 20th century. Pueblo tribes in the state of New Mexico have styles distinctive to each of the various pueblos (villages). They include Santa Clara Pueblo, Taos Pueblo, Hopi Pueblos, San Ildefonso Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo and Zuni people Pueblo, amongst others. Some of the renowned artists of Pueblo pottery include: Nampeyo, Elva Nampeyo, and Dextra Quotskuyva of the Hopi; Leonidas Tapia of San Juan Pueblo; and Maria Martinez and Julian Martinez of San Ildefonso Pueblo. In the early 20th century Martinez and her husband Julian rediscovered the method of creating traditional San Ildefonso Pueblo Black-on Black pottery.

Pottery in Sub-Saharan Africa is traditionally made by coiling and is fired at low temperature. The figurines of the ancient Nok culture of northern Nigeria, whose function remains unclear, are an example of early high-quality figural work. Early Nok figures can be dated as early as 500 BCE and as late as 200 CE. These coil-built figures typically depict heads with triangular eyes, varied facial expressions, and intricate hairstyles. Later figurative work is found in several west African cultural traditions, such as the work of Djenne-Djenno ceramists and in Benin art.

In the Aïr Region of Niger (West Africa) (Haour 2003) pottery dating from around 10,000 BCE was excavated.