Ceramic pottery-making industry: juin 2010

lundi 21 juin 2010

Pottery Pouncing - Part 2

This is part 2 of 3 of the pottery pouncing demonstration.

The traditional way to transfer patterns onto the unfired white glaze is an ancient technique known as pouncing. Pouncing is where pounce -- loose graphite or charcoal -- is rubbed through a series of small holes punched in a paper pattern to transfer the design to an item to be decorated.

Make Pottery Tips : Centering the Clay Tips

Learn about centering the clay on the wheel in this free arts and crafts video series taught by a pottery expert.
Expert: Mark Kooy
Bio: Mark Kooy has been teaching high school students how to work with ceramics, metals, painting, drawing, and publications for over 20 years.
Filmmaker: Tim Adams

Make Pottery Tips : Starting the Opening a Pottery Wheel

Learn the starting the opening on the pottery wheel in this free arts and crafts video series taught by a pottery expert.

All What You Need to Making Ceramic Pottery

nce the very beginning of ceramic making, ceramic is very popular to make decorative household and tiles. And in the 17th century, a company named Ashura began to mass-produce ceramics in Nove and Bassano. Ceramics create the walls of houses and palaces looks beautiful and lustrous, plus combination of patterns or motifs to make the wall to be more interesting and artistic.

Nowadays, ceramics pottery is an interesting hobby to do at home to fill our spare time. Maybe some of us are inspired by the famous film “ghost” to create a beautiful small mug or jar. It is no problem, although you have never done it before, you can learn basic techniques basically about 1 or 2 weeks only. In addition, you need to note is the selection of ceramic materials to make it easier to you to create an object and a set of basic tool kit to help you to enhance its designs and motifs.

On AMACO/Brent, you can choose a wide selection of ceramic materials, tools, and other additional fun stuff to get started your ceramic pottery project. Firstly, you have to choose your clays. Today, it is recommended to use talc-free clays for those who want to the start the project successfully for the first time. Talc-free clays are easy to use and most of ceramic art educations use it. Clays also come in various colors and types such as low fire clays, high fire clays, self-hardening clays, and air dry clays. If you don’t have any ceramic pottery kiln or oven, you can use self-hardening clays instead of fire clays. And please do not use a home oven for baking process.

After that, you will need electric wheels to create symmetric object such mug and jar with ease and some optional tools and materials such as knives, needle tools, rubber mat, pasta machine, sandpaper, carving tools, pottery glazes, glitters, embossing powders, acrylic paints, etc. After all tools you need are complete, it is ready to make. Don’t forget to download free lesson plans and some technique sheets from amaco.com to help you to make unique, colorful ceramic pottery.

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Ceramic Art ：Such as vases, sculpture, furnishings ceramics etc.

Ceramic Technology ：Vases, flower pots, flower inserted, lampholders, garden pottery etc.

Ceramics for daily use：Tableware, tea sets, altar, pots, cans, plates, bowls, bathroom group, seasoning bottles, perfume furnace etc.

We have professional technical staff to ensure each products are high quality and a ceramic sample Development Research Centre.

Ceramic materials: ceramic raw materials from the quality of the ceramics factory , and through strict and stringent tests before production.

Production equipment: a raw materials processing workshops, molding workshop, casting and molding workshop, paint workshop, firing workshop, ceramics room, the development of ceramic art room, the tunnel kilns and electric kilns, and other special kiln etc.

Exported to Hong Kong and Taiwan, Middle East, UK, Japan, USA, Germany, France, Belgium, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, the Philippines, Singapore and other countries.

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Ceramic pots to decorate the house staff

A remarkable variety of ceramic pots to decorate the pillars of the house - a high-taste and elegance in design

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pottery - History of Egyptian Pottery - cemaic and pottery

About 2700 B.C., after the dispersion of the family of men in the Euphrates valley, a small number found their way along the shores of the sea, or pushed an adventurous expedition through Arabia across the deserts, and discovered a land of abundant fruitfulness, watered by a mighty river, and dark with the green foliage of fruit-bearing palms. The beasts of the field and the birds of the air had preceded them. Food was abundant. Nature was lavish in her gifts. The sunshine was perpetual, scarcely a cloud obscuring it--only those vast silvery clouds of millions of water-fowl of every species, then, as until within our own memory, floated and circled in innumerable quantity and variety through the day, making Egypt, from sea to cataract, a "land shadowing with wings."

The small colony increased with great rapidity. Either the peculiarity of their life, or hereditary ability, rapidly advanced them in the arts above the rest of the human family, from whom they were isolated by sea and desert. The natural surroundings, the birds above, the luxuriant flowers and foliage of the vast morasses in the lower country, the solemn, barren mountains on each side of the narrow valley, entered into their conceptions of beauty and guided their imaginations. They retained the monotheistic religion of their ancestors for several centuries. In a very short time, without immigration, their numbers increased, by ordinary generation, to millions. The patriarchal form of government became a monarchy. The monarchy had its vicissitudes, was divided and reunited again and again, but the national civilization remained pre-eminent for twenty centuries. Their wise men were learned. The whole population were well educated. Whatever was important in history was recorded for all the people to read. Books, poetry, philosophy, history, abounded. When at length they came into contact with other races, their superiority imposed on these the characteristics of Egyptian art. But the end of this long and unparalleled history came. From the land of their common origin, the Persians descended on the Nile valley, and overthrew the monuments of the Egyptians.

The Greek civilization, which Egypt had nurtured in its childhood, overcame her by force of arms, without compensating her with the gifts of Greek art, and the national existence perished under the exhausting away of avaricious Rome.

Centuries afterward, on the sands of the desert along the Nile valley, the exquisite creations of a new art, coming again from the Asiatic home of the race, sprang up in the sunshine to mark the burial-places of Saracen rulers of Egypt; but, too beautiful to endure, are now melancholy ruins, splendid even as they crumble to the desert sand.

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Early Egyptian Pottery

Egypt made pottery before the building of the Pyramids. This is evident from the presence in older hieroglyphic writing of characters which are pictures of earthen vessels. Pictures of pottery vessels and small pieces of pottery have been found in tombs of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Dynasties, contemporary with and after the building of the Great Pyramid (about 2350 B.C.).

The art of covering pottery with enamel was invented by the Egyptians at a very early date. They applied it to stone as well as to pottery. Although it is not customary (except with the Chinese) to class in the ceramic art enamels on any other than earthen bodies, the enamelled stone of Egypt is so closely related to the enamelled pottery of Egypt that it must be considered with it.

Steatite (or soapstone, as some varieties are called) is easily worked, and bears great heat without cracking. From this material the Egyptians carved small pieces--vases, amulets, images of deities, of animals and other objects--and covered them with green, blue, and occasionally red, yellow, and white enamel, which when baked became brilliant and enduring. Objects in enamelled steatite are known of very early periods. One in the Trumbull-Prime collection, obtained at Thebes--a small cylinder--bears the cartouche of a king, Amunmhe III., of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Moeris of history, whose date is placed at about 2000 B.C. The enamel is pale-green, almost white, except in the engraved lines, where, being thicker, it shows more color.

In the Louvre collection, a cylinder of this material bears the name of Shafra, a king of the Fourth Dynasty, builder of the second pyramid; and the British Museum has three which have the names of kings and of a queen of the Twelfth Dynasty. The manufacture of this material was carried on till the time of the Ptolemies.

The knowledge and practice of this art at the time of the building of the Pyramids necessarily imply that the Egyptians could enamel pottery also at that early date. It is, in fact, impossible to say that there are any known specimens of unglazed pottery older than specimens of glazed and enamelled pottery. The histories of the two classes therefore begin together.

Artwork of Egyptian Pottery - ceramic and pottery

The highest art was displayed in the smallest articles, whether of soft pottery, or of the sandy paste before described. Images of deities were moulded in fair style or beautifully carved from steatite, and enamelled with the brilliant blue or green. The scarabaeus--the amulet which signified, as some suppose, creation; as others think, resurrection--was made in pottery as well as steatite, with different symbolic variations, but having the same general form.

Among our specimens is one with the head of an asp; another with the head of Isis; another with the head of a ram, each a work of admirable art. One is of soft pottery, bearing the cartouche of Amasis, 570 B.C., and is a specimen of unusually fine workmanship. The wings are open-work, formed of asps engraved; the back is the head of Isis; the head a ram's head. A scarabaeus in the possession of Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, at Hartford, is skilfully engraved with a life-like head of a hippopotamus. In our collection are crocodiles, snakes, hawks, apes, lions, fish, frogs, cats, a great variety of animal forms, which were made chiefly for ornaments or amulets. Beads and bugles in various colors and shapes were common. It was customary to wrap the dead in shawls composed of net-work, made of bugles and beads with amulets attached. Bugles are often ornamented with spiral lines differing from the general color--black on green, purple on blue, etc. Beads were made globular, angular, oblong, flat with serrated edges, and of other shapes--blue, green, red, and yellow in color.

Enamelled pottery was also used for inlaying purposes in ornamental work. Small tiles, two inches by one, were used in the Pyramid of Sakkara, as in modern chimney decoration. In the Abbott collection (New York Historical Society) and in the Trumbull-Prime collection are numerous specimens of pottery which have been thus used. In the latter collection is an unusually large plaque, 4 3/4 by 4 inches, the eye of Osiris (as this design is ordinarily called) being indicated on it in raised lines, the whole covered with a rich dark-green enamel.

At Tel-el Yahoudeh are the remains of a temple, built of crude brick, whose walls were once covered with tiles of a remarkable character, bearing on them the hieroglyphic history, with illustrations, of the deeds of Remeses III., about 1200 B.C. The legends on these are sometimes impressed in blue tiles and inlaid with colored glass. Other have yellow grounds, with impressed legends inlaid in color. Yet others have relief figures of prisoners captured by the king, their dresses and hair inlaid in color.

Ceramic pottery - Examples Of Egyptian Pottery

The New York Historical Society possesses, in the Abbott collection, a very extensive illustration of Egyptian pottery and enamels of all periods. Besides a great number of figures, amulets, scarabaei, and small objects in steatite and pottery, this collection exhibits various forms and decorations of vases, bottles, etc. There are several bottles in the blue enamel, which are of the form now called "pilgrim bottles," a flattened-egg shape, having a small neck, and two small strong handles for a string to pass through. Two are in their original wicker cases, indicating the care which was taken of them. A curious vase is shaped in general like the kanopos, the funeral vase for holding the intestines, etc., before described, but, instead of having a movable cover, is in one piece, the top a hawk's head. This is soft pottery, nine inches high, enamelled with turquoise-blue. On the front are two cartouches in black, one containing the praenomen of Osorkon I., of the Twenty-second Dynasty, about 968 B.C. This king was son of Shishak, the spoiler of Jerusalem in the days of Rehoboam. For some years past, this vase has presented a remarkable appearance in the glass case in which it stands. It is completely covered by a growth of fine hair-like spinels, of a transparent crystallization over a fourth of an inch in length. This is not an uncommon occurrence with Egyptian pottery, proceeding from the impregnation of the ware with nitre, or other salts, abounding in Egypt.

A small vase, of cream-colored pottery, is decorated with a rude indication of a human face made of small lumps of clay for eyes and nose, two arms at the sides, two horns above. Mr. Birch supposes this decoration to represent the god Bes, and the vases thus ornamented to be of Roman time. The Greeks and Romans called these vases Besa, from the image on them. Those who are fond of coincidences in art find remarkable resemblance between these vases and some of Central American fabric in our collection.

A fish-shaped bottle in red pottery is curious. Pilgrim bottles, as in enamel, are here in red pottery. Characteristic Egyptian decorations will be found on large, coarse vases in dashing lines of red and black. The red of the Egyptians can hardly be mistaken, although closely imitated in Cyprus. A still more characteristic decoration is that on small vases, where the pottery is marbled with red in rough daubed lines over the surface, rectangular spaces being filled with hieroglyphs in black. A remarkable vase--a jug of buff-colored pottery--with large, globular bulb nearly a foot in diameter, a short neck, from which a straight spout projects horizontally, with handle opposite, is decorated in black with one design often repeated, which might well be taken for a cuttle-fish with its arms extended in divers folds. The leaf ornaments around the neck indicate a Greek period.

The cover of the upper half of a mummy-case, in unglazed red pottery, in the usual form, representing the face and shoulders of a person, is a noteworthy specimen. The face is colored yellow, apparently before baking; the head and all the exterior are colored yellow, with red and black faintly intermingled, the inside remaining red. Holes through the edges are for fastening down this cover on the sarcophagus, which was perhaps also of pottery. The interior shows the numerous finger-marks of the workman in the soft clay while pressing the face into the mould.

That the Egyptians possessed tin at an early period the abundance of bronze objects fully attests. Their knowledge of oxides of metals is shown in various ways, notably in the colors employed in decorating pottery. At the period of the Exodus we are told that the Israelites were directed to purify the gold, silver, brass, iron, tin, and lead taken from the Midianites. Tin might have been obtained from India, as there is abundant evidence of Egyptian commerce with those countries at least fourteen hundred years before Christ.

The glaze sometimes used was evidently not stanniferous, neither does it show the presence of lead. It was siliceous, and the color was intermingled with the glaze. Small objects are found in which the color seems to have been mixed with the clay, and unbaked beads of soft clay, colored deep-green, have been found in Egypt, and also in Cyprus, whither they were probably exported from Egypt. The green and blue colors were probably obtained from copper; the red, which is more rare, from iron; the yellow from silver; the purple from manganese or gold; the white from tin.

Lamps are found, probably of Roman time, covered with a hard green glaze, much crackled, and presenting a singular resemblance to Chinese enamelled potteries. Lamps of red and buff-colored pottery of the Roman period, down to the fourth century of the Christian era and later, abound. Christian inscriptions, designs, and symbols on these lamps are frequent. A toad was a common form of the top of a lamp. We have several of this form in bright-red pottery. Names of saints, crosses, the labarum, religious sentences, are frequent ornaments. On one, a red-ware lamp in our collection, obtained in Egypt in 1856, is an inscription, remarkable as a rare instance of apparent quotation from the New Testament

ceramic pottery - Types of Pottery - egyption pottery

The Egyptians made two kinds of pottery--the one, ordinary soft pottery; the other, a coarse, gritty compound, loose in its character and lacking cohesion, sandy, easily crumbled, very white, but always covered with a strong glaze or enamel. This material was chiefly used for small objects, seldom for vases. We found at Thebes, in 1856, a fragment of a vase of this ware (Ill. 9) which must have been nearly a foot in height, which is covered with a thick white stanniferous enamel, and decorated with figures and hieroglyphs in purple. There are smaller vases in our collection, amphora-shaped, of the same material, measuring from four to six inches in height. Cups and bowls were formed of it, on which figures were painted in color generally in black, and also lotus-flowers and other Egyptian emblematic designs. These pictures are usually in outline, rude in execution, much inferior to the work of many Egyptian artists who painted on stone or on papyrus. The beauty of the enamel on these objects has been the envy of potters in modern times. The blue has never been surpassed, if, indeed, it has ever been equalled. Objects three thousand years old retain the splendor of their original color; and this leads to the inference that the variety of the shades of blue found on them is not the result of time, but the original intent of the makers. These shades vary from the most intense bleu-de-roi and pure turquoise to pale-blue tints approaching white. The color is usually remarkably uniform on the object. Several of the rare colors of old Chinese porcelain are thus found in ancient Egyptian enamels. The same enamel was occasionally applied to soft pottery.

Of unglazed pottery Egypt produced several varieties. The most common was the ordinary red, cream-colored, and yellow, sometimes in the later periods, under the Greeks and Romans, polished so as to appear like lustrous pottery. Another variety of pottery found in Egypt has a creamy-white surface resembling pipe-clay, the paste very hard and compact, the surface polished, and presenting almost the appearance of stanniferous enamel not perfectly white. It may be questioned, however, whether this ware was made in Egypt. It is abundant in Cyprus, and it is possible that objects found in Egypt were imported from Cyprus. After the Egyptian conquest of Cyprus, about 1440 B.C., and even at an earlier time, the two countries may have interchanged products.

It is not certain that Egypt ever burned brick. The absence of rain in that country made it unnecessary. Sun-dried brick were used for the construction of houses and walls, and the fact that to the present day thousands of these bricks retain their form and position, and even the stamps of the kings in whose reigns they were made, shows how useless burning would have been. It is supposed by some authorities that the burned brick which are occasionally found are the results of accidental fire. Others suppose that bricks were baked when intended for use in wet places. For ordinary purposes, the Egyptian brick were more masses of sun-dried Nile mud, moulded usually of a large size, sometimes 20 inches long, more commonly smaller; seldom, however, less than 13 1/2 inches by 6 1/2 by 4 1/2; sometimes strengthened by the admixture of cut straw, used as modern plasterers use hair in mortar

The forms of Egyptian pottery were numerous. Vases were made chiefly for use, and not for ornament. The amphora, in Egypt as in all ancient countries the most common and most useful vase, was made in all sizes, from the three-inch oil or perfume holder to the immense jar of three or four feet in height, for holding water, wine, oil, or grain. The pithos (so called by the Greeks), an immense tub, cask, or vase of pottery, was made in Egypt as in all the Oriental countries. It was the household cellar, in which meats and provisions were stored. This was sometimes six feet in diameter, always made of coarse unglazed pottery.

Users Of Egyptian Pottery - ceramic and pottery

The ancient Egyptians used pottery for burial purposes, to contain those interior parts of the body which were removed before embalming. Four vases, which were sometimes deposited with the mummied body, contained the stomach, the heart and lungs, the liver, and the smaller intestines.

These were generally made of stone, but sometimes of pottery. Examples are in the Abbott collection in New York. Besides these, large numbers of smaller objects in enamelled pottery were deposited with the dead. The most common were those now called Osirian figures, usually representing mummies. These are of various sizes. Many so closely resemble each other in work, and in the hieroglyphic legends painted or impressed on them, that it seems probable they were objects kept in stock by the potters for sale to purchasers for funeral purposes. They are found both unglazed and enamelled, in red pottery and in the hard, gritty pottery before described. Those which represent the person with a long robe, as in life, are more rare, and are believed to be the more ancient. It was also common to build into the walls on the interior of tombs cones of pottery, six to ten inches in length, the bases standing out, on which were engraved or impressed, before baking, legends relating to the dead occupants of the tomb. These cones have been found in great numbers, and much important information has been derived from the inscriptions on them, which usually contain the name of the deceased, his titles, the offices which he held, and expressions appropriate to funeral purposes. These were formerly supposed to be stamps for seals. The practice of burning the dead which the Greeks introduced led to the use of pottery for the ashes of the dead.

In the year 1855 we examined a great number of tombs in a very extensive cemetery then lying to the eastward of Alexandria, now covered by the modern growth of that city, and found many vases and lamps of Egyptian pottery of the Greek and Roman periods. One tomb alone contained over a hundred vases in a decayed condition, all of common red pottery, unglazed, without decoration, except now and then a few lines of black on the red clay. A vase, taken from one of these tombs (III. 14), will serve as an illustration of the later Greek style in Egypt. This vase we found sunk in a square cavity, only large enough to hold it, in the rock floor of a tomb. It was closed by a disk, cemented in the orifice, and contained bones and ashes.

Preparing the Clay for throwing

When preparing the clay for throwing,

Please use caution when working around dry clay dust.

It contains free silica's.

When deciding which clay to use, consider these variables:

what type of piece, it's function and firing temperatures.

The clay can be dry mixed in a large plastic bucket or plastic barrel

adding enough water to cover the clay. Allow the clay enough time to absorb the water

completely to the bottom of the container. You can stir the clay water mixture

by hand {part of the fun is getting dirty}.

Continue to add water to the clay until it has a batter like consistency.

More water is better than not enough.

Once thoroughly mixed let the clay stand , letting the water rise to the top,

sponge excess water off and let it stand until you can pull the clay out in clumps.

This process takes several days to complete.

Once completed, turn out onto a large plastic sheet

to begin the mixing and wedging process.