ArtPage on Ceramics

ceramics or ceramic ware - Pottery or hollow clay sculpture fired at high temperatures in a kiln or oven to make them harder and stronger. Types include earthenware, porcelain, stoneware, and terra cotta.

Examples:

Japanese (Jomon period, c. 4500-200 BCE), Jar, earthenware, 22 x 16 inches, Birmingham Museum of Art.

Mexico, Puebla State, Olmec peoples, "Baby" Figure, 12th - 9th century BCE, ceramic, pigment, height 13 3/8 inches (34 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. See Mesoamerican art and Pre-Columbian art.

Greece, c. 515-510 BCE, signed by Euphronios, Attic Red-Figure Krater with Heracles Wrestling with Antaeus, terra cotta, height 44.8 cm, Louvre. See Greek art.

North Africa, Libya, Tripoli, Funerary Urn in the Form of a House with Lid Surmounted by a Bird, second-third centuries CE, ceramic, 10 1/4 x 16 x 9 1/2 inches (26 x 40.6 x 24.1 cm), Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory U, Atlanta, GA.

Maya culture (Late Classic Period, Guatemala, Peten region, c. 700 - 800), Cylindrical Vessel, 6 1/2 x 4 1/4 diameter, Birmingham Museum of Art. See Mesoamerican art and Pre-Columbian art.

Pueblo people (San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, USA), Toña Peña Vigil (dates unknown, still active in 1915), or Martina Vigil (1856-1916) and Florentino Montoya (1858-1918) 1890-95, Storage Jar, fired clay and slip 15 x 17 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches, Birmingham Museum of Art. See American Indian.

Maria (1887-1980) and Julian (1885-1943) Martinez (New Mexico, San Ildefonso Pueblo), Bowl with Repeated Feather Motif, San Ildefonso black-on-black, c. A.D. 1934-1943, ceramic, 6 11/16 x 6 3/4 inches (16.9 x 17.2 cm), Michael C. Carlos Museum. See American Indian art and feather.

Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988, ceramic, 42 x 70 1/2 x 32 1/2 inches, Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica, CA. See Neo-Geo and portrait.

Michael Lucero (American, 1953-), Greek, 1995, found plaster cast, ceramic, and metal, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA. The sculptor found a plaster cast of an ancient Greek statue. To this he added his own ceramic pots in place of the head and arms broken from the original sculpture long ago.

Also see clay, cone, earthenware, firing, glaze, kiln, pique assiette (also called picassiette), porcelain, potter's wheel, pyrometer, pyrometric cones, vase, vessel, and vitrify.