When I began working on this project, I thought I would try to copy vessels from ancient cultures, with Greece being my first idea, then Southeast Asia. But since I have begun work my mind has changed, especially in light of the recent tragedy in Japan, which has given me a new goal for my finished pieces. I have been thinking more about that goal and decided to make my pieces according to a theme of my own design: the egg-type shape of the piece I showed you in the "Burnishing" entry, below. I like this form because it is challenging to throw and yet will probably stand up well to the pit-firing process, but most of all because it is simply dripping with symbolism:
-New life comes from eggs, and the goal of my eggs is to bring new life to Japan.
-Japan has been ravaged by fire (/nuclear meltdown) in the wake of the earthquake, and my eggs are born in fire, in the firing pit - so, that which is created in fire will help to restore that which was destroyed by it.
-The Japanese pioneered the raku- and pit-firing methods in the first place so it is fitting that I who use their methods give back to them, of those methods, when they are in need.
I mean, damn, amirite?
But think of all that as a foreword to the real meat of this entry, which is that EVEN THOUGH I am no longer so interested in emulating ancient forms of pottery, I believe it is still important to give credit where credit is due; that is, to learn something about the rich history of world ceramics, and also about the chemical and physical properties of clay, because, well, because why not? And I took four semesters of ceramics at my high school and it was good fun but we did not learn any of the above.
Reader's Digest Crafts and Hobbies is dated as hell and belonged to my hippie mother in the seventies but also has information on the history and how-to of everything from ceramics to - well, anything else you can think of. Here is what it has to say about "Clay in the Life of Man": The earliest known fired clay (figures and the like) comes from Mesopotamia, and the earliest known vessels come from what is now Turkey, and both date from about 7000-8000 BC and are made of crude, low-fired earthenware (more on that later). Pottery had spread to Egypt and the entire Near East (I think that means what we would call the Middle East, since Europe is generally considered the West, especially in the 70s) by 5000 BC. By this time firing temperatures were higher and pieces were harder and longer-lasting. The potter's wheel was invented in this Near East around 4000 BC and was in common use throughout the region about 1000 years later. Glaze first appears in Egypt on ceramics from about 3500 BC.
In the opinion of this book, Chinese pottery, though it caught on rather late in the grand scheme of things, is basically the best, and I see no reason to disagree. It was the Chinese who invented white stoneware, which is what I use today, in 1400 BC - a full 3000 years before it came to Europe. Then later on during the T'ang Dynasty (AD 618-906) they pioneered the first true porcelain. To this day Chinese porcelain is unrivaled.
Chinese pottery had a strong influence upon Korean pottery, which in turn was the basis for Japanese wares. Japanese pottery caught on very late (15th century AD) and is mainly important for the famous tea ceremony, the reason for the invention of the signature raku firing style.
As for the rest of the world: Islamic pottery is very important to world ceramics, if one cares about that sort of thing, since the Middle East was the true birthplace of clay vessels. Islam's other notable contributions to world ceramics are tin glaze and luster, a pigment containing precious metals applied to already-fired glaze. Greek pottery is very interesting and too complicated and detailed to do any kind of justice to here. European pottery is just boring. Native American pottery is "fundamentally different from anything in the Old World," says this book, mainly because nobody in the Americas ever invented the potter's wheel. It too is very interesting and has a rich history but is not strictly relevant to my interests so I will leave it at that.
Also in the interest of not putting my reader to sleep and breaking up my research into manageable chunks I will leave the chemical and physical properties of clay for my next entry.
-New life comes from eggs, and the goal of my eggs is to bring new life to Japan.
-Japan has been ravaged by fire (/nuclear meltdown) in the wake of the earthquake, and my eggs are born in fire, in the firing pit - so, that which is created in fire will help to restore that which was destroyed by it.
-The Japanese pioneered the raku- and pit-firing methods in the first place so it is fitting that I who use their methods give back to them, of those methods, when they are in need.
I mean, damn, amirite?
But think of all that as a foreword to the real meat of this entry, which is that EVEN THOUGH I am no longer so interested in emulating ancient forms of pottery, I believe it is still important to give credit where credit is due; that is, to learn something about the rich history of world ceramics, and also about the chemical and physical properties of clay, because, well, because why not? And I took four semesters of ceramics at my high school and it was good fun but we did not learn any of the above.
Reader's Digest Crafts and Hobbies is dated as hell and belonged to my hippie mother in the seventies but also has information on the history and how-to of everything from ceramics to - well, anything else you can think of. Here is what it has to say about "Clay in the Life of Man": The earliest known fired clay (figures and the like) comes from Mesopotamia, and the earliest known vessels come from what is now Turkey, and both date from about 7000-8000 BC and are made of crude, low-fired earthenware (more on that later). Pottery had spread to Egypt and the entire Near East (I think that means what we would call the Middle East, since Europe is generally considered the West, especially in the 70s) by 5000 BC. By this time firing temperatures were higher and pieces were harder and longer-lasting. The potter's wheel was invented in this Near East around 4000 BC and was in common use throughout the region about 1000 years later. Glaze first appears in Egypt on ceramics from about 3500 BC.
In the opinion of this book, Chinese pottery, though it caught on rather late in the grand scheme of things, is basically the best, and I see no reason to disagree. It was the Chinese who invented white stoneware, which is what I use today, in 1400 BC - a full 3000 years before it came to Europe. Then later on during the T'ang Dynasty (AD 618-906) they pioneered the first true porcelain. To this day Chinese porcelain is unrivaled.
Chinese pottery had a strong influence upon Korean pottery, which in turn was the basis for Japanese wares. Japanese pottery caught on very late (15th century AD) and is mainly important for the famous tea ceremony, the reason for the invention of the signature raku firing style.
As for the rest of the world: Islamic pottery is very important to world ceramics, if one cares about that sort of thing, since the Middle East was the true birthplace of clay vessels. Islam's other notable contributions to world ceramics are tin glaze and luster, a pigment containing precious metals applied to already-fired glaze. Greek pottery is very interesting and too complicated and detailed to do any kind of justice to here. European pottery is just boring. Native American pottery is "fundamentally different from anything in the Old World," says this book, mainly because nobody in the Americas ever invented the potter's wheel. It too is very interesting and has a rich history but is not strictly relevant to my interests so I will leave it at that.
Also in the interest of not putting my reader to sleep and breaking up my research into manageable chunks I will leave the chemical and physical properties of clay for my next entry.
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