CERAMIC ART. - A generic term designating any product obtained through the successive use of two technical processes: 1) manipulation of more or less plastic clays, possibly combined with other ingredients, for the purpose of fashioning by hand or by machine objects of utility or ornament; 2) firing of such artifacts after their drying, at a suitable temperature in a special kiln. Ceramics teaches the execution of these processes, which differ in the nature (and in the specific name) of the varieties corresponding to the different artifacts obtainable (terracotta, faïence, majolica, earthenware, stoneware, porcelain, refractories, etc.) according to the materials employed and the related techniques followed (firing temperature from about 850° to 1410°, depending on the type).
The beginnings of ceramics are certain in the Neolithic, originally as a consequence of primitive pletenogenic techniques. Indeed, a wicker basket lined on the inside with a clay paste softened with water, after its separation from that container owing to the natural contraction of the clay, gave rise to a vessel standing on its own, which, first hardened in the sun and then, at a more evolved stage, by fire, became, in its subsequent transformations of a practical and aesthetic order, both an instrument and an index of the progress of civilization.
In this way there also arose, with the originally ovoid shape of the vessel, the "impressed" ornament equally distributed over the exterior surface of the object; an ornament which later, with the subsequent use of more refined clays and of coloring pigments, and with the more or less intense return of ornamental schemes, was replaced by painted vase decoration.
The indestructibility of fired clay, even against the dissolving action of subterranean agents, makes the artifact a witness, often the only one, to the ways of life of the most remote ages, while the natural stratification of the deposit of shards constitutes irreplaceable chronological reference points. If in the geometric style and in the primitive schematizations of ornament some may intuit expressions with cosmological content as well, the floral and zoomorphic elements introduced into the painted decoration on artifacts of the Bronze Age attest to the beginnings of the aesthetic exploration of nature. The Elamite-Babylonian world, the Pharaonic world, the Aegean world present themselves with particular manifestations, in which the intervening invention of the potter's wheel makes common the perfecting of rounded forms, while the contemporary application of the kiln (already achieved in the 2nd millennium B.C.) makes possible the uniformity of firing and subsequently makes possible the adoption of particular chromatic techniques based on the variations introduced into the atmosphere of the firing chamber (oxidizing, neutral, reducing). The mentions of the potter's wheel in ancient writers are numerous and significant: from the famous passage of Homer concerning the "wheel," to the repeated biblical references as moral admonition; and progressively in classical literature the reference to this art, which truly creates form out of the formless, takes on vivid, satirical, and, in general, true-to-life values.
Having learned to give the surface of the vase an envelope impermeable to liquids represents a new phase in technical progress and adds to the practicality of daily use a fundamental element for aesthetic enjoyment: color. And one may immediately affirm, by way of example, that the Egyptian XVIIIth dynasty, producer of colored glasses as a coating for its ceramics, gave proof of a chromatic richness and a delicacy of tints that have been hardly surpassed: a technique that would persist through the millennia and shine again in the Hellenistic workshops, to be then transmitted, under conditions suited to the new times, to the potters of Muslim Egypt and thence of the modern world. Muslim potters, by spreading the use of metallic luster (improperly called "reflex" by some), drew from it effects of superior loveliness.
Greek potters accentuated, in their two successive techniques of vase ornamentation in "black figures" and "red figures," the linearity of an impeccable line, not only in decorative and animal ornament but also in the representation of the human figure, so that in the workshops of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. they made that figure the focal center of the decoration, demonstrating an unequaled artistic skill. The Roman world preferred a solid ceramic with a "coral" patina, delicately decorated in the finest pieces according to Alexandrian taste with relief applications ("terra sigillata"). In this genre, between the 1st century B.C. and the 1st century A.D., the "Arretine vases" are characteristic, although this technique, soon widespread in the provinces, especially in Gaul, there later supplanted the imported model. Byzantine currents came to awaken around the lands of the western Mediterranean a form of production both with sgraffito ornament and with austere dichromy painted in dark purple and green, provided with a lead-based vitreous coating, a survival of more ancient workshops, while the use of tin enamel, itself likewise of far distant Eastern origin, would in our lands, as in Moorish Spain, become ever more consolidated in use with the first centuries after the year 1000. So much so that at the end of the 15th century, and even more in the 16th century, it would become the basis of the exquisite polychromies painted by the Italian artists of the Renaissance, inspired by fantasies, by mythological and sacred "histories," by the compositions of Italian and German woodcut and engraving artists and of painters, especially of the school of Raphael.
This enamel, in the workshops of the Della Robbia family, would become the precious foundation of the white and blue of those exquisite sacred compositions, and in the workshops of the potters and jug-makers, especially of Romagna, Tuscany, the Marches and Umbria, it would then be the first of the means of predominance of Italian art in the potteries of western and central Europe. It will not be surprising, therefore, if with the close of the 16th century in France and, after France, in all civilized languages, the word faience, with the memory of the Romagna city of Faenza, already a center of an ever-renewing current of decorative elements on "maiolica," and a place of origin of active and enterprising masters, came to designate a variety of ceramic production which in our lands is more commonly called maiolica (v.) from the name of Majorca, an island of the Balearics, already an active emporium for the importation into Italy of the luster ceramics of the Spanish Levant.
The Far East, with the use of feldspathic clays, which require high temperatures, anticipates every other region in the production of hard pastes and therefore of porcelain. The West fell in love with it to such a degree that even the alchemists applied themselves to discovering its secret, until in Italy, first and especially in Florence, after the first attempts that failed elsewhere, under the patronage of Francesco de' Medici (1575-85) a "soft" variety (non-kaolinic) was produced, called precisely "Medici porcelain," of which rare specimens survive.
The German alchemist G. F. Böttger, finally, between 1709 and 1710, using Saxon kaolin, produced the first specimens of European hard-paste porcelain, founding at Meissen the first workshop, soon imitated, despite prohibitions and severities. And Venice already had in 1720 the Vezzi factory; while in 1735 at Doccia the Ginori manufactory was founded, which still works to the glory of Italy, and then in 1743 the royal one of Capodimonte (Naples) was instituted, and so on at the same time and then throughout all Europe (v. PORCELLANA).
Toward the end of the 18th century the practical spirit of the British, by perfecting white bodies that were easily plastic and suited, even in their predominant destination for domestic uses, to receive painted and relief decoration, introduced earthenware, making of it a field of intense universal commerce, subsequently spread to every other country, in an ever-increasing and also remunerative manner. The Germans at Cologne, from about 1540, were producing artistic stoneware; a working method that was later practiced in other places in the Rhineland.
Entirely recent is the study and obtaining of other bodies for high temperatures for particular industrial, technical and sanitary requirements; which has opened new fields to a more thorough technological and scientific study of production.
Interesting is the dispute which, starting from more or less solid etymological bases, has divided and divides the field of scholars concerning the development to be given to the content of the word ceramics and therefore concerning its definition.
In any case it is possible to group ceramics into ceramics with a porous body and with a compact body. With a porous body are terracotta, faenza and soft earthenware; with a compact body are strong earthenware, stoneware, porcelain. Here are the definitions.
Terracotta: with a marly body, more or less corrected; it gives products strongly colored by iron oxide and porous, generally without a coating.
Faenza: body based on clay: it gives porous products, more or less colored, with a transparent silico-lead coating (marzacotto, crystal glaze, or vetrina) applied to the already fired piece. This variety is called maiolica when it is coated with an opaque covering, generally white, based on tin oxide (tin glaze). If the coating is given by a wash of white earth (terra di Vicenza, terra di Siena) which is called slip, to be applied on the raw piece, a lower variety is obtained (slipped faenza, bianchetto) which, when painted, is covered with crystal glaze in a single firing.
Earthenware: body based on clay, kaolin, quartz and feldspar; it gives white, ringing, opaque products, with a silico-lead coating (glaze), more or less hard (soft earthenware, strong earthenware, according to the proportions of the ingredients and the degree of firing).
Stoneware: body based on clay and feldspar; it gives brown or grayish products, more or less vitrified, opaque, ringing, hard (those with an alkaline covering obtained with sodium chloride are called salt-glazed stoneware). A variety with a light body also serves artistic purposes.
Porcelain: body based on kaolin, quartz and feldspar; it gives products with a white, homogeneous, ringing, hard, impermeable, more or less translucent body, with a feldspathic covering (those without a coating are called, in the French manner, biscuit).
There are then various ceramic products: refractories, steatite, hlinker, dental porcelain, abrasives, etc. - See Plates LXXX-LXXXI.
