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150-456: Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, including clay . It may take varied forms, including artistic pottery , including tableware , tiles , figurines and other sculpture . As one of the plastic arts , ceramic art is a visual art . While some ceramics are considered fine art , such as pottery or sculpture, most are considered to be decorative , industrial or applied art objects. Ceramic art can be created by one person or by

300-508: A kiln to permanently set their shapes, vitrify the body and the glaze. Porcelain is fired at a higher temperature than earthenware so that the body can vitrify and become non-porous. Many types of porcelain in the past have been fired twice or even three times, to allow decoration using less robust pigments in overglaze enamel . Porcelain was invented in China over a centuries-long development period beginning with "proto-porcelain" wares dating from

450-511: A kiln to temperatures between 1,200 and 1,400 °C (2,200 and 2,600 °F). The greater strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery , arise mainly from vitrification and the formation of the mineral mullite within the body at these high temperatures. End applications include tableware , decorative ware such as figurines , and products in technology and industry such as electrical insulators and laboratory ware. The manufacturing process used for porcelain

600-537: A patent on a porcelain containing bone ash. This was the first bone china , subsequently perfected by Josiah Spode . William Cookworthy discovered deposits of kaolin in Cornwall , and his factory at Plymouth , established in 1768, used kaolin and china stone to make hard-paste porcelain with a body composition similar to that of the Chinese porcelains of the early 18th century. But the great success of English ceramics in

750-728: A "tile" is a construction tile or similar object, such as rectangular counters used in playing games (see tile-based game ). The word is derived from the French word tuile , which is, in turn, from the Latin word tegula , meaning a roof tile composed of fired clay. Tiles are often used to form wall murals and floor coverings, and can range from simple square tiles to complex mosaics . Tiles are most often made of ceramic , typically glazed for internal uses and unglazed for roofing, but other materials are also commonly used, such as glass, cork, concrete and other composite materials, and stone. Tiling stone

900-574: A distinctive variant of Chinese, and later Japanese, developments. The celadon Goryeo ware from the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) and early Joseon white porcelain of the following dynasty are generally regarded as the finest achievements. From the 8th to 18th centuries, glazed ceramics was important in Islamic art , usually in the form of elaborate pottery , developing on vigorous Persian and Egyptian pre-Islamic traditions in particular. Tin-opacified glazing

1050-505: A few hundred ohms . The major advantage of these is that they can dissipate a lot of energy, and they self-reset; after the voltage across the device drops below the threshold, its resistance returns to being high. This makes them ideal for surge-protection applications; as there is control over the threshold voltage and energy tolerance, they find use in all sorts of applications. The best demonstration of their ability can be found in electrical substations , where they are employed to protect

1200-514: A finer examination of the composition of ceramic artifacts and sherds to determine the source of the material and, through this, the possible manufacturing site. Key criteria are the composition of the clay and the temper used in the manufacture of the article under study: the temper is a material added to the clay during the initial production stage and is used to aid the subsequent drying process. Types of temper include shell pieces, granite fragments, and ground sherd pieces called ' grog '. Temper

1350-422: A furnace, a pyroelectric crystal allowed to cool under no applied stress generally builds up a static charge of thousands of volts. Such materials are used in motion sensors , where the tiny rise in temperature from a warm body entering the room is enough to produce a measurable voltage in the crystal. In turn, pyroelectricity is seen most strongly in materials that also display the ferroelectric effect , in which

1500-669: A glassy surface, making a vessel less pervious to water. Ceramic artifacts have an important role in archaeology for understanding the culture, technology, and behavior of peoples of the past. They are among the most common artifacts to be found at an archaeological site, generally in the form of small fragments of broken pottery called sherds . The processing of collected sherds can be consistent with two main types of analysis: technical and traditional. The traditional analysis involves sorting ceramic artifacts, sherds, and larger fragments into specific types based on style, composition, manufacturing, and morphology. By creating these typologies, it

1650-515: A group, in a pottery or a ceramic factory with a group designing and manufacturing the artware. In Britain and the United States, modern ceramics as an art took its inspiration in the early twentieth century from the Arts and Crafts movement, leading to the revival of pottery considered as a specifically modern craft. Such crafts emphasized traditional non-industrial production techniques, faithfulness to

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1800-403: A major European factories producing tableware, and later porcelain figurines. Eventually other factories opened: Gardner porcelain, Dulyovo (1832), Kuznetsovsky porcelain, Popovsky porcelain, and Gzhel . During the twentieth century, under Soviet governments, ceramics continued to be a popular artform, supported by the state, with an increasingly propagandist role. One artist, who worked at

1950-600: A major cause. One of these potters, Yi Sam-pyeong , discovered the raw material of porcelain in Arita and produced first true porcelain in Japan. 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

2100-534: A material, "terracotta" also refers to items made out of this material. In archaeology and art history , "terracotta" is often used to describe objects such as statues, and figurines not made on a potter's wheel . A prime example is the Terracotta Army , a collection of man-sized terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang , the first Emperor of China . It is a form of funerary art buried with

2250-718: A medium. Much studio pottery is tableware or cookware but an increasing number of studio potters produce non-functional or sculptural items. Some studio potters now prefer to call themselves ceramic artists, ceramists or simply artists. Studio pottery is represented by potters all over the world. A tile is a manufactured piece of hard-wearing material such as ceramic , stone , metal, or even glass , generally used for covering roofs, floors, walls, showers, or other objects such as tabletops. Alternatively, tile can sometimes refer to similar units made from lightweight materials such as perlite , wood , and mineral wool , typically used for wall and ceiling applications. In another sense,

2400-586: 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 the Netherlands and widely exported over Northern Europe from the 16th century on. Several 18th-century royal palaces had porcelain rooms with

2550-509: A paste composed of kaolin and alabaster and fired at temperatures up to 1,400 °C (2,552 °F) in a wood-fired kiln, producing a porcelain of great hardness, translucency, and strength. Later, the composition of the Meissen hard paste was changed, and the alabaster was replaced by feldspar and quartz , allowing the pieces to be fired at lower temperatures. Kaolinite, feldspar, and quartz (or other forms of silica ) continue to constitute

2700-492: A rotation process called "throwing"), slip casting , tape casting (used for making very thin ceramic capacitors), injection molding , dry pressing, and other variations. Many ceramics experts do not consider materials with an amorphous (noncrystalline) character (i.e., glass) to be ceramics, even though glassmaking involves several steps of the ceramic process and its mechanical properties are similar to those of ceramic materials. However, heat treatments can convert glass into

2850-597: A second is applied, and prior to the scratching or incising decoration. This is particularly useful if the base body is not of the desired colour or texture. In sharp contrast to the archaeological usage, in which the term terra sigillata refers to a whole class of pottery, in contemporary ceramic art, 'terra sigillata' describes only a watery refined slip used to facilitate the burnishing of raw clay surfaces and used to promote carbon smoke effects, in both primitive low temperature firing techniques and unglazed alternative western-style Raku firing techniques. Terra sigillata

3000-434: A semi-crystalline material known as glass-ceramic . Traditional ceramic raw materials include clay minerals such as kaolinite , whereas more recent materials include aluminium oxide, more commonly known as alumina . Modern ceramic materials, which are classified as advanced ceramics, include silicon carbide and tungsten carbide . Both are valued for their abrasion resistance and are therefore used in applications such as

3150-423: A signal). The unit of time measured is the natural interval required for electricity to be converted into mechanical energy and back again. The piezoelectric effect is generally stronger in materials that also exhibit pyroelectricity , and all pyroelectric materials are also piezoelectric. These materials can be used to inter-convert between thermal, mechanical, or electrical energy; for instance, after synthesis in

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3300-455: A smoother surface to a rough body, mask an inferior colour or for decorative effect. Slips or engobes can also be applied by painting techniques, in isolation or in several layers and colours. Sgraffito involves scratching through a layer of coloured slip to reveal a different colour or the base body underneath. Several layers of slip and/or sgraffito can be done while the pot is still in an unfired state. One colour of slip can be fired, before

3450-552: A source of imperial pride. The Yongle emperor erected a white porcelain brick-faced pagoda at Nanjing , and an exceptionally smoothly glazed type of white porcelain is peculiar to his reign. Jingdezhen porcelain's fame came to a peak during the Qing dynasty. Although the Japanese elite were keen importers of Chinese porcelain from early on, they were not able to make their own until the arrival of Korean potters that were taken captive during

3600-418: A stable electric dipole can be oriented or reversed by applying an electrostatic field. Pyroelectricity is also a necessary consequence of ferroelectricity. This can be used to store information in ferroelectric capacitors , elements of ferroelectric RAM . The most common such materials are lead zirconate titanate and barium titanate . Aside from the uses mentioned above, their strong piezoelectric response

3750-484: A wider range of colours. Like many earlier wares, modern porcelains are often biscuit -fired at around 1,000 °C (1,830 °F), coated with glaze and then sent for a second glaze -firing at a temperature of about 1,300 °C (2,370 °F) or greater. Another early method is "once-fired", where the glaze is applied to the unfired body and the two fired together in a single operation. In this process, "green" (unfired) ceramic wares are heated to high temperatures in

3900-400: Is pottery that has not been fired to vitrification and is thus permeable to water. Many types of pottery have been made from it from the earliest times, and until the 18th century it was the most common type of pottery outside the far East. Earthenware is often made from clay, quartz and feldspar . Terracotta , a type of earthenware , is a clay -based unglazed or glazed ceramic , where

4050-439: Is a type of pottery identified by its primary decorating process where slip is placed onto the leather-hard clay body surface before firing by dipping, painting or splashing. Slip is an aqueous suspension of a clay body, which is a mixture of clays and other minerals such as quartz , feldspar and mica . A coating of white or coloured slip, known as an engobe, can be applied to the article to improve its appearance, to give

4200-512: Is a very common shape in Korea. Korean celadon comes in a variety of colors, from turquoise to putty . Additionally, in the late 13th century, the Inlay technique of expressing pigmented patterns by filling the hollow parts of pottery with white and red clay was frequently used. The main difference from those in China is that many specimens have inlay decoration under the glaze. Most Korean ceramics from

4350-572: Is also used as a brushable decorative colourant medium in higher temperature glazed ceramic techniques. Studio pottery is pottery made by amateur or professional artists or artisans working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs. Typically, all stages of manufacture are carried out by the artists themselves. Studio pottery includes functional wares such as tableware , cookware and non-functional wares such as sculpture . Studio potters can be referred to as ceramic artists, ceramists, ceramicists or as an artist who uses clay as

4500-416: Is determined by measuring the increase in content of water required to change a clay from a solid state bordering on the plastic, to a plastic state bordering on the liquid, though the term is also used less formally to describe the ease with which a clay may be worked. Clays used for porcelain are generally of lower plasticity than many other pottery clays. They wet very quickly, meaning that small changes in

4650-467: Is employed. Ice templating allows the creation of macroscopic pores in a unidirectional arrangement. The applications of this oxide strengthening technique are important for solid oxide fuel cells and water filtration devices. To process a sample through ice templating, an aqueous colloidal suspension is prepared to contain the dissolved ceramic powder evenly dispersed throughout the colloid, for example Yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ). The solution

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4800-468: Is exploited in the design of high-frequency loudspeakers , transducers for sonar , and actuators for atomic force and scanning tunneling microscopes . Temperature increases can cause grain boundaries to suddenly become insulating in some semiconducting ceramic materials, mostly mixtures of heavy metal titanates . The critical transition temperature can be adjusted over a wide range by variations in chemistry. In such materials, current will pass through

4950-402: Is known for its high levels of whiteness and translucency, and very high mechanical strength and chip resistance. Its high strength allows it to be produced in thinner cross-sections than other types of porcelain. Like stoneware it is vitrified , but is translucent due to differing mineral properties. From its initial development and up to the later part of the twentieth century, bone china

5100-539: Is nonporous; it may or may not be glazed. One widely recognised definition is from the Combined Nomenclature of the European Communities, a European industry standard states "Stoneware, which, though dense, impermeable and hard enough to resist scratching by a steel point, differs from porcelain because it is more opaque , and normally only partially vitrified. It may be vitreous or semi-vitreous. It

5250-480: Is not understood, but there are two major families of superconducting ceramics. Piezoelectricity , a link between electrical and mechanical response, is exhibited by a large number of ceramic materials, including the quartz used to measure time in watches and other electronics. Such devices use both properties of piezoelectrics, using electricity to produce a mechanical motion (powering the device) and then using this mechanical motion to produce electricity (generating

5400-537: Is now made worldwide, including in China. The English had read the letters of Jesuit missionary François Xavier d'Entrecolles , which described Chinese porcelain manufacturing secrets in detail. One writer has speculated that a misunderstanding of the text could possibly have been responsible for the first attempts to use bone-ash as an ingredient in English porcelain, although this is not supported by modern researchers and historians. Traditionally, English bone china

5550-506: Is now the Russian Far East , providing several from between 20,000 and 10,000 BCE, although the vessels were simple utilitarian objects. Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi province contained pottery fragments that date back to 20,000 years ago. Recent archaeological excavations at Angkor Borei (in southern Cambodia) have recovered a large number of ceramics, some of which probably date back to

5700-491: Is possible to distinguish between different cultural styles, the purpose of the ceramic, and the technological state of the people, among other conclusions. Besides, by looking at stylistic changes in ceramics over time, it is possible to separate (seriate) the ceramics into distinct diagnostic groups (assemblages). A comparison of ceramic artifacts with known dated assemblages allows for a chronological assignment of these pieces. The technical approach to ceramic analysis involves

5850-568: Is responsible for such diverse optical phenomena as night-vision and IR luminescence . Thus, there is an increasing need in the military sector for high-strength, robust materials which have the capability to transmit light ( electromagnetic waves ) in the visible (0.4 – 0.7 micrometers) and mid- infrared (1 – 5 micrometers) regions of the spectrum. These materials are needed for applications requiring transparent armor, including next-generation high-speed missiles and pods, as well as protection against improvised explosive devices (IED). In

6000-468: Is similar to that used for earthenware and stoneware , the two other main types of pottery, although it can be more challenging to produce. It has usually been regarded as the most prestigious type of pottery due to its delicacy, strength, and high degree of whiteness. It is frequently both glazed and decorated. Though definitions vary, porcelain can be divided into three main categories: hard-paste , soft-paste , and bone china . The categories differ in

6150-522: Is the art and science of making objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials by the action of heat. It excludes glass and mosaic made from glass tesserae . There is a 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 ceramics include

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6300-425: Is then cooled from the bottom to the top on a platform that allows for unidirectional cooling. This forces ice crystals to grow in compliance with the unidirectional cooling, and these ice crystals force the dissolved YSZ particles to the solidification front of the solid-liquid interphase boundary, resulting in pure ice crystals lined up unidirectionally alongside concentrated pockets of colloidal particles. The sample

6450-472: Is then heated and at the same the pressure is reduced enough to force the ice crystals to sublime and the YSZ pockets begin to anneal together to form macroscopically aligned ceramic microstructures. The sample is then further sintered to complete the evaporation of the residual water and the final consolidation of the ceramic microstructure. During ice-templating, a few variables can be controlled to influence

6600-790: Is typically marble, onyx, granite or slate. Thinner tiles can be used on walls than on floors, which require more durable surfaces that will resist impacts. A figurine (a diminutive form of the word figure ) is a statuette that represents a human , deity , legendary creature , or animal . Figurines may be realistic or iconic , depending on the skill and intention of the creator. The earliest were made of stone or clay. In ancient Greece, many figurines were made from terracotta (see Greek terracotta figurines ). Modern versions are made of ceramic, metal, glass, wood and plastic. Figurines and miniatures are sometimes used in board games , such as chess , and tabletop role playing games . Old figurines have been used to discount some historical theories, such as

6750-472: Is typically somewhere between the minimum wavelength of visible light and the resolution limit of the naked eye. The microstructure includes most grains, secondary phases, grain boundaries, pores, micro-cracks, structural defects, and hardness micro indentions. Most bulk mechanical, optical, thermal, electrical, and magnetic properties are significantly affected by the observed microstructure. The fabrication method and process conditions are generally indicated by

6900-435: Is usually coloured grey or brownish because of impurities in the clay used for its manufacture, and is normally glazed." Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating materials, generally including kaolin , in a kiln to temperatures between 1,200 and 1,400 °C (2,200 and 2,600 °F). The toughness, strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery , arises mainly from vitrification and

7050-399: Is usually identified by microscopic examination of the tempered material. Clay identification is determined by a process of refiring the ceramic and assigning a color to it using Munsell Soil Color notation. By estimating both the clay and temper compositions and locating a region where both are known to occur, an assignment of the material source can be made. Based on the source assignment of

7200-467: Is virtually lossless. Optical waveguides are used as components in Integrated optical circuits (e.g. light-emitting diodes , LEDs) or as the transmission medium in local and long haul optical communication systems. Also of value to the emerging materials scientist is the sensitivity of materials to radiation in the thermal infrared (IR) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum . This heat-seeking ability

7350-770: The Baranovsky Porcelain Factory and at the Experimental Ceramic and Artistic Plant in Kyiv, was Oksana Zhnikrup , whose porcelain figures of the ballet and the circus were widely known. The pastes produced by combining clay and powdered glass ( frit ) were called Frittenporzellan in Germany and frita in Spain. In France they were known as pâte tendre and in England as "soft-paste". They appear to have been given this name because they do not easily retain their shape in

7500-617: 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. Different types of clay , when used with different minerals and firing conditions, are used to produce different types of ceramic, including earthenware, stoneware, porcelain and bone china. Earthenware

7650-472: The Islamic world , where they were highly prized. Eventually, porcelain and the expertise required to create it began to spread into other areas of East Asia. During the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE), artistry and production had reached new heights. The manufacture of porcelain became highly organised, and the dragon kilns excavated from this period could fire as many as 25,000 pieces at a time, and over 100,000 by

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7800-468: The Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) . They brought an improved type of kiln, and one of them spotted a source of porcelain clay near Arita , and before long several kilns had started in the region. At first their wares were similar to the cheaper and cruder Chinese porcelains with underglaze blue decoration that were already widely sold in Japan; this style was to continue for cheaper everyday wares until

7950-681: The Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) are of excellent decorative quality. It usually has a melon shape and is asymmetrical. Imported Chinese porcelains were held in such great esteem in Europe that in English china became a commonly used synonym for the Italian-derived porcelain . The first mention of porcelain in Europe is in Il Milione by Marco Polo in the 13th century. Apart from copying Chinese porcelain in faience ( tin glazed earthenware ),

8100-613: The Linear Pottery culture , Beaker culture , Globular Amphora culture , Corded Ware culture and Funnelbeaker culture , to take examples only from Neolithic Europe (approximately 7000–1800   BCE). 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

8250-684: 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. The earliest Japanese pottery was made around the 11th millennium BCE. Jōmon ware emerged in

8400-516: 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. 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

8550-478: 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

8700-477: The Russian Far East , providing several from 20,000 to 10,000   BCE, although the vessels were simple utilitarian objects. Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi province contained pottery fragments that date back to 20,000 years ago. These early pottery containers were made well before the invention of agriculture , by mobile foragers who hunted and gathered their food during the Late Glacial Maximum. Many of

8850-520: The Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BCE). By the time of the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE) these early glazed ceramic wares had developed into porcelain, which Chinese defined as high-fired ware. By the late Sui dynasty (581–618 CE) and early Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), the now-standard requirements of whiteness and translucency had been achieved, in types such as Ding ware . The wares were already exported to

9000-786: The origins of chess . Tableware is the dishes or dishware used for setting a table, serving food and dining. It includes cutlery , glassware , serving dishes and other useful items for practical as well as decorative purposes. Dishes, bowls and cups may be made of ceramic, while cutlery is typically made from metal, and glassware is often made from glass or other non-ceramic materials. The quality, nature, variety and number of objects varies according to culture, religion, number of diners, cuisine and occasion. For example, Middle Eastern, Indian or Polynesian food culture and cuisine sometimes limits tableware to serving dishes, using bread or leaves as individual plates. Special occasions are usually reflected in higher quality tableware. In addition to being

9150-869: The 13th century BCE. Glazed and coloured bricks were used to make low reliefs in Ancient Mesopotamia , most famously the Ishtar Gate of Babylon ( c.  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

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9300-615: The 18th century was based on soft-paste porcelain, and refined earthenwares such as creamware , which could compete with porcelain, and had devastated the faience industries of France and other continental countries by the end of the century. Most English porcelain from the late 18th century to the present is bone china. In the twenty-five years after Briand's demonstration, a number of factories were founded in England to make soft-paste tableware and figures: Porcelain has been used for electrical insulators since at least 1878, with another source reporting earlier use of porcelain insulators on

9450-886: The 1960s, scientists at General Electric (GE) discovered that under the right manufacturing conditions, some ceramics, especially aluminium oxide (alumina), could be made translucent . These translucent materials were transparent enough to be used for containing the electrical plasma generated in high- pressure sodium street lamps. During the past two decades, additional types of transparent ceramics have been developed for applications such as nose cones for heat-seeking missiles , windows for fighter aircraft , and scintillation counters for computed tomography scanners. Other ceramic materials, generally requiring greater purity in their make-up than those above, include forms of several chemical compounds, including: For convenience, ceramic products are usually divided into four main types; these are shown below with some examples: Frequently,

9600-524: The 20th century. Exports to Europe began around 1660, through the Chinese and the Dutch East India Company , the only Europeans allowed a trading presence. Chinese exports had been seriously disrupted by civil wars as the Ming dynasty fell apart, and the Japanese exports increased rapidly to fill the gap. At first the wares used European shapes and mostly Chinese decoration, as the Chinese had done, but gradually original Japanese styles developed. Nabeshima ware

9750-502: The 6th millennium BCE and the plainer Yayoi style in about the 4th century BCE. This early pottery was soft earthenware, fired at low temperatures. The potter's wheel and a kiln capable of reaching higher temperatures and firing stoneware appeared in the 3rd or 4th centuries CE, probably brought from China via the Korean peninsula. In the 8th century, official kilns in Japan produced simple, green lead-glazed earthenware . Unglazed stoneware

9900-733: The 9th century. Pottery was produced in Raqqa , 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. Ceramic The earliest ceramics made by humans were fired clay bricks used for building house walls and other structures. Other pottery objects such as pots, vessels, vases and figurines were made from clay , either by itself or mixed with other materials like silica , hardened by sintering in fire. Later, ceramics were glazed and fired to create smooth, colored surfaces, decreasing porosity through

10050-556: The French Jesuit father Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles and soon published in the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de Chine par des missionnaires jésuites . The secrets, which d'Entrecolles read about and witnessed in China, were now known and began seeing use in Europe. Von Tschirnhaus along with Johann Friedrich Böttger were employed by Augustus II , King of Poland and Elector of Saxony , who sponsored their work in Dresden and in

10200-591: The German state of Saxony , the search concluded in 1708 when Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus produced a hard, white, translucent type of porcelain specimen with a combination of ingredients, including kaolin and alabaster , mined from a Saxon mine in Colditz . It was a closely guarded trade secret of the Saxon enterprise. In 1712, many of the elaborate Chinese porcelain manufacturing secrets were revealed throughout Europe by

10350-526: The Hall-Petch equation, hardness , toughness , dielectric constant , and the optical properties exhibited by transparent materials . Ceramography is the art and science of preparation, examination, and evaluation of ceramic microstructures. Evaluation and characterization of ceramic microstructures are often implemented on similar spatial scales to that used commonly in the emerging field of nanotechnology: from nanometers to tens of micrometers (µm). This

10500-573: The Hewelke factory, which only lasted from 1758 to 1763. The soft-paste Cozzi factory fared better, lasting from 1764 to 1812. The Le Nove factory produced from about 1752 to 1773, then was revived from 1781 to 1802. The first soft-paste in England was demonstrated by Thomas Briand to the Royal Society in 1742 and is believed to have been based on the Saint-Cloud formula. In 1749, Thomas Frye took out

10650-753: The Islamic world, notably the İznik pottery of Turkey under the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. Using the lusterware technology, one of the finest examples of medieval Islamic use of ceramics as wall decoration can be seen in the Mosque of Uqba also known as the Great Mosque of kairouan (in Tunisia ), the upper part of the mihrab wall is adorned with polychrome and monochrome lusterware tiles; dating from 862 to 863, these tiles were most probably imported from Mesopotamia. Transmitted via Islamic Iberia ,

10800-493: The Ming dynasty, and in 1598, Dutch merchants followed. Some porcelains were more highly valued than others in imperial China. The most valued types can be identified by their association with the court, either as tribute offerings, or as products of kilns under imperial supervision. Since the Yuan dynasty , the largest and best centre of production has made Jingdezhen porcelain . During the Ming dynasty, Jingdezhen porcelain had become

10950-573: The Shang dynasty, in Ancient Roman and Iranian pottery, and Rococo European styles, copying contemporary silverware shapes. A common use of ceramics is for "pots" - containers such as bowls, vases and amphorae , as well as other tableware, but figurines have been very widely made. The earliest evidence of glazed brick is the discovery of glazed bricks in the Elamite Temple at Chogha Zanbil , dated to

11100-675: The UK and around the world. Fine china is not necessarily bone china, and is a term used to refer to ware which does not contain bone ash. China painting, or porcelain painting is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain , developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porcelain (often bone china ), developed in 18th-century Europe. The broader term ceramic painting includes painted decoration on lead-glazed earthenware such as creamware or tin-glazed pottery such as maiolica or faience . Typically

11250-494: The artifact, further investigations can be made into the site of manufacture. The physical properties of any ceramic substance are a direct result of its crystalline structure and chemical composition. Solid-state chemistry reveals the fundamental connection between microstructure and properties, such as localized density variations, grain size distribution, type of porosity, and second-phase content, which can all be correlated with ceramic properties such as mechanical strength σ by

11400-511: The basic ingredients for most continental European hard-paste porcelains. Soft-paste porcelains date back to early attempts by European potters to replicate Chinese porcelain by using mixtures of clay and frit . Soapstone and lime are known to have been included in these compositions. These wares were not yet actual porcelain wares, as they were neither hard nor vitrified by firing kaolin clay at high temperatures. As these early formulations suffered from high pyroplastic deformation, or slumping in

11550-488: 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

11700-457: The body is first fired in a kiln to convert it into a hard porous biscuit . Underglaze decoration may then be applied, followed by ceramic glaze , which is fired so it bonds to the body. The glazed porcelain may then be decorated with overglaze painting and fired again at a lower temperature to bond the paint with the glaze. Decoration may be applied by brush or by stenciling , transfer printing , lithography and screen printing . Slipware

11850-513: The brightness and contrast of a digital image. Guided lightwave transmission via frequency selective waveguides involves the emerging field of fiber optics and the ability of certain glassy compositions as a transmission medium for a range of frequencies simultaneously ( multi-mode optical fiber ) with little or no interference between competing wavelengths or frequencies. This resonant mode of energy and data transmission via electromagnetic (light) wave propagation , though low powered,

12000-436: The ceramic body approaches whiteness and translucency. In 2021, the global market for porcelain tableware was estimated to be worth US$ 22.1 billion. Hard-paste porcelain was invented in China, and it was also used in Japanese porcelain . Most of the finest quality porcelain wares are made of this material. The earliest European porcelains were produced at the Meissen factory in the early 18th century; they were formed from

12150-418: The ceramic family. Highly oriented crystalline ceramic materials are not amenable to a great range of processing. Methods for dealing with them tend to fall into one of two categories: either making the ceramic in the desired shape by reaction in situ or "forming" powders into the desired shape and then sintering to form a solid body. Ceramic forming techniques include shaping by hand (sometimes including

12300-471: The chemical erosion that occurs in other materials subjected to acidic or caustic environments. Ceramics generally can withstand very high temperatures, ranging from 1,000 °C to 1,600 °C (1,800 °F to 3,000 °F). The crystallinity of ceramic materials varies widely. Most often, fired ceramics are either vitrified or semi-vitrified, as is the case with earthenware, stoneware , and porcelain. Varying crystallinity and electron composition in

12450-534: The class of ceramic matrix composite materials, in which ceramic fibers are embedded and with specific coatings are forming fiber bridges across any crack. This mechanism substantially increases the fracture toughness of such ceramics. Ceramic disc brakes are an example of using a ceramic matrix composite material manufactured with a specific process. Scientists are working on developing ceramic materials that can withstand significant deformation without breaking. A first such material that can deform in room temperature

12600-429: The composition of the body and the firing conditions. Porcelain slowly evolved in China and was finally achieved (depending on the definition used) at some point about 2,000 to 1,200 years ago. It slowly spread to other East Asian countries, then to Europe, and eventually to the rest of the world. The European name, porcelain in English, comes from the old Italian porcellana ( cowrie shell ) because of its resemblance to

12750-498: The content of water can produce large changes in workability. Thus, the range of water content within which these clays can be worked is very narrow and consequently must be carefully controlled. Porcelain can be made using all the shaping techniques for pottery. Biscuit porcelain is unglazed porcelain treated as a finished product, mostly for figures and sculpture. Unlike their lower-fired counterparts, porcelain wares do not need glazing to render them impermeable to liquids and for

12900-470: The craft into the native population in the Philippines , although oral literature from Cebu in the central Philippines have noted that porcelain were already being produced by the natives locally during the time of Cebu's early rulers, prior to the arrival of colonizers in the 16th century. Olive green glaze was introduced in the late Silla Dynasty . Most ceramics from Silla are generally leaf-shaped, which

13050-457: The electrical properties that show grain boundary effects. One of the most widely used of these is the varistor. These are devices that exhibit the property that resistance drops sharply at a certain threshold voltage . Once the voltage across the device reaches the threshold, there is a breakdown of the electrical structure in the vicinity of the grain boundaries, which results in its electrical resistance dropping from several megohms down to

13200-602: The emperor in 210–209   BCE and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife. French sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse made many terracotta pieces, but possibly the most famous is The Abduction of Hippodameia depicting the Greek mythological scene of a centaur kidnapping Hippodameia on her wedding day. American architect Louis Sullivan is well known for his elaborate glazed terracotta ornamentation, designs that would have been impossible to execute in any other medium. Terracotta and tile were used extensively in

13350-496: The end of the period. While Xing ware is regarded as among the greatest of the Tang dynasty porcelain, Ding ware became the premier porcelain of the Song dynasty. By the Ming dynasty , production of the finest wares for the court was concentrated in a single city, and Jingdezhen porcelain , originally owned by the imperial government, remains the centre of Chinese porcelain production. By

13500-523: The factories of Arita , which had much in common with the Chinese Famille Verte style. The superb quality of its 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

13650-421: The fired body is porous. Its uses include vessels (notably flower pots ), water and waste water pipes, bricks, and surface embellishment in building construction . Terracotta has been a common medium for ceramic art ( see below ). Stoneware is a vitreous or semi-vitreous ceramic made primarily from stoneware clay or non- refractory fire clay. Stoneware is fired at high temperatures. Vitrified or not, it

13800-541: The first true porcelain was made in the province of Zhejiang in China during the Eastern Han period. Shards recovered from archaeological Eastern Han kiln sites estimated firing temperature ranged from 1,260 to 1,300 °C (2,300 to 2,370 °F). 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

13950-535: The formation of the mineral mullite within the body at these high temperatures. Properties associated with porcelain include low permeability and elasticity ; considerable strength , hardness , toughness , whiteness , translucency and resonance ; and a high resistance to chemical attack and thermal shock . Porcelain has been described as being "completely vitrified, hard, impermeable (even before glazing), white or artificially coloured, translucent (except when of considerable thickness), and resonant". However,

14100-460: The group as a whole. General properties such as high melting temperature, high hardness, poor conductivity, high moduli of elasticity , chemical resistance, and low ductility are the norm, with known exceptions to each of these rules ( piezoelectric ceramics , low glass transition temperature ceramics, superconductive ceramics ). Composites such as fiberglass and carbon fiber , while containing ceramic materials, are not considered to be part of

14250-632: The infrastructure from lightning strikes. They have rapid response, are low maintenance, and do not appreciably degrade from use, making them virtually ideal devices for this application. Semiconducting ceramics are also employed as gas sensors . When various gases are passed over a polycrystalline ceramic, its electrical resistance changes. With tuning to the possible gas mixtures, very inexpensive devices can be produced. Under some conditions, such as extremely low temperatures, some ceramics exhibit high-temperature superconductivity (in superconductivity, "high temperature" means above 30 K). The reason for this

14400-468: The ionic and covalent bonds cause most ceramic materials to be good thermal and electrical insulators (researched in ceramic engineering ). With such a large range of possible options for the composition/structure of a ceramic (nearly all of the elements, nearly all types of bonding, and all levels of crystallinity), the breadth of the subject is vast, and identifiable attributes ( hardness , toughness , electrical conductivity ) are difficult to specify for

14550-526: The kiln at high temperatures, they were uneconomic to produce and of low quality. Formulations were later developed based on kaolin with quartz, feldspars, nepheline syenite , or other feldspathic rocks. These are technically superior and continue to be produced. Soft-paste porcelains are fired at lower temperatures than hard-paste porcelains; therefore, these wares are generally less hard than hard-paste porcelains. Although originally developed in England in 1748 to compete with imported porcelain, bone china

14700-695: The late Eastern Han period (100–200   CE), the Three Kingdoms period (220–280   CE), the Six Dynasties period (220–589   CE), 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   CE) 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. Some experts believe

14850-486: The material near its critical temperature, the dielectric effect remains exceptionally strong even at much higher temperatures. Titanates with critical temperatures far below room temperature have become synonymous with "ceramic" in the context of ceramic capacitors for just this reason. Optically transparent materials focus on the response of a material to incoming light waves of a range of wavelengths. Frequency selective optical filters can be utilized to alter or enhance

15000-445: The material until joule heating brings it to the transition temperature, at which point the circuit will be broken and current flow will cease. Such ceramics are used as self-controlled heating elements in, for example, the rear-window defrost circuits of automobiles. At the transition temperature, the material's dielectric response becomes theoretically infinite. While a lack of temperature control would rule out any practical use of

15150-603: The material, the skills of the individual maker, attention to utility, and an absence of excessive decoration that was typical to the Victorian era. The word "ceramics" comes from the Greek keramikos (κεραμεικός), meaning "pottery", which in turn comes from keramos (κέραμος) 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 this way. In modern ceramic engineering usage, ceramics

15300-410: The mechanical performance of materials and components. It applies the physics of stress and strain , in particular the theories of elasticity and plasticity , to the microscopic crystallographic defects found in real materials in order to predict the macroscopic mechanical failure of bodies. Fractography is widely used with fracture mechanics to understand the causes of failures and also verify

15450-412: The microstructure. The root cause of many ceramic failures is evident in the cleaved and polished microstructure. Physical properties which constitute the field of materials science and engineering include the following: Mechanical properties are important in structural and building materials as well as textile fabrics. In modern materials science , fracture mechanics is an important tool in improving

15600-506: The modern Western cultures. There is evidence that pottery was independently invented in several regions of the world, including East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, and the Americas. Although pottery figurines are found from earlier periods in Europe, the oldest pottery vessels come from East Asia, with finds in China and Japan, then still linked by a land bridge, and some in what is now

15750-401: The most part are glazed for decorative purposes and to make them resistant to dirt and staining. Many types of glaze, such as the iron-containing glaze used on the celadon wares of Longquan , were designed specifically for their striking effects on porcelain. Porcelain often receives underglaze decoration using pigments that include cobalt oxide and copper, or overglaze enamels , allowing

15900-535: The old capital of Kyoto , the Raku family continued to produce the rough tea bowls that had so delighted connoisseurs. At Mino , 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. Korean pottery has had a continuous tradition since simple earthenware from about 8000 BCE. Styles have generally been

16050-476: The porcelain to a maximum of 1200 °C in an oxidising atmosphere, whereas reduction firing is standard practice at Chinese manufacturers. In 2018, a porcelain bushing insulator manufactured by NGK in Handa , Aichi Prefecture , Japan was certified as the world's largest ceramic structure by Guinness World Records . It is 11.3 m in height and 1.5 m in diameter. The global market for high-voltage insulators

16200-718: The pore size and morphology of the microstructure. These important variables are the initial solids loading of the colloid, the cooling rate, the sintering temperature and duration, and the use of certain additives which can influence the microstructural morphology during the process. A good understanding of these parameters is essential to understanding the relationships between processing, microstructure, and mechanical properties of anisotropically porous materials. Some ceramics are semiconductors . Most of these are transition metal oxides that are II-VI semiconductors, such as zinc oxide . While there are prospects of mass-producing blue LEDs from zinc oxide, ceramicists are most interested in

16350-651: The pottery fragments had scorch marks, suggesting that the pottery was used for cooking. Many remarkable containers were made from stone before the invention of pottery in Western Asia (which occurred around 7,000 BC), and before the invention of agriculture . The Natufian culture created elegant stone mortars during the period between 12,000 and 9,500 BC. Around 8000 BC, several early settlements became experts in crafting beautiful and highly sophisticated containers from stone, using materials such as alabaster or granite , and employing sand to shape and polish. Artisans used

16500-539: The prehistoric period. Most of the pottery, however, dates to the pre-Angkorian period and consists mainly of pinkish terracotta pots which were either hand-made or thrown on a wheel, and then decorated with incised patterns. 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

16650-442: The properties of the porcelain, such as ASTM C515. A porcelain tile has been defined as 'a ceramic mosaic tile or paver that is generally made by the dust-pressed method of a composition resulting in a tile that is dense, fine-grained, and smooth with sharply formed face, usually impervious and having colors of the porcelain type which are usually of a clear, luminous type or granular blend thereof.' Manufacturers are found across

16800-468: The raw materials of modern ceramics do not include clays. Those that do have been classified as: Ceramics can also be classified into three distinct material categories: Each one of these classes can be developed into unique material properties. Porcelain Porcelain ( / ˈ p ɔːr s ( ə ) l ɪ n / ) is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials , generally including kaolinite , in

16950-713: The research was still being supervised by Tschirnhaus; however, he died in October of that year. It was left to Böttger to report to Augustus in March 1709 that he could make porcelain. For this reason, credit for the European discovery of porcelain is traditionally ascribed to him rather than Tschirnhaus. The Meissen factory was established in 1710 after the development of a kiln and a glaze suitable for use with Böttger's porcelain, which required firing at temperatures of up to 1,400 °C (2,552 °F) to achieve translucence. Meissen porcelain

17100-683: The root ceram- is the Mycenaean Greek ke-ra-me-we , workers of ceramic, written in Linear B syllabic script. The word ceramic can be used as an adjective to describe a material, product, or process, or it may be used as a noun, either singular or, more commonly, as the plural noun ceramics . Ceramic material is an inorganic, metallic oxide, nitride, or carbide material. Some elements, such as carbon or silicon , may be considered ceramics. Ceramic materials are brittle, hard, strong in compression, and weak in shearing and tension. They withstand

17250-455: 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. There is Chinese porcelain from

17400-516: The small, almost mosaic, brightly coloured zellige tiles of Morocco . With exceptions, notably the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing , tiles or glazed bricks do not feature largely in East Asian ceramics. Although pottery figurines are found from earlier periods in Europe, the oldest pottery vessels come from East Asia, with finds in China and Japan, then still linked by a land bridge, and some in what

17550-510: The soft-paste Medici porcelain in 16th-century Florence was the first real European attempt to reproduce it, with little success. Early in the 16th century, Portuguese traders returned home with samples of kaolin, which they discovered in China to be essential in the production of porcelain wares. However, the Chinese techniques and composition used to manufacture porcelain were not yet fully understood. Countless experiments to produce porcelain had unpredictable results and met with failure. In

17700-412: The start of the 19th century, and as Japan opened to trade in the second half, exports expanded hugely and quality generally declined. Much traditional porcelain continues to replicate older methods of production and styles, and there are several modern industrial manufacturers. By the early 1900s, Filipino porcelain artisans working in Japanese porcelain centres for much of their lives, later on introduced

17850-635: The surface of the shell. Porcelain is also referred to as china or fine china in some English-speaking countries, as it was first seen in imports from China during the 17th century. Properties associated with porcelain include low permeability and elasticity ; considerable strength , hardness , whiteness, translucency , and resonance ; and a high resistance to corrosive chemicals and thermal shock . Porcelain has been described as being "completely vitrified, hard, impermeable (even before glazing), white or artificially coloured, translucent (except when of considerable thickness), and resonant". However,

18000-509: The telegraph line between Frankfurt and Berlin. It is widely used for insulators in electrical power transmission system due to its high stability of electrical, mechanical and thermal properties even in harsh environments. A body for electrical porcelain typically contains varying proportions of ball clay, kaolin, feldspar, quartz, calcined alumina and calcined bauxite. A variety of secondary materials can also be used, such as binders which burn off during firing. UK manufacturers typically fired

18150-521: The term porcelain lacks a universal definition and has "been applied in a very unsystematic fashion to substances of diverse kinds which have only certain surface-qualities in common". Bone china is a type of soft-paste porcelain that is composed of bone ash , feldspathic material , and kaolin . It has been defined as ware with a translucent body containing a minimum of 30% of phosphate derived from animal bone and calculated calcium phosphate. Developed by English potter Josiah Spode , bone china

18300-540: The term "porcelain" lacks a universal definition and has "been applied in an unsystematic fashion to substances of diverse kinds that have only certain surface-qualities in common". Traditionally, East Asia only classifies pottery into low-fired wares (earthenware) and high-fired wares (often translated as porcelain), the latter also including what Europeans call "stoneware", which is high-fired but not generally white or translucent. Terms such as "proto-porcelain", "porcellaneous", or "near-porcelain" may be used in cases where

18450-453: The theoretical failure predictions with real-life failures. Ceramic materials are usually ionic or covalent bonded materials. A material held together by either type of bond will tend to fracture before any plastic deformation takes place, which results in poor toughness in these materials. Additionally, because these materials tend to be porous, the pores and other microscopic imperfections act as stress concentrators , decreasing

18600-481: The time of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 CE), porcelain wares were being exported to Asia and Europe. Some of the most well-known Chinese porcelain art styles arrived in Europe during this era, such as the coveted " blue-and-white " wares. The Ming dynasty controlled much of the porcelain trade, which was expanded to Asia, Africa and Europe via the Silk Road . In 1517, Portuguese merchants began direct trade by sea with

18750-460: The toughness further, and reducing the tensile strength . These combine to give catastrophic failures , as opposed to the more ductile failure modes of metals. These materials do show plastic deformation . However, because of the rigid structure of crystalline material, there are very few available slip systems for dislocations to move, and so they deform very slowly. To overcome the brittle behavior, ceramic material development has introduced

18900-416: The town buildings of Victorian Birmingham , England. There is a 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 3,000 years ago. Cultures especially noted for ceramics include the Chinese , Cretan , Greek , Persian , Mayan , Japanese , and Korean cultures, as well as

19050-483: The town of Meissen . Tschirnhaus had a wide knowledge of science and had been involved in the European quest to perfect porcelain manufacture when, in 1705, Böttger was appointed to assist him in this task. Böttger had originally been trained as a pharmacist; after he turned to alchemical research, he claimed to have known the secret of transmuting dross into gold, which attracted the attention of Augustus. Imprisoned by Augustus as an incentive to hasten his research, Böttger

19200-474: The two and true porcelain wares is not a clear one. Archaeological finds have pushed the dates to as early as the Han dynasty (206–BCE – 220   CE). 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

19350-605: The unfired material is "body"; for example, when buying materials a potter might order an amount of porcelain body from a vendor. The composition of porcelain is highly variable, but the clay mineral kaolinite is often a raw material. Other raw materials can include feldspar, ball clay , glass, bone ash , steatite , quartz, petuntse and alabaster . The clays used are often described as being long or short, depending on their plasticity . Long clays are cohesive (sticky) and have high plasticity; short clays are less cohesive and have lower plasticity. In soil mechanics , plasticity

19500-558: The use of glassy, amorphous ceramic coatings on top of the crystalline ceramic substrates. Ceramics now include domestic, industrial, and building products, as well as a wide range of materials developed for use in advanced ceramic engineering, such as semiconductors . The word ceramic comes from the Ancient Greek word κεραμικός ( keramikós ), meaning "of or for pottery " (from κέραμος ( kéramos )  'potter's clay, tile, pottery'). The earliest known mention of

19650-499: The veins in the material to maximize visual effect. Such object have been found in abundance on the upper Euphrates river , in what is today eastern Syria, especially at the site of Bouqras . These form the early stages of the development of the Art of Mesopotamia . Early pots were made by what is known as the "coiling" method, which worked the clay into a long string that wound to form a shape that later made smooth walls. The potter's wheel

19800-511: 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 cocklestoves 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,

19950-446: The wear plates of crushing equipment in mining operations. Advanced ceramics are also used in the medical, electrical, electronics, and armor industries. Human beings appear to have been making their own ceramics for at least 26,000 years, subjecting clay and silica to intense heat to fuse and form ceramic materials. The earliest found so far were in southern central Europe and were sculpted figures, not dishes. The earliest known pottery

20100-602: The wet state, or because they tend to slump in the kiln under high temperature, or because the body and the glaze can be easily scratched. Experiments at Rouen produced the earliest soft-paste in France, but the first important French soft-paste porcelain was made at the Saint-Cloud factory before 1702. Soft-paste factories were established with the Chantilly manufactory in 1730 and at Mennecy in 1750. The Vincennes porcelain factory

20250-554: The world with Italy being the global leader, producing over 380 million square metres in 2006. Historic examples of rooms decorated entirely in porcelain tiles can be found in several palaces including ones at Galleria Sabauda in Turin , Museo di Doccia in Sesto Fiorentino , Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, the Royal Palace of Madrid and the nearby Royal Palace of Aranjuez . and

20400-540: Was once-fired , or green-fired . It was noted for its great resistance to thermal shock ; a visitor to the factory in Böttger's time reported having seen a white-hot teapot being removed from the kiln and dropped into cold water without damage. Although widely disbelieved this has been replicated in modern times. In 1744, Elizabeth of Russia signed an agreement to establish the first porcelain manufactory; previously it had to be imported. The technology of making "white gold"

20550-460: Was almost exclusively an English product, with production being effectively localised in Stoke-on-Trent . Most major English firms made or still make it, including Mintons , Coalport , Spode , Royal Crown Derby , Royal Doulton , Wedgwood and Worcester . In the UK, references to "china" or "porcelain" can refer to bone china, and "English porcelain" has been used as a term for it, both in

20700-728: Was carefully hidden by its creators. Peter the Great had tried to reveal the "big porcelain secret", and sent an agent to the Meissen factory, and finally hired a porcelain master from abroad. This relied on the research of the Russian scientist Dmitry Ivanovich Vinogradov . His development of porcelain manufacturing technology was not based on secrets learned through third parties, but was the result of painstaking work and careful analysis. Thanks to this, by 1760, Imperial Porcelain Factory, Saint Petersburg became

20850-509: 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. Stoneware was also an important craft in Islamic pottery, produced throughout Iraq and Syria by

21000-428: Was established in 1740, moving to larger premises at Sèvres in 1756. Vincennes soft-paste was whiter and freer of imperfections than any of its French rivals, which put Vincennes/Sèvres porcelain in the leading position in France and throughout the whole of Europe in the second half of the 18th century. Doccia porcelain of Florence was founded in 1735 and remains in production, unlike Capodimonte porcelain which

21150-506: Was estimated to be worth US$ 4.95 billion in 2015, of which porcelain accounts for just over 48%. A type of porcelain characterised by low thermal expansion, high mechanical strength and high chemical resistance. Used for laboratory ware, such as reaction vessels, combustion boats, evaporating dishes and Büchner funnels . Raw materials for the body include kaolin, quartz, feldspar, calcined alumina, and possibly also low percentages of other materials. A number of International standards specify

21300-425: Was found in 2024. If a ceramic is subjected to substantial mechanical loading, it can undergo a process called ice-templating , which allows some control of the microstructure of the ceramic product and therefore some control of the mechanical properties. Ceramic engineers use this technique to tune the mechanical properties to their desired application. Specifically, the strength is increased when this technique

21450-497: Was made by mixing animal products with clay and firing it at up to 800 °C (1,500 °F). While pottery fragments have been found up to 19,000 years old, it was not until about 10,000 years later that regular pottery became common. An early people that spread across much of Europe is named after its use of pottery: the Corded Ware culture . These early Indo-European peoples decorated their pottery by wrapping it with rope while it

21600-409: Was made from two parts of bone ash , one part of kaolin , and one part of china stone , although the latter has been replaced by feldspars from non-UK sources. Kaolin is the primary material from which porcelain is made, even though clay minerals might account for only a small proportion of the whole. The word paste is an old term for both unfired and fired materials. A more common terminology for

21750-493: Was moved from Naples to Madrid by its royal owner , after producing from 1743 to 1759. After a gap of 15 years Naples porcelain was produced from 1771 to 1806, specializing in Neoclassical styles. All these were very successful, with large outputs of high-quality wares. In and around Venice , Francesco Vezzi was producing hard-paste from around 1720 to 1735; survivals of Vezzi porcelain are very rare, but less so than from

21900-399: Was obliged to work with other alchemists in the futile search for transmutation and was eventually assigned to assist Tschirnhaus. One of the first results of the collaboration between the two was the development of a red stoneware that resembled that of Yixing . A workshop note records that the first specimen of hard, white and vitrified European porcelain was produced in 1708. At the time,

22050-628: Was probably invented in Mesopotamia by the 4th millennium BCE, 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

22200-462: Was produced in kilns owned by the families of feudal lords, and were decorated in the Japanese tradition, much of it related to textile design. This was not initially exported, but used for gifts to other aristocratic families. Imari ware and Kakiemon are broad terms for styles of export porcelain with overglaze "enamelled" decoration begun in the early period, both with many sub-types. A great range of styles and manufacturing centres were in use by

22350-528: Was still wet. When the ceramics were fired, the rope burned off but left a decorative pattern of complex grooves on the surface. The invention of the wheel eventually led to the production of smoother, more even pottery using the wheel-forming (throwing) technique, like the pottery wheel . Early ceramics were porous, absorbing water easily. It became useful for more items with the discovery of glazing techniques, which involved coating pottery with silicon, bone ash, or other materials that could melt and reform into

22500-422: Was used as funerary jars, storage jars and kitchen pots up to the 17th century. Some of the kilns improved their methods and are known as the “Six Old Kilns”. From the 11th to the 16th century, Japan imported much porcelain from China and some from Korea. The Japanese overlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi 's attempts to conquer China in the 1590s were dubbed the "Ceramic Wars"; the emigration of Korean potters appeared to be

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