pottery

pottery
/pot"euh ree/, n., pl. potteries.
1. ceramic ware, esp. earthenware and stoneware.
2. the art or business of a potter; ceramics.
3. a place where earthen pots or vessels are made.
[1475-85; POTTER1 + -Y3]

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I
One of the oldest and most widespread of the decorative arts, consisting of objects (mostly useful ones, such as vessels, plates, and bowls) made of clay and hardened with heat.

Earthenware is the oldest and simplest form; stoneware is fired at a high temperature to cause it to vitrify and harden; and porcelain is a fine, generally translucent form of pottery. The Chinese began their sophisticated production of pottery in the Neolithic period and produced porcelain as early as the 7th century AD. Chinese porcelain, or "china," was widely exported to Europe and had a profound influence on European manufacturers and on taste. Classical Greece and Islamic cultures are also known for their artistic and technical innovations in pottery.
II
(as used in expressions)
black figure pottery
red figure pottery

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Introduction

      one of the oldest and most widespread of the decorative arts, consisting of objects made of clay and hardened with heat. The objects made are commonly useful ones, such as vessels for holding liquids or plates or bowls from which food can be served.

Kinds, processes, and techniques
       clay, the basic material of pottery, has two distinctive characteristics: it is plastic (i.e., it can be molded and will retain the shape imposed upon it); and it hardens on firing to form a brittle but otherwise virtually indestructible material that is not attacked by any of the agents that corrode metals or organic materials. Firing also protects the clay body against the effects of water. If a sun-dried clay vessel is filled with water, it will eventually collapse, but, if it is heated, chemical changes that begin to take place at about 900° F (500° C) preclude a return to the plastic state no matter how much water is later in contact with it. Clay is a refractory substance; it will vitrify only at temperatures of about 2,900° F (1,600° C). If it is mixed with a substance that will vitrify at a lower temperature (about 2,200° F, or 1,200° C) and the mixture is subjected to heat of this order, the clay will hold the object in shape while the other substance vitrifies. This forms a nonporous, opaque body known as stoneware. When feldspar or soapstone (steatite) is added to the clay and exposed to a temperature of 2,000° to 2,650° F (1,100° to 1,450° C), the product becomes translucent and is known as porcelain. In this section, earthenware is used to denote all pottery substances that are not vitrified and are therefore slightly porous and coarser than vitrified materials.

      The line of demarcation between the two classes of vitrified materials—stoneware and porcelain—is extremely vague. In the Western world, porcelain is usually defined as a translucent substance—when held to the light most porcelain does have this property—and stoneware is regarded as partially vitrified material that is not translucent. The Chinese, on the other hand, define porcelain as any ceramic material that will give a ringing tone when tapped. None of these definitions is completely satisfactory: for instance, some thinly potted stonewares are slightly translucent if they have been fired at a high temperature, whereas some heavily potted porcelains are opaque. Therefore, the application of the terms is often a matter of personal preference and should be regarded as descriptive, not definitive.

Kinds of pottery
      Earthenware was the first kind of pottery made, dating back about 9,000 years. In the 20th century, it is still widely used.

      The earthenware body varies in colour from buff to dark red and from gray to black. The body can be covered or decorated with slip (a mixture of clay and water in a creamlike consistency, used for adhesive and casting as well as for decoration), with a clear glaze, or with an opaque tin glaze. Tin-glazed earthenware is usually called maiolica, faience, or delft (delftware) (see below Decorative glazing (pottery)). If the clear-glazed earthenware body is a cream colour, it is called creamware. Much of the commercial earthenware produced in the second half of the 20th century is heat- and cold-proof and can thus be used for cooking and freezing as well as for serving.

      Stoneware is very hard and, although sometimes translucent, usually opaque. The colour of the body varies considerably; it can be red, brown, gray, white, or black.

      Fine white stoneware was made in China as early as 1400 BC ( Shang dynasty). In Korea, stoneware was first made during the Silla dynasty (57 BC–AD 935); in Japan, during the 13th century ( Kamakura period). The first production of stoneware in Europe was in 16th-century Germany. When tea was first imported to Europe from China in the 17th century, each chest was accompanied by a red stoneware pot made at the I-hsing kilns in Kiang-su province. This ware was copied in Germany, the Netherlands (Netherlands, The), and England. At the end of the 17th century, English (United Kingdom) potters made a salt-glazed white stoneware that was regarded by them as a substitute for porcelain (see below Decorative glazing (pottery)). In the 18th century, the Englishman Josiah Wedgwood (Wedgwood, Josiah) made a black stoneware called basaltes (basaltes ware) and a white stoneware (coloured with metallic oxides) called jasper (jasperware). A fine white stoneware, called ironstone china, was introduced in England early in the 19th century. In the 20th century, stoneware is used mostly by artist-potters, such as Bernard Leach and his followers.

      Porcelain was first made in a primitive form in China during the T'ang dynasty (Tang dynasty) (AD 618–907). The kind most familiar in the West was not manufactured until the Yüan dynasty (Yuan dynasty) (AD 1279–1368). It was made from kaolin (white china clay) and petuntse (a feldspathic rock), the latter being ground to powder and mixed with the clay. During the firing, which took place at a temperature of about 2,650° F (1,450° C), the petuntse vitrified, while the refractory clay ensured that the vessel retained its shape.

      In medieval times isolated specimens of Chinese porcelain found their way to Europe, where they were much prized, principally because of their translucency. European potters made numerous attempts to imitate them, and, since at that time there was no exact body of chemical and physical knowledge whereby the porcelain could be analyzed and then synthesized, experiments proceeded strictly by analogy. The only manufactured translucent substance then known was glass, and it was perhaps inevitable that glass made opaque with tin oxide (the German Milchglas, or milk glass, for example) should have been used as a substitute for porcelain. The nature of glass, however, made it impossible to shape it by any of the means used by the potter, and a mixture of clay and ground glass was eventually tried. Porcelain made in this way resembles that of the Chinese only superficially and is always termed soft, or artificial, porcelain. The date and place of the first attempt to make soft porcelain are debatable, but some Middle Eastern pottery of the 12th century was made from glaze material mixed with clay and is occasionally translucent (see below Islāmic: Egyptian (pottery)). Much the same formula was employed with a measure of success in Florence about 1575 at workshops under the patronage of Duke Francesco de'Medici (Francis (I)). No further attempts of any kind appear to have been made until the mid-17th century, when Claude and François Révérend, Paris importers of Dutch pottery, were granted a monopoly of porcelain manufacture in France. It is not known whether they succeeded in making it or not, but, certainly by the end of the 17th century, porcelain was being made in quantity, this time by a factory at Saint-Cloud, near Paris.

      The secret of true, or hard, porcelain similar to that of China was not discovered until about 1707 in Saxony, when Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus, assisted by an alchemist called Johann Friedrich Böttger, substituted ground feldspathic rock for the ground glass in the soft porcelain formula. Soft porcelain, always regarded as a substitute for hard porcelain, was progressively discontinued because it was uneconomic; kiln wastage was excessive, occasionally rising to nine-tenths of the total.

      The terms soft and hard porcelain refer to the soft firing (about 2,200° F, or 1,200° C) necessary for the first, and the hard firing (about 2,650° F, or 1,450° C) necessary for the second. By coincidence they apply also to the physical properties of the two substances: for example, soft porcelain can be cut with a file, whereas hard porcelain cannot. This is sometimes used as a test for the nature of the body.

      In the course of experiments in England during the 18th century, a type of soft porcelain was made in which bone ash (a calcium phosphate made by roasting the bones of cattle and grinding them to a fine powder) was added to the ground glass. Josiah Spode the Second later added this bone ash to the true, hard porcelain formula, and the resulting body, known as bone china, has since become the standard English porcelain. Hard porcelain is strong, but its vitreous nature causes it to chip fairly easily and, unless especially treated, it is usually tinged slightly with blue or gray. Bone china is slightly easier to manufacture. It is strong, does not chip easily, and the bone ash confers an ivory-white appearance widely regarded as desirable. Generally, bone china is most popular for table services in England and the United States, while hard porcelain is preferred on the European continent.

Forming processes and techniques
      Raw clay consists primarily of true clay particles and undecomposed feldspar mixed with other components of the igneous rocks from which it was derived, usually appreciable quantities of quartz and small quantities of mica, iron oxides, and other substances. The composition and thus the behaviour and plasticity of clays from different sources are therefore slightly different. Except for coarse earthenwares, which can be made from clay as it is found in the earth, pottery is made from special clays plus other materials mixed to achieve the desired results. The mixture is called the clay body, or batch.

      To prepare the batch, the ingredients are combined with water and reduced to the desired degree of fineness. The surplus water is then removed.

Shaping the clay
      The earliest vessels were modelled by hand, using the finger and thumb, a method employed still by the Japanese to make raku teabowls. Flat slabs of clay luted together (using clay slip as an adhesive) were employed to make square or oblong vessels, and the slabs could be formed into a cylinder and provided with a flat base by the same means. Coiled pottery was an early development. Long rolls of clay were coiled in a circle, layer upon layer, until the approximate shape had been attained; the walls of the vessel were then finished by scraping and smoothing. Some remarkably fine early pots were made in this way.

      It is impossible to say when the potter's wheel, which is a difficult tool and needs long apprenticeship, was introduced. A pot cannot be made by hand modelling or coiling without the potter either turning it or moving around it, and, as turning involves the least expenditure of human effort, it would obviously be preferred. The development of the slow, or hand-turned, wheel as an adjunct to pottery manufacture led eventually to the introduction of the kick wheel, rotated by foot, which became the potter's principal tool. The potter throws the clay onto a rapidly rotating disc and shapes his pot by manipulating it with both hands. This is a considerable feat of manual dexterity that leads to much greater exactness and symmetry of form. Perhaps the most skillful of all potters have been the Chinese. Excellent examples of their virtuosity are the double-gourd vases, made from the 16th century onward, which were turned in separate sections and afterward joined together. By the 18th century the wheel was no longer turned by the potter's foot but by small boys, and since the 19th century the motive power has been mechanical.

      Jollying, or jiggering, is the mechanical adaptation of wheel throwing and is used where mass production or duplication of the same shape—particularly cups and plates—is required. The jolly, or jigger, was introduced during the 18th century. It is similar to the wheel in appearance except that the head consists of a plaster mold shaped like the inside of an object, such as a plate. As it revolves, the interior of the plate is shaped by pressing the clay against the head, while the exterior, including the footring, is shaped by a profile (a flat piece of metal cut to the contour of the underside of the plate) brought into contact with the clay. Machines that make both cups and plates automatically on this principle were introduced in the 20th century. Small parts, such as cup handles, are made separately by pressing clay into molds (mold) and are subsequently attached to the vessel by luting.

      One of the earliest methods of shaping clay was molding. Pots were made by smearing clay around the inside of a basket or coarsely woven sack. The matrix was consumed during firing, leaving the finished pot with the impression of the weave on the exterior. A more advanced method, used by the Greeks (Greek pottery) and others, is to press the pottery body into molds of fired clay. Though the early molds were comparatively simple, they later became more complex, a tendency best seen in those molds used for the manufacture of pottery figures. The unglazed earthenware figures of Tanagra (Tanagra figurine) (Boeotia, central Greece) were first modelled by hand, then molds of whole figures were used, and finally the components—arms, legs, heads, and torsos—were all molded separately. The parts were often regarded as interchangeable, so that a variety of models could be constructed from a limited number of components. No improvement on this method of manufacture had been devised by the 20th century: the European porcelain factories make their figures in precisely the same way.

       plaster of paris molds were introduced into Staffordshire about 1745. They enabled vessels to be cast in slip, for when the slip was poured into the mold the plaster absorbed the water from it, thus leaving a layer of clay on the surface of the mold. When this layer had reached a sufficient strength and thickness, the surplus slip was poured off, the cast removed and fired, and the mold used again. This method is still in common use.

      Newly shaped articles were formerly allowed to dry slowly in the atmosphere. In 20th century pottery factories, this stage is speeded up by the introduction of automatic dryers, often in the form of hot, dry tunnels through which the ware passes on a conveyor belt.

      Turning is the process of finishing the greenware (unfired ware) after it has dried to leather hardness. The technique is used to smooth and finish footrings on wheel-thrown wares or undercut places on molded or jiggered pieces. It is usually done on the potter's wheel or jigger as the ware revolves. Lathe turning, like most hand operations, was tending to disappear in the mid-20th century except on the more ornamental and expensive objects.

      The earliest vessels, which were sun-dried but not fired, could be used only for storing cereals and similar dry materials. If a sun-dried clay vessel is filled with water it absorbs the liquid, becomes very soft, and eventually collapses; but if it is heated, chemical changes that begin to take place at about 900° F (500° C) preclude a return to the plastic state.

      After thorough drying, the pottery is fired in a kiln. In primitive pottery making, the objects were simply stacked in a shallow depression or hole in the ground, and a pyre of wood was built over them. Later, coal- or wood-fired ovens became almost universal. In the 20th century both gas and electricity are used as fuels. Many improvements have been made in the design of intermittent kilns, in which the ware is stacked when cold and then raised to the desired temperature. These kilns are extravagant of fuel, however, and are awkward to fill or empty if they have not had time to cool completely. For these reasons they are being replaced by continuous kilns, the most economical and successful of which is the tunnel kiln. The wares are conveyed slowly from a comparatively cool region at the entrance to the full heat in the centre. As they near the exit after firing, they cool gradually.

      The atmosphere in the kiln at the time of firing, as well as the composition of the clay body, determines the colour of the fired earthenware pot. Iron is ubiquitous in earthenware clay, and under the usual firing conditions it oxidizes, giving a colour ranging from buff to dark red according to the amount present. In a reducing atmosphere (i.e., one where a limited supply of air causes the presence of carbon monoxide) the iron gives a colour varying from gray to black, although a dark colour may also occur as a result of the action of smoke. Both of the colours that result from iron in the clay can be seen in the black-topped vases of predynastic Egypt.

Decorating processes and techniques
Impressing and stamping
      Even the earliest pottery was usually embellished in one way or another. One of the earliest methods of decoration was impressing the raw clay. Finger marks were sometimes used, as well as impressions from rope (Japanese Jōmon ware of the 1st millennium BC) or from a beater bound with straw (used to shape the pot in conjunction with a pad held inside it). Basketwork patterns are found on pots molded over baskets and are sometimes imitated on pots made by other methods.

      The addition of separately modelled decoration, known as applied ornament (or appliqué), such as knops (ornamental knobs) or the reliefs on Wedgwood jasperware, came somewhat later. The earliest known examples are found on Mediterranean pottery made at the beginning of the 1st millennium. Raised designs are also produced by pressing out the wall of the vessel from inside, as in the Roman pottery known as terra sigillata (terra sigillata ware), a technique that resembles the repoussé method adopted by metalworkers. relief ornament was also executed—by the Etruscans, for example—by rolling a cylinder (cylinder seal) with the design recessed in intaglio over the soft clay, the principle being the same as that used to make Babylonian cylinder seals.

Incising, sgraffito, carving, and piercing
      The most primitive kind of decoration is that which is incised into the raw clay with a pointed stick or with the thumbnail, chevrons (inverted v's) being a particularly common motif. Incised designs on a dark body are sometimes filled with lime, which effectively accents the decoration. Examples can be seen in some early work from Cyprus and in some comparatively modern work from primitive tribes. Decoration that has been engraved after firing is much less usual, but the skillful and accomplished engraving on one fine Egyptian (art and architecture, Egyptian) pot of the predynastic period (i.e., before c. 3100 BC) suggests that the practice may have been more frequent than was previously suspected.

      Originally, defects of body colour suggested the use of slip, either white or coloured, as a wash over the vessel before firing. A common mode of decoration is to incise a pattern through the slip, revealing the differently coloured body beneath, a technique called sgraffito (“scratched”). Sgraffito ware was produced by Islāmic (Islamic arts) potters and became common throughout the Middle East. The 18th-century scratched-blue class of English white stoneware is decorated with sgraffito patterns usually touched with blue.

      Related to the sgraffito technique is slip carving: the clay body is covered with a thick coating of slip, which is carved out with a knife, leaving a raised design in slip (champlevé technique). Slip carving was done by Islāmic and Chinese potters (Sung dynasty).

      Much pierced work—executed by piercing the thrown pot before firing—was done in China during the Ming dynasty (reign of Wan-li). It was sometimes called “demon's work” (kuei kung) because of the almost supernatural skill it was supposed to require. English white molded stoneware of the 18th century also has elaborate piercing.

Slip decorating
      In addition to sgraffito and carving, slip can be used for painting, trailing, combining, and inlay. The earliest forms of decoration in ancient Egypt, for example, were animal and scenic motifs painted in white slip on a red body; and in the North American Indian (Native American art) cultures coloured slips provided the material for much of the painted freehand decoration.

      Slip, too, is sometimes dotted and trailed in much the same way as a confectioner decorates a cake with icing sugar; the English slipwares (slipware) of the 17th and 18th centuries are typical of this kind of work. Earthenware washed over with a white slip and covered with a colourless glaze is sometimes difficult to distinguish from ware covered with a tin glaze (tin-glazed earthenware) (see below Decorative glazing (pottery)). In consequence it has sometimes been wrongly called faience. The term for French earthenware covered with a transparent glaze (in imitation of Wedgwood's creamware) is faience fine, and in Germany it is called Steingut. Mezza-Maiolica (mezza majolica) (Italy) and Halb fayence (Germany) refer to slip-covered earthenware with incised decoration.

      Slip is also used for combed wares. The marbled effect on Chinese pottery of the T'ang dynasty, for example, was sometimes achieved by mingling, with a comb, slips of contrasting colours after they had been put on the pot.

      The Koreans used slip for their inlay technique called mishima (punch'ŏng pottery). The designs were first incised into the clay, and the incisions were then filled with black and white slip.

Burnishing and polishing
      When the clay used in early pottery was exceptionally fine, it was sometimes polished or burnished after firing. Such pottery—dating back to 6500 and 2000 BC—has been excavated in Turkey and the Pan-shan (Banshan ware) cemetery in Manchuria. Most Inca pottery is red polished ware.

Decorative glazing
      Early fired earthenware vessels held water, but, because they were still slightly porous, the liquid percolated slowly to the outside where it evaporated, cooling the contents of the vessel. Thus, the porosity of earthenware was, and still is, sometimes an advantage in hot countries, and the principle is utilized in the 20th century in the construction of domestic milk and butter coolers and some food-storage cupboards.

      Porosity, however, had many disadvantages—e.g., the vessels could not be used for storing wine or milk. To overcome the porosity, primitive peoples often applied varnishes of one kind or another. Varnished pots were made, for example, in Fiji. The more advanced technique is glazing. The fired object was covered with a finely ground glass powder often suspended in water and was then fired again. During the firing the fine particles covering the surface fused into an amorphous, glasslike layer, sealing the pores of the clay body.

      The art of glazing earthenware for decorative as well as practical purposes followed speedily upon its introduction. On stoneware, hard porcelain, and some soft porcelain, which are fired to the point of vitrification and are therefore nonporous, glazing is used solely for decoration.

      Except for tin-glazed wares (see below Painting (pottery)), earthenware glaze was added to the biscuit clay body, which was then fired a second time at a lower temperature. Soft porcelain glaze was always applied in this way. Hard porcelain glaze was usually (and stoneware salt glaze, always) fired at the same time as the raw clay body at the same high temperature.

      Basically, there are four principal kinds of glazes: feldspathic, lead, tin, and salt (salt glaze). (Modern technology has produced new glazes that fall into none of these categories while remaining a type of glass.) Feldspathic, lead, and salt glazes are transparent; tin glaze is an opaque white. Hard porcelain takes a feldspathic glaze, soft porcelain usually a kind of lead glaze and can be classified according to the kind of glaze used.

      There are two main types of glazed earthenware: the one is covered with a transparent lead glaze, and the other with an opaque white tin glaze.

      Tin glaze was no doubt employed in the first place to hide faults of colour in the body, for most clays contain a variable amount of iron that colours the body from buff to dark red. Tin-glazed wares look somewhat as though they have been covered with thick white paint. These wares are often referred to as “tin-enamelled.” As noted above, other terms in common use are maiolica (majolica), faience, and delft. Unfortunately, these are variously defined by various authorities. The art of tin-glazing was discovered by the Assyrians (Assyria), who used it to cover courses of decorated brickwork. It was revived in Mesopotamia (art and architecture, Mesopotamian) about the 9th century AD and spread to Moorish Spain, whence it was conveyed to Italy by way of the island of Majorca, or Maiolica. In Italy, tin-glazed earthenware was called maiolica after the place where it was mistakenly thought to have originated. The wares of Italy, particularly those of Faenza (Faenza majolica), were much prized abroad, and early in the 16th century the technique was imitated in southern France. The term faience, which is applied to French tin-glazed ware, is undoubtedly derived from Faenza. Wares made in Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia are known by the same name. Early in the 17th century a flourishing industry for the manufacture of tin-glazed ware was established at the town of Delft, Holland, and Dutch potters brought the art of tin-glazing to England together with the name of delft, which now applies to ware manufactured in The Netherlands and England. Some misleading uses of these terms include that of applying maiolica to wares made outside Italy but in the Italian style, and faience to Egyptian blue-glazed ware and certain kinds of Near Eastern earthenware.

      Although glazed stoneware does not fall into such definite categories as glazed earthenware, to some extent it can be classified according to the kind of glaze used. The fine Chinese stonewares of the Sung dynasty (AD 960–1279) were covered with a glaze made from feldspar, the same vitrifiable material later used in both the body and glaze of porcelain. Stoneware covered with a lead glaze is sometimes seen, but perhaps the majority of extant glazed wares are salt-glazed. In this process a shovelful of common salt (sodium chloride) is thrown into the kiln when the temperature reaches its maximum. The salt splits into its components, the sodium combining with the silica in the clay to form a smear glaze of sodium silicate, the chlorine escaping through the kiln chimney. Salt glazes have a pitted appearance similar to that of orange peel. A little red lead is sometimes added to the salt, which gives the surface an appearance of being glazed by the more usual means.

      Some fusion usually occurs between glaze and body, and it is therefore essential that both should shrink by the same proportion and at the same rate on cooling. If there is a discrepancy, the glaze will either develop a network of fine cracks or will peel off altogether. This crazing of the glaze was sometimes deliberately induced as a decorative device by the Chinese.

      One method of applying colour to pottery is to add colouring oxides to the glaze itself. Coloured glazes have been widely used on earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain and have led to the development of special techniques in which patterns were incised, or outlined with clay threads (cloisonné technique), so that differently coloured glazes could be used in the same design without intermingling; for example, in the lakabi (lakabi ware) wares of the Middle East.

      Earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain are all found in unglazed as well as glazed forms. Wares fired without a glaze are called biscuit. Early earthenware pottery, as discussed above, was unglazed and therefore slightly porous. Of the unglazed stonewares, the most familiar are the Chinese Ming dynasty teapots and similar wares from I-hsing in Kiangsu Province, the red stoneware body made at Meissen in Saxony during the first three decades of the 18th century and revived in modern times, and the ornamental basaltes and jaspers made by Josiah Wedgwood and Sons since the 18th century. Biscuit porcelain was introduced in Europe in the 18th century. It was largely confined to figures, most of which were made at the French factories of Vincennes and Sèvres (Sèvres porcelain). Unglazed porcelain must be perfect, for the flaws cannot be concealed with glaze or enamel. The fashion for porcelain biscuit was revived in the 19th century and called Parian ware.

      Painted designs are an early development, some remarkably fine work made before 3000 BC coming from excavations at Ur and elsewhere in Mesopotamia, as well as urns from Pan-shan (Banshan ware) in Manchuria (Northeast Provinces) that date back to 2000 BC.

      The earliest pottery colours appear to have been achieved by using slips stained with various metallic oxides (see above Slip decorating (pottery)). At first these were undoubtedly oxides that occurred naturally in the clay; later they were added from other sources. Until the 19th century, when pottery colours began to be manufactured on an industrial scale, the oxides commonly used were those of tin, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, and antimony. Tin oxide supplied a useful white, which was also used in making tin glaze (see above Decorative glazing (pottery)) and occasionally for painting. Cobalt blue, ranging in colour from grayish blue to pure sapphire, was widely used in the Far East and Europe for blue-and-white porcelain wares. Cupric oxide gives a distinctive series of blues, cuprous oxide a series of greens, and, in the presence of an excess of carbon monoxide (which the Chinese achieved by throwing wet wood into the kiln), cupric oxide yields a bluish red. This particular colour is known as reduced copper, and the kiln is said to have a reducing atmosphere. (For the effect of this atmosphere on the colour of the biscuit body, see above Drying, turning, and firing (pottery)). The colours obtained from ferric iron range from pale yellow to black, the most important being a slightly orange red, referred to as iron red. Ferrous iron yields a green that can be seen at its best on Chinese celadon wares. manganese gives colours varying from the bright red purple similar to permanganate of potash to a dark purplish brown that can be almost black. The aubergine purple of the Chinese was derived from this oxide. antimony provides an excellent yellow.

      Pottery colours are used in two ways—under the glaze or over it. Overglaze painting is executed on a fired clay body covered with a fired glaze, underglaze painting, on a fired, unglazed body (which includes a body that has been coated with raw or unfired, glaze material).

      Earthenware and stoneware are usually decorated with underglaze colours. After the body is manipulated into the desired shape it is fired. It is then painted, coated with glaze, and fired again. The second firing is at a lower temperature than the first, being just sufficient to fuse the glaze. In the case of most tin-glazed wares the fired object was first coated with the tin glaze, then painted, then fired again. The painting needed exceptional skill, since it was executed on the raw glaze and erasures were impossible. The addition of a transparent lead glaze over the painted decoration needed a third firing. In 18th-century Germany especially tin-glazed wares were decorated with colours applied over the fired glaze, as on porcelain. The wares were sometimes called Fayence-Porcellaine.

      The body and glaze of most hard porcelain are fired in one operation, since the fusion temperature of body and glaze is roughly the same. Underglaze colours are limited because they must be fired at the same temperature as the body and glaze, which is so high that many colours would “fire away” and disappear. Although the Chinese made some use of copper red, underglaze painting on porcelain is more or less limited to cobalt blue, an extremely stable and reliable colour that yields satisfactory results under both high- and low-temperature firings. On soft porcelain, manganese was sometimes used under the glaze, but examples are rare. All other porcelain colours were painted over the fired glaze and fixed by a second firing that is much lower than the first.

      Underglaze pigments are known as high-temperature colours, or colours of the grand feu. Similarly, overglaze colours are known as low-temperature colours, or colours of the petit feu. Other terms for overglaze colours are enamel colours and muffle colours, the latter name being derived from the type of kiln, known as a muffle kiln, in which they are fired. Overglaze colours consist of pigments mixed with glaze material suspended in a medium, such as gum arabic, with an alkaline flux added to lower the melting point below that of the glaze. They were first used in Persia (art and architecture, Iranian) on earthenware (minai (minai ware) painting) in the 12th century and perhaps at the same date on Chinese stoneware made at Tz'u-chou.

      Lustre (lustreware) decoration is carried out by applying a colloid suspension of finely powdered gold (goldwork), silver, platinum, or copper to the glazed and fired object. On a further, gentle firing, gold yields a purplish colour, silver a pale straw colour, platinum retains its natural hue, and copper varies from lemonish yellow to gold and rich brown. Lustre painting was invented by early Islāmic potters.

      Pottery may be gilded or silvered. The earliest gilding was done with gold mixed with an oil base. The use of gold ground in honey may be seen on the finest porcelain from Sèvres during the 18th century, as well as on that from Chelsea. Toward the end of the same century gold was applied as an amalgam, the mercury subsequently being volatilized by heating. Silver was used occasionally for the same purposes as gold but with time has nearly always turned black through oxidation.

      The transfer print made from a copper plate was first used in England in the 18th century. In the 20th century transfers from copper plates are in common use for commercial wares, as are lithographic and other processes, such as silk screen printing, which consists of rubbing the colour through a patterned screen of textile material. Combinations of hand-painted and transfer decorations are often used. The outline or other part of the decoration is put on with a transfer print, then parts of the design, such as leaves, flowers, clothing, or water, are painted in.

Marking
      Most porcelain and much earthenware bears marks (potter's mark) or devices for the purpose of identification. Stonewares, apart from those of Wedgwood, are not so often marked. Chinese porcelain marks usually record the dynasty and the name of an emperor, but great caution is necessary before accepting them at their face value. The Chinese frequently used the mark of an earlier reign as a sign of veneration for the products of antiquity and, in recent times, for financial gain.

      The majority of European factories adopted a device—for example, the well-known crossed swords of Meissen taken from the electoral arms of Saxony, or the royal monogram on Sèvres porcelain—but these, also, cannot be regarded as a guarantee of authenticity. Not only are false marks added to contemporary forgeries but the smaller 18th-century factories often copied the marks of their more august competitors. If 18th-century European porcelain is signed with the artist's name, it generally means that the painting was done outside the factory. Permission to sign factory work was rarely given.

      On earthenware, a factory mark is much less usual than on porcelain. Workmen's marks of one kind or another are frequently seen, but signatures are rare. There are a few on Greek vases.

      It is often desirable to identify the provenance and the date of manufacture of specimens of pottery as closely as possible. Not only does such information add to the interest of the specimen in question and increase understanding of the pottery art as a whole but it also often throws fresh light on historical questions or the social habits and technical skills of the time it was made. Since ceramics are not affected by any of the agents that attack metal, wood, or textiles, they are often found virtually unchanged after being buried for thousands of years, while other artifacts from the same period are partially or completely destroyed. For this reason archaeologists use pottery extensively; for example, to trace contacts between peoples, since vessels were often widely distributed in course of trade, either by the people who made them or by such maritime nations as the Phoenicians (Archaic period).

      Pottery making is not universal. It is rarely found among nomadic tribes, since potters must live within reach of their raw materials. Moreover, if there are gourds, skins, and similar natural materials that can be made into vessels without trouble, there is no incentive to make pottery. Yet pottery making is one of the most widespread and oldest of the crafts.

Western pottery

Ancient Near East and Egypt
      In the early 1960s, excavations at a Neolithic settlement at atalhüyük (Çatalhüyük), on the Anatolian Plateau of Turkey, revealed a variety of crude, soft earthenware estimated to be approximately 9,000 years old. A more advanced variety of handmade pottery, hardfired and burnished, has proved to be as early as 6500 BC. The use of a red slip covering and molded ornament came a little later.

      Handmade pottery has been found at Ur, in Mesopotamia, below the clay termed the Flood deposit. Immediately above the Flood deposit, and therefore dating from a time soon after the Flood (about 3000 BC), was wheelmade decorated pottery of a type usually called Al 'Ubaid. Perhaps the most richly decorated pottery of the Near East, remarkable for its fine painting, comes from Susa (Shushan) in southwest Iran. The motifs are partly geometric, partly stylized but easily recognizable representations of waterfowl and running dogs, usually in friezes. They are generally executed in dark colours on a light ground. Vases, bowls, bowls on feet, and goblets have been found, all dating from about 3200 BC. By 3000 BC pottery was no longer decorated. Earthenware statuettes belong to this period, and a vessel (in the Louvre, Paris) with a long spout based on a copper prototype is the ancestor of many much later variations from this region in both pottery and metal.

      Remarkable glazed brick panels have been recovered from the ruins of Khorsabad ( Dur Sharrukin), Nimrūd ( Calah), Susa, and Babylon. They provide the first instance of the use of tin glaze; although the date of its introduction cannot be certainly determined. A well-known fragment from Nimrūd in the British Museum belongs to about 890 BC, and by the 5th century BC extremely large friezes, one of them about 11 yards (10 metres) long, were being erected at Susa. The presence of lead in the blue glazes derived from copper suggests that the lead may have been added deliberately as a flux, and that this glazing technique, like that of tin-glazing, subsequently was forgotten—to be recovered only at a much later date.

      In Egypt, pottery was made in great variety in the predynastic period (up to c. 3100 BC), and a hard-fired ware of good quality was attained. The earliest forms of decoration were geometrical or stylized animal or scenic motifs painted in white slip on a red body. There is comparatively little variation until the 26th dynasty (c. 664–525 BC), when clay was probably imported from Greece. Most artifacts are vessels of one kind or another, although pottery figures of variable quality were made, some of the later examples (after 500 BC) showing signs of Greek influence.

      The so-called faience of Egypt is an unfired ware and thus, strictly speaking, falls outside the definition of pottery used in this article. As early as the 1st dynasty, figures, vases, and tiles of this material were covered with a fired glaze that was coloured turquoise and green with copper oxide. Later, the colouring materials common to the Egyptian glassmaker, including cobalt and manganese, were added.

Ancient Aegean (Aegean civilizations) and Greece
      The potter's art first reached the Aegean in the Neolithic, or New Stone Age (Neolithic Period). All Neolithic vases are handmade, and the best are highly polished; in other respects, the various local schools have little in common, since communications were severely limited in this remote period. The main centres of pottery production lay in Thessaly and Crete. Thessalian potters favoured a red monochrome ware but occasionally attempted simple painted decoration consisting of rectilinear patterns, with a vertical or diagonal emphasis. The Neolithic pottery of Crete is remarkable for its finely burnished surface, any decoration usually incised.

Early Bronze Age (c. 3000–2000 BC)
      On the mainland, the pottery initiative passed from Thessaly to the Peloponnese and Boeotia. Early Bronze Age pottery from these two areas has been classified into Early, Middle, and Late Helladic, each subdivided into stages I, II, and III. Early Helladic wares show how quickly pottery fell under the influence of the new craft of metalworking (metalwork): the two leading shapes, the sauceboat and the high-spouted jug, both have metal prototypes. Painted ornament is rare before the final stage (Early Helladic III, or EH III); in the central phase (EH II), the surface is coated with a dark pigment formed from a solution of the clay. This type of paint, later much improved by the Athenians (see below Attic black-figure and red-figure (pottery)), remained the normal medium of decoration on all Aegean pottery until the adoption of a true silicate glaze in Byzantine times.

      The contemporary wares of the Cyclades are similar, but more use is made of incised ornament; spirals are common motifs, while some vases bear primitive representations of ships. The pottery of Early Minoan Crete bears simple geometrical patterns, at first in dark paint on a light clay ground (EM I–II), and subsequently in white over a coat of dark paint (EM III). The surface of the ware of Vasílikí in eastern Crete (EM II) has a mottled red and black appearance. The commonest Early Minoan (Minoan civilization) shapes are high-spouted jugs and long-spouted drinking jars resembling teapots.

Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000–1500 BC)
      After the conquest of the mainland by the first Greeks in the Middle Bronze Age, the local schools of pottery developed on widely different lines. The Minyan ware introduced by the newcomers in an unpainted monochrome body thrown on a fast wheel and fired in a reducing kiln to a uniform gray colour that penetrates the biscuit; the surface is then highly polished and feels soapy to the touch. The shapes are all strongly ridged (carinated) and probably derive from metalwork.

      Equally characteristic of this period are the mat-painted wares, which are mainly handmade: here rectilinear patterns are applied in dull black or lilac to a porous white surface. This style, although native to the Cyclades, was also widely imitated on the mainland; in the latest stage the ornament falls increasingly under the influence of the polychrome and curvilinear style of Middle Minoan Crete.

 By far the most sophisticated pottery of this epoch was made in Crete, contemporaneously with the first palaces at Knossos and Phaistos. The finest ware (Middle Minoan II) is confined to these two royal capitals and to the Kamáres (Kamáres ware) cave sanctuary whence the style derives its name (see photograph—>). Over a dark lustrous ground the ornament is added in red and white, the carefully composed designs striking a subtle balance between curvilinear abstract patterns and stylized motifs derived from plant and marine life. The decoration sometimes takes the form of appliqué molded ornament or barbotine (made of slip) knobs. By the time of MM II the use of the fast wheel had become general, imparting a new crispness to the profiles. Among the commonest shapes are carinated cups (often of eggshell thinness), small, round jars with bridge-spouts, and large storage jars (pithoi). In the course of MM III the fashion for polychrome schemes gradually died out, but at the very end of the period (MM III B) a new naturalistic style was born, inspired by the floral and marine frescoes on the walls of the second palaces. The wide distribution of MM pottery illustrates the vigour of Cretan commercial enterprise; several Minoan emporia were founded in the Aegean Islands, while exports also reached Cyprus, Egypt, and the Levant.

Late Bronze Age (c. 1580–1100 BC)
      Aegean civilization now reached new heights of prosperity, displayed in the luxurious life of the Minoan palaces and the splendid treasures of the shaft graves at Mycenae. Potters were much influenced by work in richer and more spectacular media: many of their shapes can be traced to originals in gold and bronze found in Cretan palaces and Mycenaean tombs.adapted to the shape of the vase.

      With the spread of Minoan culture around the shores of the Aegean, Cretan potters exercised a profound influence on the other local schools, and for the first two centuries of this period the vases of the mainland (known as Late Helladic or Mycenaean) are closely related to Minoan models. In the 16th century BC (LM I A), Cretan potters reversed their colour scheme, returning to dark-on-light decoration. Their repertoire includes some abstract motifs (e.g., running spirals and vertical ripples) but is mainly derived from nature, a continuation of the figurative style of MM III B: flowers, grasses, and olive sprays are drawn with charm and spontaneity. After 1500 BC (LM I B) marine creatures are much in evidence, rendered with considerable realism: in a setting of coral and seaweed may be found argonauts, starfish, dolphins, and, above all, the octopus, wrapping his tentacles round the vase. On the palace style amphorae (amphora) of the late 15th century BC (LM II), however, there is a reaction against this extreme naturalism: plants and marine life continue, but in a more stylized and symmetrical form.

      After the destruction of Knossos in c. 1400 BC, the artistic initiative passed to Mycenae and remained there until the end of the Bronze Age. In the 14th and 13th centuries BC (LH III A and B), Mycenaen vases were widely exported, not only to Egypt and the Levant but also as far west as Italy and Sicily. In the interests of commerce, pottery was mass-produced, and the Mycenaean colonies on Rhodes and Cyprus were as prolific as the mainland. Some shapes, like the stirrup-vase, were imported for their contents of oil and unguents; others, such as the tall stemmed goblets, were prized for the excellence of their form. Yet, in spite of their high technical standards, the decoration shows a lack of invention. In the absence of any new ideas, the old floral and marine motifs were subjected to an ever-increasing degree of stylization: the flowers degenerate into chevrons and dashes, the octopus into wavy lines. At the same time there is a new tendency to concentrate the decoration into a single focal zone, in anticipation of later Greek pottery. A few large jars bear crude representations of human figures in chariot scenes, probably derived from palace frescoes. (No less schematic are the painted female figurines found in tombs and shrines of this period.) In the pottery of the 12th century BC, which saw the collapse of Mycenaean civilization (LH III C), there is an abrupt decline in quality as well as in artistic imagination.

Early Iron Age
      Pottery was the first art to recover its standards after the Dorian invasion and the overthrow of Mycenae. Athens escaped these disasters and in the ensuing dark age became the chief source of ceramic ideas. For a short time Mycenaean motifs survived in debased form but on new shapes. This Submycenaean ware soon gave place to the style known as Protogeometric (Proto-Geometric style) (c. 1100–900 BC) by a natural process of evolution that converted the decaying Mycenaean ornament into regular geometrical patterns; thus, the slovenly spirals were transformed into neat sets of concentric circles, always drawn with a compass fitted with a multiple brush. These circles are the hallmark of Protogeometric decoration, which, like the latest Mycenaean, is confined to the handle zone; in the final stage the rest of the surface is covered with a thick black paint remarkable for its high lustre. Many shapes were inherited from Submycenaean, but all were tautened and vastly improved: the drinking vessels rest on high conical feet, while the closed vases have graceful ovoid bodies. After its invention in Attica, the Protogeometric style spread to other parts of the Aegean world.

      In the early 9th century BC Athenian potters introduced the full Geometric style by abandoning circular for rectilinear ornament, the key meander assuming the leading role. At first decoration was restricted to a small reserved area surrounded by the lustrous dark paint; later, as the style approached maturity, more decorated zones were added, until the potter achieved a harmonious balance between light and dark. In the 8th century, after nearly 400 years of abstract decoration, living creatures appear once again, although their style is hardly less angular than the geometric ornament that supports them. Geometric pottery reached its fullest development in the gigantic amphorae and kraters (krater) that served as grave monuments in the Athenian Dipylon cemetery; here a funerary scene, showing the corpse on the bier surrounded by mourners, occupies the main panel, while other friezes contain chariot processions, battles on land and sea, rows of animals, and linear geometric designs. The creators of these monumental vases established a continuous tradition of figured painting that persisted on Greek pottery until the end of the Classical period; the immediate consequence of their innovation was a loss of interest in purely abstract design, which became increasingly perfunctory on the latest Geometric vases.

Period of Oriental influence (c. 725–c. 600 BC)
      After several centuries of isolation, the renewal of contact with the Middle East provided a welcome stimulus to the Greek potter. In art, as well as in commerce, it was Corinth that now led the way. Unlike the Athenians, Corinthian potters specialized in small vases and especially in the tiny aryballos, or scent bottle, which found a ready market throughout the Mediterranean region. There soon arose a style of miniatures that was called Proto-Corinthian (Proto-Corinthian style); it borrowed much of its repertoire from the fauna and flora of Syrophoenician art. Processions of animals, both real and legendary, are placed in the main friezes, while lotus flowers and palmettes serve as subsidiary ornament. When human beings are depicted, mythical scenes can often be recognized, reflecting the early diffusion of Homeric epic poetry. It was on Proto-Corinthian vases that the technique known as black-figure (black-figure pottery) was first applied: the figures were first drawn in black silhouette and were then marked with incised detail; further touches were added in purple and white.

      Other notable Orientalizing styles arose in Attica, the Cyclades, Laconia, and Rhodes, regional differences in pottery becoming more clearly marked as the Hellenic city-states grew into self-conscious political units. The Athenians (Athens) still did their best work on large funerary vases. At first they cultivated a wild and grandiose manner in which the figures of men and animals were elaborated in outline; later, incised ornament introduced from Corinth imposed a salutary discipline. Cycladic potters also attempted the grand manner; Laconian work, on the other hand, is confined to a small scale and owes comparatively little to Oriental influence. The Rhodians rarely progressed beyond animal friezes drawn in outline; their style is known as “wild goat”, after their favourite quadruped.

Attic (Attica) black-figure and red-figure

Archaic period (c. 750–c. 480 BC)
      By c. 550 BC Athens had once again become the principal centre of pottery manufacture in Greece, having ousted its Corinthian rivals from the overseas markets. Its success is at least partially due to a sudden improvement in technique, for its potters had learned how to obtain the familiar orange-red surface of their vases by mixing a proportion of ruddle, or red ochre, with their clay. As the main medium of decoration, the Athenians perfected a shiny black pigment that was more lustrous than anything that had been hitherto achieved.

      In these centuries most of the more important vases were painted either in the black-figure or in the slightly later red-figure (red-figure pottery) technique, so that some explanation of the essential difference is necessary. The red-figure style can be compared with a photographic print, the black-figure with a negative. The latter figures were painted in silhouette in glossy black pigment on the orange-red polished surface. Details were indicated by incised lines and by the occasional use of white and purple, the female figure, especially, being painted in white. Decoration on the red-figure vases was first outlined in black; the surface outside of the outline was then completely covered by the black pigment, leaving the figures reserved in red. Details were added in black, and in dilutions of the black pigment that appear as brown; purple is occasionally found at first but dies out in mature red-figure work. The use of white was revived on the gaudier vases of the 4th century, where yellow brown, gold, and even blue are sometimes used. The forms of Attic black- and red-figure, in the course of centuries, were limited to certain well-defined types, such as the amphora, kylix, krater, and hydria.

      The practice of signing vases, already begun in the 7th century, became more common in the 6th. The signatures record either the potter or the painter or in some cases both. The inscription on the celebrated François Vase in the Museo Archeologico in Florence—“Ergotimos made me; Cleitias painted me”—supplies the first positive evidence that, with only occasional exceptions, the two functions had become separate. When the name of a recognizable painter is not known from an inscription, it has become the fashion to name him after the potter with whom he usually worked: thus, the “Amasis painter” is the habitual colleague of Amasis the potter.

      The Attic black-figure style was well developed by the beginning of the 6th century. Among the most favoured subjects were the Labours of Heracles, Theseus, and the revels of Dionysus with his attendant train of satyrs and maenads. The finest Attic black-figure vases were made between 550 and 520 BC, the figures being rendered in a mature Archaic style much influenced by contemporary developments in sculpture. This is the generation of Exekias, the greatest master of the technique. He excelled in painting and in finely engraved detail; he also succeeded, where others had failed, in endowing his figures with mood and emotion, as well as the capacity for action. With Exekias the possibilities of black-figure were virtually exhausted, and after the introduction of red-figure (c. 530 BC) it is not surprising that the best artists soon turned to this new technique, which allowed a greater freedom of expression and more naturalistic treatment of the human body. After c. 500 BC the only important vases in black-figure are the amphoras presented to victors at the Panathenaic Festival; these have a figure of Athena standing between two pillars and are usually inscribed “I am one of the prizes from Athens.”

 The early red-figure artists were not slow to exploit the advantages of the new system. Benefitting from the experience of relief sculptors, they had mastered the problems of foreshortening by the end of the 6th century; but since they still avoided any suggestion of depth in their grouping, they were able to convey the illusion of a third dimension without doing violence to the two-dimensional surface of the vase. The most successful work was done in the final years of the Archaic period (c. 500–c. 480 BC) when the style of the figures, with their formal and elaborate patterns of drapery, was still decorative rather than naturalistic (see photograph—>). Monotony was avoided through the use of a wide variety of poses and simple devices for rendering character and mood. Besides the old heroic and Dionysiac themes, many scenes from daily life (especially orgiastic banquets) were now being used.

Classical period (c. 480–c. 330 BC)
      This period saw a progressive decline in Attic vase painting. Because of the limitations imposed by the pot surface, the vase painter could no longer keep pace with the rapid advance toward naturalism in the major arts; the occasional attempts at perspective and depth of grouping simply detracted from the shape of the vessel (a mistake repeated in some painting on Italian maiolica in the late 16th century AD). Furthermore, in contrast with the earlier wares, much of the later Attic vase painting shows a saccharine sentimentality and triviality in both the choice of subject and its treatment. Distinguished exceptions are the funerary lekythoi (lekythos) of the late 5th century, decorated in subdued mat colours on a white background. The figures on these vases, isolated and statuesque, share the serenity and restraint of the Parthenon sculptures and suggest something of the grandeur of classical free painting, nearly all of which is now lost. In the 4th century, the figured decoration of pottery had become a degenerate art, and by c. 320 BC it had died out in Attica.

      In addition to their black- and red-figure vases, the Athenians manufactured plain black-painted wares in great quantity; these follow the shapes of the figured pottery.

Hellenistic period (Hellenistic Age) (c. 330–c. 30 BC)
      After the end of red-figure, Greek pottery is undistinguished. Painted decoration is virtually limited to festoons of ivy, laurel, and a vine in white or yellow over a black ground; the black pigment loses its lustrous sheen and assumes a dull metallic texture. A class of hemispherical bowls, known as Megarian, was made in molds and bears relief decoration in imitation of metal bowls. More remarkable are the contemporary terra-cotta figurines; among the most accomplished are the draped women from Tanagra in Boeotia (Greek pottery), whose artistic value is sometimes marred by excessive sentimentality.

Etruscan and Roman
      At the beginning of the Iron Age (c. 900 BC), the most characteristic vessel of the Villanovan culture is the cremation urn. It is usually biconical in shape but sometimes takes the form of a primitive hut, decorated with quasi-architectural ornament in relief.

 The first pottery of importance is the Etruscan ware called bucchero (bucchero ware), which was fired in a reducing kiln. The earliest examples of the 8th century BC, for which the wheel was rarely used, were decorated with incised or engraved geometric patterns. By the 6th century lively and stylized birds and animals were engraved, modelled, or applied in friezes or in conjunction with such geometric patterns as re-entrant (coiling inward) spirals (see photograph—>). Later, relief ornament was often executed by rolling a cylinder with design recessed in intaglio over the soft clay, the principle being the same as that used to make Babylonian cylinder seals (cylinder seal). Vases with covers in the form of a human head, with arms slipped through fixed ring handles, were made for funerary purposes until about the mid-6th century.

      In the late Archaic period the Etruscans excelled in lifesize terra-cotta sculptures, of which the outstanding examples are the menacing figure of Apollo, from his temple at Veii, and the large sarcophagi from Caere, with couples of banqueters reclining on the lid. Figures, heads, and busts continued to be produced in the Hellenistic period.

      Proto-Corinthian (Proto-Corinthian style) ware was copied with great exactness by Greek colonists as early as 700 BC at Cumae, near Naples. The Etruscans soon learned to use the Greek black pigment, and stylized human and animal figures appear in red, black, and white on a light clay or on the bucchero surface. Copies of the black-figure vases were soon so accomplished that it is not always easy to tell exactly where a specimen was made. The red-figure class, however, is rarely difficult to separate from Greek work. The decoration is much more complex and elaborate, and the reverse is often carelessly executed. (Long after the red-figure style had fallen into disuse in Greece, it lingered on in Italy, particularly in the south.)

      The characteristic and most widely dispersed type of pottery of the Roman Empire was the red, polished Arretine ware, so called because manufacture was at first concentrated at Arretium (modern Arezzo). It is sometimes also misleadingly termed Samian ware, from a supposed connection with the island of Samos. The body was generally formed in a mold and was frequently decorated with raised designs. These were achieved by using a mold that had itself been impressed with several stamps arranged in the desired pattern. This decorative technique—which gave the ware yet another name, terra sigillata (terra sigillata ware) (clay impressed with designs)—was borrowed from metalwork. The patterns, too, were often influenced by metalwork and include floral and foliate motifs, mythological scenes, and scenes from daily life. The potteries at Arretium, which were organized on factory lines, operated between about 30 BC and AD 30. Their products were highly prized and widely exported.

      Lead glazing perhaps originated or was rediscovered (the Assyrians having used it) in Egypt. Certainly it was established in the Near East by the 1st century BC. The glazes were generally stained with copper to yield a greenish colour and were sometimes used over relief decoration which, like the designs on Arretine ware, betrays the influence of metalwork. The technique reached Italy and France by the 1st century AD.

      Of the other varieties of Roman pottery, lamps made either in a buff or a dark gray clay are common and usually have an impressed or molded design. A few depicting Christian motifs or gladiatorial combats are prized a little more highly than most specimens, but, generally, they are of little value. Molded terra-cotta plaques with reliefs of mythological and other subjects borrowed from Greece were often used to decorate buildings.

Islāmic
      In quality, the Islāmic pottery of Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan, and Anatolia rivals even the wares of the Far East, and its influence on the development of European pottery was more profound than that of any other region except China. The Islāmic potter, in his turn, owes an incalculable debt to the Chinese.

      Near and Middle Eastern pottery was at its best between the 9th and 13th centuries, and its history is closely linked to the fortunes of the caliphate (the dominion of the temporal and spiritual head of Islām). Each dynasty was surrounded in its capital by a wealthy and beauty-loving court that patronized artists and artisans. When one dynasty fell and another established itself elsewhere, it seems that the finest potters emigrated to the new capital, carrying with them their special, and often secret, skills. At first the principal centres of manufacture were Baghdad, al-Fusṭāṭ (old Cairo), and Samarkand; later they shifted to Raqqah on the Euphrates and to Rāy (Rhagae) and Kāshān, both in northern Iran.

      Most of the extant pottery has been excavated and consequently is fragmentary. Little made before the 14th century has survived above ground; and tombs, often rich depositories of undamaged wares in other regions of the world, are fruitless because Muslims did not bury pottery with their dead. Only one or two discoveries of undamaged wares have been made: for example, at Gurgan, Iran, entire specimens were found carefully packed in large earthenware jars. They had probably formed part of the stock of merchants, who buried them and fled before the invading Mongols in 1221. Because of deterioration through burial, much Islāmic pottery (like Roman and Near Eastern glass) is iridescent.

Early Islāmic

      There is little pottery of merit from the period of the Umayyad caliphate (661–750). At this time the capital was at Damascus, and the chief interest of the pottery lies in its mingled Mediterranean and Middle Eastern derivation; for example, attempts were made to synthesize the formal repetitive style derived from the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations with naturalistic ornament in the Greco-Roman style. When the ‘Abbāsids overthrew the Umayyads and moved the capital to Baghdad, the European influence on ornament waned. Good use continued to be made of Western techniques, however, particularly of lead glazes that had been employed by Greek and Roman potters since the 3rd century BC.

ʾAbbāsid (Abbāsid Dynastyʿ)
      An event that had a profound effect on the development of the Middle Eastern pottery was the presentation of a number of T'ang porcelain bowls to the caliph Hārūn ar-Rashīd about AD 800 (see below China: T'ang dynasty (pottery)). Shortly after this, the first fine pottery was produced in Baghdad and elsewhere in the caliphate. Thus, it seems possible that it was through the example of the Chinese that pottery came to be regarded as an artistic medium instead of a purely utilitarian one. This supposition is borne out by the fact that T'ang wares were in great demand and were imported in large quantities after this date: they and early Islāmic imitations, particularly of the dappled T'ang glazes, have been found in various parts of Mesopotamia and as far apart as Egypt and eastern Persia. Unlike their contemporaries in China, however, Islāmic potters aimed primarily at richness of colour and decoration rather than beautiful shapes and textures. Nearly all their pottery is glazed and is painted with elegant, rather stylized motifs. Floral and foliate ornaments predominate, although complex geometrical patterns are also characteristic. In theory there was a religious ban, formulated in the Ḥadīth (traditions of the Prophet), on all representations of animal life, which were thought to encourage idolatry. In practice, particularly in Persia, the limitation was often disregarded except in the decoration of mosques. The animal figures on pottery are spirited and rhythmical, while the human ones tend to be stiff, resembling those in contemporary miniatures. Arabic calligraphy was commonly and effectively used as an element of design.

      The Islāmic potters were responsible for a number of important technical innovations, the most influential of which was the rediscovery of tin glaze in the 9th century AD. Though tin was first used by the Assyrians and according to some authorities was discovered as early as 1100 BC, it had fallen into disuse. The ‘Abbāsid potters first used it in an attempt to imitate the texture of T'ang wares, but soon it became the vehicle for characteristically Middle Eastern decoration. From Mesopotamia and Persia the technique was later taken to Moorish Spain and then to Italy and other parts of Europe, where it was employed for a number of important wares—maiolica, faience, and delft (see below European: to the end of the 18th century (pottery)).

      Like that of tin glazing, the technique of lustre painting was perfected (and probably invented) by Islāmic potters. Again, like tin-glazing, it later passed to Muslim Spain but not to the Far East. Lustre on pottery probably was first used to cover entire vessels, thus simulating vessels made of precious metals that were proscribed by sumptuary laws laid down in the Ḥadīth, which sought to preserve the earlier simplicity of Muslim life. The metallic pigments employed in lustre painting were probably silver and copper in combination, although an occasional ruby glint suggests that gold may sometimes have been included. After firing, the painting may be dull yellow, golden brown, or olive, tinged with green or red.

      Extensive use was made of slip. Wares such as the early Gabrī type of the 11th century and later have a reddish body washed over with white slip. Designs were executed by scratching through the slip to the body beneath (sgraffito). On some later specimens the background was cut away to leave a raised design in white slip or the design was incised through the white slip and then was itself covered with green and brown glazes. The usual motifs are large floral forms, animals, and bold inscriptions. Sgraffito ware became common throughout the Middle East and appears in Egypt and Syria in the 13th century.

      Many fragments of Chinese pottery and porcelain have been found at the site of Sāmarrā', on the Tigris, where the ‘Abbāsids built their summer palaces in the 9th century (see below China: T'ang dynasty (pottery)). Among the native wares are some made in a buff body decorated in relief under a green glaze; others with monochrome green, white, and yellow glazes or with glazes in imitation of a well-known type of T'ang decoration; and those painted with cobalt blue (perhaps the earliest use of underglaze blue) and further embellished with lustre of various colours.

Sāmānid (Sāmānid Dynasty)
      To the northeast, beyond the Oxus (modern Amu Darya) River, the Sāmānid dynasty (874–999) became practically independent of the caliphate at Baghdad and fostered a national artistic and literary revival. Sāmānid pottery, which has been found chiefly at Samarkand and Nīshāpūr, differs from the pottery of more westerly regions in technique and style. The best pieces have a reddish body covered with a white, vivid red-brown, or purplish-black slip that was then painted and fired under a lead glaze. The function of the slip, besides providing colour, was to prevent the pigments of the painting from running when the lead glaze was applied. The colours used in painting were the same as those of the slips, with the addition of yellowish green and browns. The designs often consist of the angular Arabic Kūfic characters or stylized birds and floral motifs. The shapes are plain—usually either plates or rather shallow bowls—and the total effect is both bold and elegant.

      Egyptian pottery of the Islāmic period was at its best during the Fāṭimid Dynasty (969–1171). Wares were at first coarser than those of Mesopotamia because of the poor quality of local materials, and the shapes were less refined, since Chinese influence was absent. Lustre painting (probably introduced in mid-10th century) was nevertheless, excellent in quality. A typical feature is the painting on the backs of dishes, a practice derived from Baghdad and later copied by the Moorish potters of Spain. Signed specimens of lustre ware and tin-glazed wares are known, the best coming from a potter named Sa‘d.

      Toward the end of the period a much whiter type of ware, with a compact body, came into use and thereafter became common throughout the Middle East. Another widespread group of wares, popular until the 14th century, has decoration carved and incised into the body and is covered with transparent glazes. The patterns suggest the influence of some of the Sung wares of China.

11th to 15th century
      In the 11th century the Seljuq Turks overran Persia and Mesopotamia, and their ascendancy lasted until the advent of the Mongols during the 13th century. As the Seljuqs had no capital, the most flourishing cities during this time were those on the trade routes. In the 12th century very fine pottery was made in the new white body recently developed in Egypt; it was decorated with bold carving, occasional piercing, and translucent glaze. Most of these wares are said to have been found at Rāy (Rayy ware) near Teheran, where many other beautiful wares have been excavated. Wares with a sandy body and a clear glaze were painted with a golden-brown lustre, often in conjunction with blue. These seem not to have been made after the city was sacked by Genghis Khan in 1220. Especially associated with Rāy are examples of minai (minai ware) painting of uncommon quality. The minai technique, a Persian discovery of the 12th century, was a method of decoration in which colours were painted onto a glazed and fired bowl and then fixed by refiring the bowl at a comparatively low temperature. The advantage of the process was that many colours that would not have withstood the heat of the first firing could now be used. The technique may perhaps have influenced the rare examples of overglaze decoration on late Sung or Yüan wares from Tz'u-chou, although it did not come into common use in China until the early part of the 15th century (see below China: Ming dynasty (pottery)).

      At Rāy the glaze is cream or turquoise, and the minai palette included blue, turquoise, purple, red, green, and white, with the addition of gold leaf. All these colours, except the blue, are mat in appearance, and the style strongly recalls that of Persian manuscript illumination of the 13th century.

      Another technique employed at Rāy was the use of silhouette decoration, a kind of sgraffito. The pot was covered with a thick black or blue and black slip, and the design was carved out with a knife. The glazes were applied without colour or stained with copper to yield a brilliant turquoise.

      Raqqah (Raqqah ware) was a prosperous trading city until it was sacked by the Mongols in 1259. Most of its pottery, which can be dated between the 9th and 14th centuries, is rougher and the designs bolder than those of Rāy. The body is white, inclining to buff, and is covered with a siliceous glaze. ome of the Raqqah fragments are painted with a brownish lustre. Others have designs in relief, sometimes covered with an opaque turquoise glaze or with a bluish-green translucent glaze. In the 12th and early 13th centuries bold designs were executed in black under pale-blue glazes and, more frequently, in blue and black under a clear glaze. Occasionally the glazes were stained purple with manganese.

      Kāshān is chiefly famous for its tiles, in fact the words kāshī or kāshānī (“of Kashan”), are commonly used as synonyms for tile (and have been incorrectly applied to tilework from India). Lustre-painted tiles had been made since at least the 9th century and were used mostly on the walls of mosques and public buildings. Those of Kāshān, particularly in the 13th and 14th centuries, are distinguished by their fine workmanship, brilliance, and intricacy of design. In shape they are square, rectangular, or of interlocking cross or star shapes, each carrying a small part of the total design. The relief inscriptions are frequently picked out with blue pigment.

      Also associated with Kāshān are the lakabi (lakabi ware) (“painted”) wares made in the 12th century. The term, a misnomer, refers to a variation of the sgraffito silhouette technique mentioned above: an incised design was decorated with different coloured glazes (blue, yellow, purple, and green), which were kept apart by intervening threads of clay. Although a number of lakabi wares were also made at Raqqah, the technique was soon abandoned at both places, as the glazes always tended to run out of their compartments during firing, giving a smudged effect.

      Both the original site of Solṭānābād and the nature of the wares that may have been made there are extremely uncertain. Principally associated with it are wares decorated with relief molding under a turquoise or dark-blue glaze or painted in black slip under a clear turquoise glaze. They date from the second half of the 13th century onward. Toward the end of the 12th century the glaze material was frequently mixed with the white-burning clay then in use. In the more highly fired specimens the product is not unlike a primitive soft porcelain, and occasional specimens are slightly translucent. These wares probably inspired the attempts to make porcelain at Florence (see below European: to the end of the 18th century (pottery)). Neither stoneware nor true porcelain was ever made in Persia.

      After the Mongol conquests of the 13th century the production of pottery practically ceased, except at Kāshān. A slow revival began about 1295, and, although pottery in the Near and Middle East never again reached its former height, some fine wares were made at Solṭānābād in the 14th century. Good use was made of the rich sombre colours beloved by the Mongols, particularly dark blues, grays, and blacks.

Later Persian
      Since the whole of Central Asia now lay under the Mongol domination, overland trade with China greatly increased. By the 15th century Chinese influence, particularly that of Ming blue-and-white (blue-and-white ware), was predominant, and the older styles were tending to die out (see below China: Ming dynasty (pottery)). A group of blue-and-white wares belonging to the 15th and early 16th century are known as Kubachi wares because large numbers of them survived above ground in this town in the Caucasus. They have a very soft body, a brilliant crackled glaze, and rhythmical and spontaneous designs. The later Kubachi blue-and-white is closer to the Chinese originals.

      Polychrome appears about 1550, and the palette includes a red related to, though lighter than, the Armenian bole introduced about the same time in Turkey (see below Turkish (pottery)). The best polychrome painting was done on tiles. Tabriz (Tabrīz) has been suggested as the real centre of manufacture, but although it seems likely that Tabriz was a manufacturing town in view of its tiled mosques and the fact that Tabriz potters were famous abroad (and indeed were either invited or carried off to Turkey on two occasions), no kiln sites have been found there.

      One of the later kiln sites in Persia is Kerman (Kermān), which was the leading pottery centre in the 17th century. Its wares are characterized by a very strong bright blue and a wavy, rather bubbly, glaze. Pseudo-Chinese marks were frequently added to the blue and white. The most usual colours on Kerman polychrome wares are blue, green, browns, and a bright red similar to Armenian bole. The quality of production declined considerably during the 18th century.

      Lustre painting, which had almost ceased in the 13th century, was revived during the second half of the 17th century and perhaps lasted into the 18th century. Its place of manufacture is not known. Most of the objects decorated in this manner are small bottles or spittoons, and their cramped designs are timid and fussy. The lustre is warm brown, often with a strong red tinge, and was sometimes used in conjunction with blue glaze. Another early technique revived at the same time was piercing, formerly practiced in the Seljuq era. There are a number of delicate pierced (pierced work) white wares covered with a colourless glaze, which were imitated in China during the reign of Ch'ien-lung. Pierced pottery and porcelain of this kind was often known in Europe as Gombroon ware, the name of the port (now Bandar ‘Abbās) from whence it was shipped.

      Chinese celadon was imitated, not very successfully, from the 14th century. In the 16th century other monochrome glazes were produced at Kerman and elsewhere. These and the celadon were frequently decorated with painted or incised ornament—the former a practice quite foreign to Chinese Sung dynasty wares.

      During the 18th century most of the pottery produced in Persia was inferior blue-and-white. In the 19th century the standard declined still further with the adoption of the Chinese-inspired famille rose palette (see below China: Ch'ing dynasty (pottery)), and only a group of wares made at Teheran between 1860 and 1890 can command any respect. Some excellent peasant pottery with a buff body and lead glaze was made in Turkistan, however.

      The potters from al-Fusṭāṭ and Raqqah may have migrated to Damascus after their potteries were destroyed by the Mongols, for lustre painting continued in Syria throughout the 13th and 14th centuries after it had ceased elsewhere in the Middle East. The lustre ranges in colour from silver to yellow and dull brown and is often used in conjunction with a blue glaze on big, heavy jars and albarellos (a jar with an incurving waist, used for dry drugs and ointments). Characteristic are gold designs arranged in panels with much use of inscriptions and heraldic devices. The body material is coarse and grayish, and the glaze sometimes has a wide crackle. Lustre painting fell into disuse in Syria about 1400 and might have died out altogether had not the secret meantime been carried from Egypt to Spain (see below European: to the end of the 18th century (pottery)). The commonest type of Syrian pottery in the 14th century is a blue-and-black style similar in shape and design to the lustre ware. Rather uncertainly drawn animals appear on some of the vessels.

      The earliest known Middle Eastern copies of Chinese blue-and-white were made in Syria at the end of the 14th century. Blue-and-white became commoner on both vessels and tiles in the first half of the next century. Later, the potteries seem to have fallen into disuse until the new mosque built in Damascus by the Turkish ruler Süleyman I (the Magnificent) in the mid-16th century provided a fresh impetus for the industry. The polychrome tiles of the 16th century at first have designs with a hard black outline; later, a more flowing foliate style was developed. A soft purple replaces the Armenian bole of Iznik (see below Turkish (pottery)). Vessels and tiles, gradually declining in quality, continued to be made in Damascus until the end of the 18th century.

      A branch of the Seljuq Turks occupied Anatolia from 1078 to 1300 and was succeeded by the Ottoman Turks, who first extended their lands westward, conquering Byzantium in 1453 and in the 16th century becoming masters of much of southeastern Europe and the lands lying to the east and south of the Mediterranean. The first notable pottery wares from Turkish lands were the tiles and bricks covered with coloured glazes made in Anatolia (art and architecture, Anatolian) for architectural purposes in the 13th century. Mosques (mosque) in particular were decorated in this way. (Persian influence in decoration suggests the presence of potters from that region.) The art of tilework (tile) apparently died out after 1300 and was not reintroduced until about 1415, when Persian craftsmen were brought from Tabriz to decorate the mosques at Bursa and Edirne. Apart from tilework, pottery appears to have received little encouragement until the late 15th century, by which time the chief centre of production was firmly established at İznik (İznik ware) (earlier called Nicaea).

      The great era of Turkish pottery (c. 1500–c. 1580) coincides with the expansion of Ottoman (Ottoman Empire) power. Decoration was at first influenced by 15th-century Ming blue-and-white porcelain. The earlier designs were probably taken at second hand from Persian sources, since a distinctly Persian flavour is usually evident. This is indicated by the intricacy of the designs and their arrangement in bands, and by the shapes of some of the vessels, which suggest the influence of metalwork. At one time the wares in this style, which lasted until about 1525, were thought to come from Kütahya in central Anatolia and are still sometimes known by that name.

      At this and later periods the body of Iznik pottery was soft and sandy. It was made from grayish-white clay covered with a thin slip that was usually white, although occasionally red or blue was used as a ground on later wares. Decoration was carried out in underglaze colours under a transparent siliceous glaze. The commonest shapes are flat dishes, but jugs, dishes with a high foot, and bowls are also found. Cylindrical vessels with small rectangular handles set halfway down are flower vases, not tankards, as one might think. A rare form is a pottery version of a mosque lamp.

      During the next period (c. 1525–50), some wares of which have been erroneously attributed to Damascus, Iznik pottery was at its finest. Ming blue-and-white was now copied directly; for example, the central motif of grapes on a dish in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is an almost exact imitation of a well-known mid-15th century Chinese motif. On the same dish is a characteristic border pattern, which was called the Ammonite scroll border because it was thought to resemble the coiled shell of the fossil ammonite but which is certainly a debased version of the Ming Rock of Ages pattern. This scroll border appears often; a slightly later and even more debased version, which incorporates large S-shaped scrolls, is sometimes known as the dollar pattern.

 The palette was gradually expanded to include turquoise, sage green, olive green, purple, and black. Most of the blue and turquoise specimens are painted with flowers. The Chinese flora motifs were almost entirely replaced by tulips, poppies, carnations, roses, and hyacinths in the form of fairly symmetrical sprays springing from a single point. The earliest flowers are often rather more stylized than the later, perhaps because the representation of living things was prohibited by Qur'ānic (Koranic) tradition. Even on comparatively late examples, floral designs are sometimes stylized to the point of abstraction, suggesting that decorators might have suited their patterns to the religious susceptibilities of their customers. An effective abstract pattern is formed from a series of overlapping scales that are usually carefully drawn (see photograph—>). The same ground was later employed in Italy on maiolica and at the Berlin porcelain factory and may have indirectly inspired the series of wares with scale grounds made at Worcester, England.

      After about 1550 Iznik pottery enters its third stage. The most notable technical innovation is the use of Armenian bole (sealing-wax red), a thick pigment that stands out in slight relief from the surface of the vessel.

      The other great change is that tiles, which had previously been made in small numbers, became all important and remained so until the early 17th century. They were used to provide lavish decoration for the new mosques built at Constantinople by Süleyman I. Once again potters were brought from Tabriz to begin the work. Much use is made of copper green and the new red, the colours very brilliant on the glossy white ground. The tiles, usually square, make up flowing repeating patterns or long high pictures with elaborate borders.

      On pottery, symmetrical sprays of flowers continued to be used as decoration until about 1600. Paintings of animals and birds are found occasionally, probably executed by Persian workmen since their resemblance to Persian wares is strong. The rare specimens with human figures were probably painted by Greeks or Armenians for export to the West. Turkish sailing vessels sometimes appear as a decorative motif.

      In the 17th century the quality of Iznik (Islamic arts) wares declined, and by 1800 manufacture had ceased. At Kütahya, pottery making had begun by 1608 and continued into the middle of the 20th century. The wares, though inferior, have some resemblance to those of Iznik with the addition of a yellow pigment.

European: to the end of the 18th century
      European wares made before the 19th century fall into six main categories: lead-glazed earthenware, tin-glazed earthenware, stoneware, soft porcelain, hard porcelain, and bone china.

      Lead-glazed earthenware was made from medieval times onward and owes little to outside influences. The body is generally reddish buff in colour; the glazes are yellow, brown, purplish, or green. The wares are usually vigorous in form but often crudely finished. Lead-glazed wares fell out of favour when tin glaze became widely known toward the end of the 15th century, but they returned to popularity with the advent of Wedgwood's creamware shortly after the middle of the 18th century. The body of this later lead-glazed earthenware is drab white or cream, the glaze clear and transparent like glass, and the forms precise.

      The first important tin-glazed wares came from Italy during the Renaissance, and these colourful examples of the painter's art exerted a profound influence on later work elsewhere. Manufacture spread rapidly, first to France, then to Germany, Holland, England, and Scandinavia. Under the name of maiolica, faience, or delft, it enjoyed immense popularity until the advent of Wedgwood's creamware, after which the fashion for tin-glazed ware declined rapidly.

      Stoneware is first commonly seen in Germany during the 16th century; its manufacture was developed in England during the 18th century, culminating in the unglazed ornamental jaspers (jasperware) and basaltes (basaltes ware) of Wedgwood.

      Two other types of ware, less common than those already discussed, are slipware and lustreware. Slip was applied both as a covering over an earthenware body and in the form of decoration, for example on the sgraffito wares of Italy (which owe a good deal to similar wares from Byzantium) and the dotted and trailed slips of 17th- and 18th-century England. Lustre pigments were used in Spain, where they are the principal decoration on the magnificent series of wares referred to as Hispano-Moresque; in Italy, where they supplement other modes of decoration; and much later, in England—although in the last case they are no longer artistically important.

      The manufacture of soft porcelain was essayed in 16th-century Italy under the patronage of Francesco de' Medici, grand duke of Tuscany. Similar attempts were made elsewhere in Italy about the same time, and manufacture is supposed to have been continued at Pisa and at Candiana, near Padua (Padova). The first production of soft porcelain on a considerable scale did not take place, however, until toward the end of the 17th century in France.

      In Saxony about 1675 Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus started experiments to make porcelain from clay mixed with fusible rock. Almost certainly he had made hard porcelain by the end of the century, but manufacture did not become a practical commercial proposition until the year of his death, in 1708. Experiments were continued by his assistant, an alchemist named Johann Friedrich Böttger, who is sometimes credited with von Tschirnhaus' discovery. The factory was established at Meissen about 1710, and the first porcelain sales of any consequence took place at the Leipzig Fair in 1713.

      Later, at the end of the 18th century, Josiah Spode the Second added bone ash to the hard porcelain formula to make bone china.

      In AD 330 Byzantium became the imperial capital of the Roman Empire and was renamed Constantinople. The term Byzantine (Byzantine art), however, is applied to the period that ended in 1453, when Constantinople was captured by the Ottoman Turks (and renamed Istanbul).

      Since it was not a Christian custom to bury pottery with the dead, few wares survive, and chronology is difficult. Most of the surviving wares fall into two classes: one is a red-bodied type, sometimes with stamped relief decoration under a clear glaze; the other, a sgraffito type with human figures, animals, birds, monograms, foliate designs, the Greek cross, and the like, engraved through a white slip and covered with yellow and green glazes. The latter is the commonest type after the 12th century. Both styles were fairly widespread and have been recovered in fragmentary form from excavations at Istanbul, and in Greece, Cyprus, and the Crimea.

      The earthenware of Spain falls into two classes: lustreware and painted tin glazed ware.

      The lustre technique spread to Moorish Spain by way of Egypt (art and architecture, Egyptian), but it is impossible to say exactly when it arrived.

      The body of Hispano-Moresque (Hispano-Moresque ware) pottery is usually of fairly coarse clay, which has burned to a pinkish buff, covered with a tin glaze containing lead in varying proportions. The lustre, added overglaze, varies in colour from golden to a pale straw, and a coppery lustre almost invariably indicates at least a 17th century date. Many dishes were additionally painted in blue and, less often, with manganese.

      Most surviving wares of the early period are dishes of various shapes. Less common are albarellos (albarello), waisted drug jars based on a Middle Eastern form. Vases based on the old Iberian Amphora but with two massive wing handles (the Alhambra type) are very rare. The decoration on wares of this early period is predominantly Moorish. Fine specimens of this kind are unlikely to be later than 1525. Subsequently, Spanish artists repeated the Moorish designs, but these often degenerate in their hands; and Arabic and the Kūfic script, frequently used by Moorish potters, becomes meaningless. The early designs are, for the most part, plant forms and arabesques, both the vine leaf and the bryony leaf being used. A little later there are magnificently drawn animals in heraldic form, principally lions and eagles. Still later there are deer and antelope, which may owe something to Persian sources. Dishes with coats of arms of noble families surrounded by vine- and bryony-leaf ornament are unusually fine. Many of them were made in Valencia and the neighbouring village of Manises for Italian families. A feature of many of the dishes is the lustre decoration on the reverse. Although often no more than a series of concentric circles, occasionally there are superb eagles and other animals found on dishes from Valencia that are even finer than the obverse designs.

      In the 17th century much lustred pottery was made for the cheaper markets and for export to England. The painting is executed in a lustre pigment of deep coppery hue. While this ware is not important in comparison with the early wares, it is often decorative.

Other tin-glazed ware
      Although the influence of Valencian lustre pottery on later Italian maiolica is obvious, the wares of Paterna, near Valencia, were hardly less influential in the 14th century. They were decorated in green and manganese, often with motifs taken from Moorish sources; this combination of colours is to be seen in early Italian pottery from Orvieto and elsewhere.

      Much tin-glazed pottery of excellent quality was made at Talavera de la Reina, in New Castile, during the 17th and 18th centuries. The palette is characteristic of much Spanish tin-glazed ware; green and manganese play a distinctive part, frequently combined with touches of orange-red and gray. The istoriato style of Urbino (see below Italy (pottery)) was copied here, and the Italian painter and engraver Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630) provided a source of inspiration for some of the painting. Alcora, in Valencia, made much faience of excellent quality during the 18th century.

      Tilework (tile) was particularly common in Spain from the earliest period; according to one proverb, only a really poor man had “a house without tiles.” At first tilework was made with a typically Persian technique by which thin slabs of tin-glazed pottery were sawn into pieces and embedded in a kind of mortar (tile mosaic). The cuerda seca method of making tiles followed about 1500: outlines were drawn on the surface in manganese mixed with a greasy substance that prevented the coloured glazes used from mingling. Tiles made by the cuenca technique had deeply impressed patterns the compartments thus formed being filled with coloured glazes. Tiles were also decorated with lustre pigments.

      The early porcelain made at Buen Retiro (Buen Retiro ware), near Madrid, in the 1760s, had been justly compared to that of Saint-Cloud. The quality of the ware was good, and some skillful figure modelling was done by Giuseppe Gricci, who had previously worked at Capodimonte.

      The pottery of Italy is extremely important not only in itself but for its subsequent influence in other European countries. Indeed, its influence may have spread even farther afield: a few specimens of Ming porcelain have motifs that may have been inspired by it.

      There are two well-defined classes of Italian earthenware: maiolica, or tin-glazed ware, and pottery decorated in the sgraffito technique.

      Tin-glazing was introduced in the 13th century from the Middle East through the Muslim civilization in southern Spain, wares being shipped from there to Italy by Majorcan traders. The term maiolica was at first applied to this Hispano-Moresque lustreware, but in the 16th century it came to denote all tin-glazed ware.

      Italian maiolica is principally noteworthy for its painted decoration, which excelled in technical competence anything produced in Europe since classical times. The painting was executed in several colours on the dry but unfired tin glaze. Great skill was needed, since the surface absorbed the colour as blotting paper absorbs ink, and erasures were therefore impossible. The best wares were given a final coating of clear lead glaze called coperta. The range of colours was comparatively limited: cobalt blue, copper green, manganese purple, antimony yellow, and iron red formed the basic palette, while white was provided by the tin-glaze material. When white was used for painting, it was applied onto a bluish-white glaze (bianco sopra bianco, or “white on white”), or on a light-blue (berettino), or dark-blue ground.

      Lustre pigments were introduced from Spain. The lustre of Italian wares is often the golden-yellow colour derived from silver, and sometimes it is ruby, suggesting the use of gold. The silver lustre often developed a nacreous effect known as mother-of-pearl (madre perle).

      The forms of maiolica are few and fairly simple. Generally, they were dictated by the need for a surface on which the painter could exercise his skill; thus, dishes form the greater part of surviving wares. It is doubtful whether most maiolica was ever intended for general use. Dishes were displayed on sideboards and buffets more often than they were placed on the table. Gaily coloured drug jars were a fashionable decoration for pharmacies and include the albarello shape, copied from Spain, for dry drugs, and a spouted jar for wet drugs. Ewers (pitchers) with a trefoil (leafshaped) spout, derived from the Greek oenochoe, were made, as well as the massive jars representative of Florentine work of the 15th century.

      The earliest maiolica, beginning in the 13th century, is decorated in green and manganese purple in imitation of the Spanish Paterna ware. Much work of this kind was done at Orvieto, in Umbria, where the characteristic form was a jug with a disproportionately large pouring lip. Orvieto ware has almost become a generic term for anything in this style, although similar vessels were made at Florence, Siena, and elsewhere. It was current in the 14th century and continued in the 15th century, when other colours were added to the palette. The decorative motifs—masks, animals, and foliage—are Gothic (Gothic art), with some traces of Eastern influence.

      From Florence came a series of wares painted in a dark, inky, impasto (or very thick) blue. These, too, have Gothic ornament, particularly oak leaves, which came into use sometime before 1450. Heraldic animals also appear on some specimens. This kind of decoration was obviously inspired by Spanish pottery, and a few examples are hardly more than copies. Soon after 1500, Florentine production was concentrated in the castle of Caffagiolo, in Tuscany (Cafaggiolo majolica), and came under the patronage of the Medici Family, whose arms appear frequently. A notable addition to the palette here was a bright red pigment, a most difficult colour to attain and one not often used.

      Gothic ornament was gradually displaced by classical motifs, such as grotesques, trophies, and the like, which, early in the 16th century, themselves gave way to the istoriato (istoriato style) style. This style, no doubt inspired by the achievements of contemporary painting, imitates the easel picture closely. Its realism, including the use of perspective, is quite unlike any previous ceramic decoration. The subjects were often classical, but biblical subjects, some taken from the woodcuts of Bernard Salomon (c. 1506–61), are frequently represented. Maiolica (majolica) was often called Raffaelle ware, a tribute to the influence of the painter Raphael (1483–1520), although he, in fact, never made any designs for pottery. In particular the maiolica painters copied his grotteschi (grotesques), motifs adapted from those rediscovered in the grottoes of the Golden House of Nero soon after 1500 and so-called in consequence. They are usually fantastic combinations of human, animal, and plant forms. The works of Albrecht Dürer and Andrea Mantegna were also borrowed, often through engravings made by Jacopo Ripanda (Jacopa da Bologna and Marcantonio Raimondi); some examples are almost exact copies, others are freer interpretations. The paintings sometimes occupy the centre of the dish with a border of formal ornament surrounding them, but in many instances, notably those from Urbino, they cover the entire surface. It is often impossible to regard the pottery body as anything more than a support for the painting, its pictorial or narrative subject having been executed with little or no consideration for the nature of the object it decorated. Although pottery decoration is rarely successful unless it is designed to enhance, or at least not to detract from, the shape of the body, an exception must be made for some of these colourful wares: at their best they are highly ornamental.

      The istoriato style probably developed at Faenza (Faenza majolica) (Emilia) in about 1500. One of the earliest and most important centres of production, it had been manufacturing maiolica since before 1450. Almost as early are some examples from Caffagiolo. Castel Durante adopted the same style, and it is particularly associated with the name of Nicola Pellipario (died c. 1542), the greatest of the maiolica painters. He also painted grotesques similar to those of Deruta, in Umbria, which are rather more stylized than the grotesques introduced later in the 16th century at Urbino that are humourous and full of movement. The former are often used as a surround to an interior medallion in the istoriato style. Urbino was probably the largest centre for the manufacture of maiolica at the time. The industry there was under the patronage of the Della Rovere family, whose name, meaning “oak tree,” led to the adoption of the oak-leaf motif in wreathed form.

      Among the early factories, that of Deruta (wich may have been under the patronage of Cesare Borgia) is of considerable importance. Maiolica has been made there from medieval times, and manufacture continues in the mid-20th century. Deruta potters about 1500 were the first to use lustre pigment, which was of a pale-yellow tone, and they also adopted the Spanish practice of painting designs on the reverse of dishes. They also often covered only the obverse with tin glaze and applied a lead glaze to the reverse—again, a typically Spanish practice. The best work was done before 1540.

      The use of lustre pigments at Gubbio, in Umbria, probably started soon after it began at Deruta. The quality of the work was such that maiolica was sent from Castel Durante, Faenza, and even from Deruta itself for this additional embellishment. An interesting series of dishes is that painted with the portraits of young women, often with the addition of a terse and appreciative comment such as “Bella,” which were made at Deruta, and also apparently at Gubbio.

      Maiolica was manufactured in Venice between the 16th and 18th centuries. As might be expected in an important seaport with worldwide trade, its maiolica often shows Eastern influence. The designs of Iznik were sometimes copied (as they were, in fact, on other Italian wares of the period), and imitations of Chinese porcelain of the Ming period gave rise to a style known as alla porcellana (“in the manner of porcelain”).

      Of the later potteries, that of Castelli, near Naples, did excellent work from the 16th century onward, although its later wares tend to become pedestrian. Istoriato painting was revived there in the 17th century in a palette paler in tone than that of early work in this style. Much maiolica survives from Savona (Savona faience), in Liguria, a good deal of which is painted in blue in Oriental styles.

      Although hardly to be classified as pottery, sculptured reliefs were made by Luca della Robbia (Della Robbia, Luca) (died 1482) in terra cotta and covered with maiolica glazes. He was followed by his nephew, Andrea, and the latter's sons. Giorgio Vasari's suggestion that Luca invented the maiolica glaze is erroneous.

Sgraffito wares
      Sgraffito wares are comparatively rare. The technique was derived from Byzantine sources by way of Cyprus which was under Venetian rule from 1472 to 1570. Manufacture was confined to northern Italy, the largest centre being at Bologna. The body of the sgraffito ware was covered with a slip of contrasting colour, the decoration then being scratched through to the body beneath and the whole covered with a lead glaze, which has a yellowish tone. Often the incised designs were first embellished with underglaze colours (blue, green, purple, brown, and yellow) that tended to run during firing. This technique died out finally at the end of the 18th century, but some important work of the kind was done in the late 15th and 16th centuries.

      There are only about 50 surviving pieces of the soft-paste porcelain made in Florence at the time of the Medicis, and little is known of its actual production. The earliest definite date for manufacture is 1581. Painting is nearly always in blue with manganese outlines. Most decorative motifs are derived from China, Persia, or Turkey, and the forms usually copy those of Urbino maiolica.

      No hard porcelain was made in Italy until Francesco and Giuseppe Vezzi's factory was established in Venice in 1720. It made fine hard porcelain the body of which has a slightly smoky colour. The style is Baroque, and the palette is notable for a brownish red. Another factory, that of Geminiano Cozzi, started in 1764, was the one where most Venetian porcelain was made. Cozzi worked in the Meissen and Sèvres styles and produced some good figures.

      The porcelain factory at Doccia (Doccia porcelain), near Florence, was founded by Marchese Carlo Ginori in 1735. Coffeepots in the Baroque style, sometimes painted with coats of arms, are characteristic of the early period. Equally fine figures were made during the 18th century. Porcelain with figure subjects in low relief was made only at Doccia, although it has been repeatedly and erroneously attributed to the soft-porcelain factory established in the royal palace of Capodimonte (Capodimonte porcelain) by Charles III of Naples in 1743. As well as extremely well painted service ware, Capodimonte is renowned for its figures. The factory was transferred to Buen Retiro, near Madrid, in 1759, when Charles became king of Spain (see above Spain (pottery)).

      The medieval pottery of France is difficult to date and classify with accuracy, but lead glaze was in common use by the 13th century at the latest. Proficient sgraffito decoration was done at Beauvaisis (Oise) and at La Chapelle-aux-Pots (Charente-Inferieure).

Lead-glazed wares of the 16th century
      Bernard Palissy (Palissy, Bernard) began to experiment with coloured glazes about 1539 and, after much difficulty, succeeded in producing his rustic wares in 1548. For the most part these are large dishes made with wavy centres intended to represent a stream, with realistically modelled lizards, snakes, and insects such as dragonflies grouped thereon. They are decorated on the obverse with blue, green, manganese purple, and brown glazes of excellent quality, while the back is covered with a glaze mottled in brown, blue, and purple. Palissy later turned his attention to classical and biblical subjects, which he molded in relief. After his death in 1589, work in his style was continued at the Avon pottery, near Fontainebleau.

      Almost contemporary with Palissy's rustic ware is a type of pottery made in the style of the metalwork of the period. It was made at Saint-Porchaire (Saint-Porchaire faience) and is sometimes called, erroneously, Henri Deux ware, or faience d'Oiron. The body is ivory white and covered with a thin glaze. Before firing, designs were impressed into the clay with metal stamps like those used by bookbinders, and the impressions were then filled with slips of contrasting colours. This technique resembles the mishima technique of decoration in Korea (see below Korea (pottery)).

Faience, or tin-glazed ware
      The technique and the designs of Italian maiolica influenced the development, in the early 16th century, of French faience. There were Italian potters at Lyon in 1512, and, by the end of the 16th century, painting in the manner of Urbino was well established there. Faience was also made at Rouen, probably as early as 1526, and at Nevers toward the end of the 16th century.

      A new factory, established at Rouen about 1656 by Edme Poterat, introduced a decoration of lambrequins, ornament with a jagged or scalloped outline based on drapery, scrollwork, lacework ornament, and the like. Lambrequins were extremely popular and were copied at other porcelain and faience factories. The faience of Nevers, too, is extremely important and shows the Baroque (Baroque period) style at its best. In the second half of the 17th century the porcelain of both China and Japan became increasingly well known in Europe, and many designs were borrowed from Chinese sources by potters at Nevers and elsewhere.

      The factory of Moustiers (Moustiers faience) in the Basses-Alpes was founded by Pierre Clérissy in 1679. During the early period frequent use was made of the engravings of Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630) as well as biblical scenes. Later came a series of dishes decorated with designs after Jean I Bérain (Berain, Jean, the Elder) (1637–1711), whose work greatly influenced French decorative art at the time. These designs usually include grotesques, baldacchini (canopies), vases of flowers, and the like, linked together by strapwork in a typically Baroque manner.

      In 1709, when Louis XIV and his court melted down their silver to help pay for the War of the Spanish Succession, the nobility looked for a less expensive medium to replace it. In consequence, faience gained in popularity and importance. A great deal was manufactured in the region of Marseilles, the factory of the Veuve Perrin being particularly noted for overglaze painting in the Rococo style. Perhaps the most influential factory was that of Strasbourg (Strasbourg ware), in Alsace (which had officially become part of France in 1697), founded by C.F. Hannong in 1709. The wares—painted in blue, in other faience colours, and in overglaze colours—were much copied elsewhere. Overglaze colours were introduced about 1740, their first recorded use in France. (For the first use in Europe, see below Germany and Austria (pottery).) Brilliant indianische Blumen (flower motifs that were really Japanese in origin but that were thought to be Indian because the decorated porcelain was imported by the East India companies) were painted in a palette that included a carmine similar to the Chinese overglaze rose (“purple of Cassius”). A characteristic copper green was also used. deutsche Blumen (“German flowers”) were introduced, perhaps by A.F. von Löwenfinck, about 1750, and inspired similar painting elsewhere. Figures by J.W. Lanz, who also worked in porcelain here and at Frankenthal, are to be seen. Much work was done in the fashionable Rococo style, including objects, such as clock cases and wall cisterns, and tureens in the form of fruit and vegetables. Both faience and porcelain in a variety of decorative forms were used for the banqueting table. Such table decoration, which in the 17th century had been supplied by confectioners who worked in sugar, had become very fashionable in Europe.

      The wares of Niderviller (Niderviller ware), in Lorraine, were much influenced by those of Strasbourg. The later figures were probably modelled by the sculptor Charles Gabriel Sauvage, called Lemire (1741–1827), and some were sometimes taken from models by Paul-Louis Cyfflé (1724–1806). At Lunéville (Lunéville faience), not far away, Cyfflé worked in a pleasant but sentimental vein and used a semiporcelain biscuit body known as terre-de-Lorraine, which was intended to resemble the biscuit porcelain of Sèvres. The work of both Sauvage and Cyfflé is extremely skillful.

      Faience was made at Tournai (now in Belgium) and at Brussels during the 17th century. Their styles were mainly derivative, but Brussels made some excellent tureens in forms such as poultry, vegetables, and fruits during the Rococo period.

      After 1800 most French pottery factories concentrated on the manufacture of faience fine (creamware).

      In the second half of the 17th century much interest was taken in both faience and porcelain, although the technique of making soft-paste porcelain (pâté tendre) had yet to be mastered, and the secret of hard-paste porcelain manufacture was not discovered until the 18th century.

      A factory at Saint-Cloud (Saint-Cloud porcelain), founded by Pierre Chicaneau in the 1670s, made faience and a soft-paste porcelain that were yellowish in tone and heavily potted. Much use was made of molded decoration, which included sprigs of prunus blossom copied from the blanc de Chine of Tehua (see below China: Ming dynasty (pottery)). Particularly common was a molded pattern of overlapping scales. Most examples are small, but there are some large jardinières (flowerpot holders) that are extremely handsome. The early painted wares were decorated in underglaze blue with typically Baroque patterns, including the lambrequins introduced at Rouen. Motifs derived from the designs of Jean Bérain are also to be seen. Polychrome specimens, some of which were decorated in the style of Kakiemon (Kakiemon ware), (see below Japan: Edo period (pottery)), date from about 1730.

      At Chantilly (Chantilly porcelain), the first soft-paste porcelain was decorated almost entirely in the Kakiemon style, and the body was invariably covered with a tin-glaze. The Japanese period ended about 1740. For some years thereafter simple Meissen (Meissen porcelain) styles were copied, in particular the German flowers. In 1753 an edict in support of the newly established factory at Vincennes forbade all other factories to manufacture porcelain or to decorate faience in polychrome; much Chantilly porcelain of the later period, therefore, is creamy white, decorated only with slight flower sprigs in blue underglaze. A transparent glaze was introduced in 1751 and replaced the very unusual practice of covering porcelain with a tin-glaze.

      A factory at the Rue de Charonne, in Paris, was started by François Barbin in 1735 and removed to Mennecy (Mennecy porcelain) in 1748. The early productions were in the manner of Saint-Cloud and Rouen. Later, some excellent flower painting was done, and figure modelling was excellent in quality. Small porcelain boxes from Mennecy, often in the form of animals, are much sought in the 20th century.

      The most important of the French factories was established at Vincennes (Vincennes ware) about 1738 and removed to a new building at Sèvres in 1756. Louis XV was a large shareholder in the original company and the factory eventually passed to the crown in 1759. It became state property in 1793, and has so remained.

      The factory did not succeed in its attempts to make a practicable soft-paste porcelain until 1745. Much of the work at Vincennes consisted of naturalistic flowers with bronze stalks and leaves, sometimes in vases elaborately mounted in gilt bronze by the court goldsmith, Claude Thomas Duplessis, and others. Meissen was also copied for a short period, but the factory soon evolved its own style, which remained partly dependent on the use of high quality gilt-bronze mounts. A few glazed and painted figures were made, but these gave place in 1751 to figures of biscuit porcelain. In 1757 the sculptor Étienne-Maurice Falconet (Falconet, Étienne-Maurice) was appointed to take charge of modelling, a position he retained until 1766. Designs by the painter François Boucher (Boucher, François) were frequently used by Falconet and others; Boucher's influence is particularly strong during the lifetime of Louis XV's mistress, Mme de Pompadour, who took much interest in the factory. Later, some excellent work in this medium was done by the sculptors Augustin Pajou and Louis-Simon Boizot.

      Both at Vincennes and Sèvres much use was made of coloured grounds in conjunction with white panels, which were used for decorative painting of the highest quality. These panels were surrounded by rich and elaborate raised gilding, which was engraved and chased (tooled). The most usual ground colours were a dark underglaze blue (gros bleu) and a brighter, overglaze (bleu de Roi); also used were turquoise blue, yellow, green, and rose Pompadour (often miscalled rose du Barry in England).

      The porcelain of Sèvres was made to harmonize with the exotic and luxurious style of interior decoration that characterized French court circles. The soft-paste body was of superb quality; and, because the extremely fusible glaze partly remelted in the enamelling kiln, the colours sank into the glaze in a way hardly seen elsewhere.

      The factory at Sèvres prosecuted the search for the ingredients of hard porcelain with vigour. They were eventually found, after a prolonged search, at Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche, near Limoges, in 1769. The new body was first manufactured soon after 1770, although for a number of years it was only used for biscuit figures. Later, it was employed for dishes and vases decorated in a severe but luxurious classical style. In 1800 the manufacture of soft porcelain was discontinued altogether.

      A large number of smaller factories making hard porcelain sprang up, chiefly in and around Paris, in the second half of the 18th century. Some were patronized by members of the royal family, including Louis XVI's wife, Marie Antoinette. A number of provincial factories were also engaged in the same manufacture.

      The Tournai factory, in Belgium, which began to make porcelain in 1751, enjoyed the patronage of the empress of Austria, Maria Theresa. Here, and in the associated factory at Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, the work of Sèvres was imitated on a considerable scale.

      While Germany is principally noted for its superb porcelain, the stoneware of the Rhineland is no less noteworthy. A great deal of faience was also made, though this was less important.

      The earliest distinctive type of ware made in markedly Germanic style (c. 1350) was the Hafnergeschirr (Hafner ware) (“stove maker vessel”). Originally the term referred to tiles, molded in relief and usually covered with a green glaze, which were built up into the large and elaborate stoves needed to make mid-European winters tolerable. Jugs and other vessels made by these stove makers, however, came to be called Hafner ware by extension when their manufacture began about the mid-16th century. The work of Paul Preuning of Nürnberg is an example of this kind of ware. He decorated his pottery with coloured glazes kept apart by threads of clay (the cloisonné technique). In Silesian Hafner ware, on the other hand, the design is cut out with a knife, the incisions preventing the coloured glazes from mingling. The earliest German stove tiles are lead glazed. Tin glazes came into use about 1500.

      After these beginnings, German pottery developed in two distinct classes: stoneware and tin-glazed earthenware.

      The stoneware (Steinzeug) came mainly from the Rhineland and, in particular from Cologne, Westerwald, Siegburg, and Raeren (the latter now in Belgium). Manufacture probably began in Cologne about 1540. The body of the stoneware is extremely hard and varies from almost white (Siegburg) to bluish gray (Westerwald (Westerwald stoneware)); a brown glaze over a drab body is also to be seen (Raeren). The surface is glazed with salt (salt glaze)—no more than a smear glaze, pitted slightly, like orange peel. A smooth, though still very thin, glaze was achieved by mixing the salt with red lead. Particularly popular at Cologne in the late 16th century was the “bearded-man jug” ( Bartmannkrug), a round-bellied jug with the mask of a bearded man applied in relief to the neck. This type was sometimes called a “Bellarmine” in England; the mask was thought to be a satire on the hated Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (Bellarmino), but there is no authority for this assumption. In England, where they were imported in large quantities, they were also known as graybeards. The term tigerware was also used for the mottled brown glaze over a grayish body.

      Some of the earliest German stoneware is notable for its remarkably fine relief decoration in the Gothic (Gothic art) style. Oak-leaf and vine-leaf motifs were common, as were coats of arms on medallions. The applied relief and stamped decoration was, at times, most elaborate, and the thin glaze lent it additional sharpness and clarity. Reliefs of biblical subjects appear on tall, tapering tankards (Schnellen), which were provided with pewter or silver mounts. The Doppelfrieskrüge were jugs with two molded friezes (usually portraying classical subjects) around the middle. They and the tankards were made in Raeren brownware by Jan Emens, surnamed Mennicken, in the last quarter of the 16th century. Emens also worked in the gray body that was used at Raeren at the turn of the century, employing blue pigment to enhance the decoration. At a later date, blue and manganese pigments were used together, and this practice continued throughout the 17th century. Figures were sometimes set in a frame reminiscent of Gothic architectural arcades, and inscriptions of one kind or another are fairly frequent.

      The style of the stonewares gradually fell into line with the prevailing Baroque style, particularly toward the end of the 17th century. At Kreussen (Kreussen stoneware), in Bavaria, a grayish-red stoneware was covered with a brown glaze, and the molded decoration was often crudely picked out with opaque overglaze colours that had a tin-glazed base. The earliest dated specimen is 1622, which was the first time overglaze colours had been used on pottery in Europe. The technique, learned from Bohemian glass enamellers, was to have some influence in France as well as in Germany.

      German stoneware was popular abroad; during the 17th century Sieburg even exported to Japan.

      An extremely important type of stoneware was first made shortly before 1710 at a factory at Meissen that was under the patronage of Augustus the Strong (Augustus II), elector of Saxony and king of Poland. It was discovered by E.W. von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708) and J.F. Böttger (1682–1719) during their researches into the secret of porcelain manufacture. It usually varies from red to dark brown and is the hardest substance of its kind known. An almost black variety was termed Eisenporzellan (“iron porcelain”), and a black glaze was devised by Böttger to cover specimens of defective colour. Decoration is usually effected by means of applied reliefs, although the black-glazed specimens were sometimes decorated with lacquer colours, as well as with gold and silver. Silvering was not uncommon and was also practiced in other German centres during the early part of the 18th century on both stoneware and porcelain.

      A particular feature of Meissen stoneware (pottery) is the incised decoration done by lapidaries on the engraving wheel. Many specimens were engraved with coats of arms, and grinding into facets (the Muscheln pattern) was also practiced. The same methods were used to give a plain surface a high polish. Metal mounts, common Rhenish stoneware, also were sometimes accompanied by insetting precious and semiprecious stones.

      Because of the vogue for porcelain, stoneware manufacture declined and was finally abandoned about 1730.

Tin-glazed ware
      Faience factories were so numerous that it is only possible to mention the most important of them. Perhaps the earliest tin-glazed wares other than stove tiles are the jugs in the form of owls (with detachable heads to be used as cups) that came from Brixen ( Bressanone), in the Tirol. Their shape and style no doubt inspired the later owl and bear jugs made in England during the 18th century. These owl jugs (Eulenkrüge (Eulenkrüg)) were, at first, used as prizes in archery contests and were sometimes repeated in Rhenish stoneware.

      The first manufacture of faience on a considerable scale took place at Nürnberg, and some dishes in the Italian style still survive. Much more is known, however, of the productions of Kreussen, which is chiefly of interest for its blue-and-white faience jugs. The outline of flowers painted in blue is almost cross-sectional in style and terminates in a small spiral—hence the name spiral family.

      A factory of Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main, was started in 1661 and remained in operation until 1806. Many of the early wares were decorated with Chinese motifs. A type of jug with a long narrow neck, the Enghalskrug, was made in Hanau. Some have a globular body (sometimes copied in China and Japan in blue painted porcelain); others, a spirally fluted body and a twisted handle. Pewter or, less often, silver covers were common. The painting includes coats of arms, landscapes, and biblical subjects. Groups of dots amid strewn flowers (Streublumen) are characteristic. Realistically painted German flowers appear shortly before mid-18th century. Most painting is in blue, manganese, and the other less often used faience colours. Overglaze colours do not seem to have been used.

      A factory in Frankfurt am Main itself was founded in 1666. Imitations of Chinese motifs as well as biblical subjects were very popular. The blue is brilliant, and the surface usually suggests the use of a transparent overglaze. Narrownecked jugs were commonly made and are sometimes difficult to distinguish from those of Hanau. This centre closed about 1740. At Nürnberg a later factory was established about 1712, continuing until about 1840. Most of the subjects used at Frankfurt and Hanau were repeated at Nürnberg, as well as designs based on the the Rococo engravings of J.E. Nilson (1721–88), which were also popular at many of the porcelain factories. The Rococo style, which spread from France to Germany about the second quarter of the 18th century, is reflected both in the forms and the decoration.

      The wares of Bayreuth are particularly interesting. Early products were painted with a misty blue, but overglaze colours were speedily adopted. “Leaf and strapwork” (Laub-und-Bandelwerk) was a much used type of motif, and excellent work was done by A.F. von Löwenfinck (who is known particularly for his work on porcelain) and Joseph Philipp Danhofer. Perhaps the finest 18th-century faience was made by the factory at Höchst, near Mainz, which also manufactured porcelain. Decoration was usually in overglaze colours, and landscapes, figure subjects, German flowers, and chinoiseries (chinoiserie) (European delineations of the Chinese scene with a strong element of fantasy) are of a much higher quality than elsewhere. faience thus decorated with colours applied over the glaze, as on porcelain, was termed Fayence-Porcellaine during the 18th century.

      An important aspect of both faience and porcelain decoration in Germany is the work of the studio painters, or Hausmaler (Hausmalerei), who brought undecorated faience and porcelain from the factories and painted it at home, firing the decoration in small muffle kilns. For this reason, their work was done in overglaze pigments. At first they mostly used the Schwarzlot technique—decoration in a black, linear style that was nearly always based on line engravings. Faience thus decorated dates from about 1660 and is the work of Johann Schaper (died 1670), who had been a Nürnberg glass painter, J.L. Faber, and others. Polychrome enamel decoration was developed by another glass painter, Abraham Helmhack (1654–1724), who mastered the technique as early as 1690, many years before it was adopted by the factories. The more important studio painters are Johann Aufenwerth and Bartholomäus Seuter of Augsburg, J.F. Metszch of Bayreuth, the Bohemians Daniel and Ignaz Preussler, and Ignaz Bottengruber of Breslau. The work of the latter is particularly esteemed.

      Toward the end of the 18th century a number of German factories, including some already making faience, made lead-glazed earthenware (Steingut) in imitation of Wedgwood, while a factory at Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) imitated Wedgwood's black basaltes body.

      The earliest hard porcelain, produced by the factory at Meissen, is smoky in tone, but some improvements were made in 1715 and others in the following decade. Many early specimens were painted with a limited range of overglaze colours of good quality, including a pale violet lustre derived from gold that remained in use until about 1730. In 1720 a painter from Vienna, Johann Gregor Höroldt, was appointed chief painter (Obermaler) to the factory; he was responsible for introducing a new and much more brilliant palette, as well as some ground colours (Fond-Porzellan). The earliest ground colour to be noted is a coffee brown termed Kapuzinerbraun, which was invented by the kilnmaster Samuel Stölzel. The use of blue underglaze proved difficult, and little work of the kind was done. Overglaze painting, on the other hand, was of fine quality and includes topographical subjects, figure subjects based either on harlequin, pierrot, and other characters of the Italian comedy or on the style of the painter Jean-Antoine Watteau and his followers, and flowers in the Oriental style (called indianische Blumen) as well as native flowers ( deutsche Blumen) taken from books of botanical illustrations. A series of harbour scenes from engravings of Italian ports were mostly executed by C.F. Herold (cousin to the Obermaler) and J.G. Heintze. Perhaps the most important early wares are the chinoiseries, which appear in great variety. The first work of the kind, much of it painted by the Hausmaler Bartholomäus Seuter, is in gold silhouette followed by polychrome painting after designs by the Obermaler. The figures are painted in three-quarter length. Indianische Blumen motifs were used, and Arita decorations, particularly those of Kakiemon (Kakiemon ware) (see below Japan: Edo period (pottery)), were closely copied.

      Little figure modelling was done until about 1727, when the sculptor Johann Gottlob Kirchner was appointed Modellmeister and asked to make some colossal figures of animals for the Japanische Palais, the building that housed Augustus the Strong's (Augustus II) porcelain collection. Because the medium was unsuited to work of this kind, most of the surviving examples are spectacular and magnificent failures. After the death of Augustus the Strong in 1733 large-scale modelling was practically discontinued, and the new Modellmeister, Johann Joachim Kändler (Kändler, Johann Joachim), turned his attention to small figures suitable for decorating the dining table.

      Assisted by other modellers, Kändler soon made the figures of Meissen fashionable throughout Europe. The first important Rococo work in porcelain appears in Saxony after 1737 when Kändler started to make the Swan service—perhaps the best known of all porcelain services. It is decorated with such motifs as swans, nereides, and tritons. Rococo Meissen was widely sought.

      Meissen was the most influential European factory until the beginning of the Seven Years' War in 1756, when it was taken by the Prussians. From then until 1763 it was operated by nominees of Frederick the Great, who virtually looted the factory. By the end of the war, leadership had passed to Sèvres, and the work of Meissen for the next 50 years is much less important than formerly. The transitional Louis XVI style of c. 1763–74 is typified by the figure modelling of Michel Victor Acier, who came to the factory to share the position of Modellmeister with Kändler in 1764. From 1774 to 1814 the Neoclassical style was increasingly used, and the designs of Sèvres and of Wedgwood (Wedgwoodarbeit) were copied.

      Few marks have been so consistently abused as that of the crossed swords of Meissen. Since the 18th century, it has been added to all kinds of unlikely specimens.

      The other German factories of the period were, for the most part, established with the aid of runaway workmen from Meissen and Vienna, where Claudius Innocentius du Paquier had started a factory in 1719 with the aid of two men who were themselves from Meissen. Early Vienna hard-porcelain wares are highly prized. Much use was made of leaf and strapwork patterns, and excellent work was done in black monochrome (Schwarzlot). The factory passed to the state in 1744, and its later work is competent without being distinguished. Between 1784 and 1805 it became noted for elaborate gilding and coloured grounds, with minutely detailed painting, after Angelica Kauffmann and others, in reserved white medallions.

      The Vienna factory provided a number of wandering arcanists (men who possessed the arcanum, or “secret,” of hard-porcelain manufacture), two of whom helped to establish the Höchst factory, which began manufacture about 1752. This factory is principally noted for excellent figures in the Neoclassical style by Johann Peter Melchior (Melchior, Johann Peter) and for the work of Simon Feilner.

      A factory in Berlin, started in 1761 and acquired by Frederick in 1763 when he relinquished his hold on Meissen, produced wares with painted decoration of high quality. The decoration made much use of mosaic patterns—detailed diapers (small repeated motifs connecting with one another or growing out of one another with continuously flowing or straight lines) painted over a coloured ground. A large service made in 1819 for presentation to the Duke of Wellington and decorated with scenes from his battles is now in Apsley House, London.

      There is much interest in the figure modelling of Franz Anton Bustelli (Bustelli, Franz Anton), who worked at Nymphenburg, a suburb of Munich. The factory, which is still in operation, was started about 1753. Bustelli became Modellmeister in 1754 and retained the position until his death in 1763. His magnificent series of figures based on the Italian comedy are the most important expression of Rococo in German porcelain. The painted wares of the factory were also of fine quality.

      Some excellent figures were made at Fürstenberg, where hard porcelain was first manufactured in 1753, and at Frankenthal by such notable modellers as J.W. Lanz, the cousins J.F. and K.G. Lücke, and Konrad Linck. Ludwigsburg, started in 1758, produced porcelain that was grayish in colour and more suitable for figure modelling than for service ware. The figures of artisans by an artist known as the Modeller der Volkstypen (modeller of folktypes) are original and pleasing, and the sculptor, Wilhelm Beyer, did good work in the Neoclassical style.

The Netherlands (Netherlands, The)
      During the 17th century, red stoneware was made by Ary de Milde of Delft and others in imitation of the wares of I-hsing (see below China: Ming dynasty (pottery)). Creamware was manufactured at several places at the end of the 18th century. Most Dutch pottery of the period, however, is tin glazed.

      Italian (Italy) potters had settled in Antwerp by 1525, and surviving examples of tin-glazed ware from this period are in the Italian style. Manufacture was concentrated to a great extent in Delft soon after the beginning of the 17th century. By about 1650 the large brewing industry began to decline, and the old buildings were taken over by potters who retained such names as The Three Golden Ash-Barrels, The Four Roman Heroes, and The Double Jug for their potteries. The craftworkers of the town were organized into the Guild of St. Luke, which exercised a considerable amount of control over apprenticeships and established a school of design.

      In the 17th century the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1602, imported Chinese and Japanese wares in great quantities, and the taste for Eastern decoration rapidly ousted Italian fashions. For the greater part of the 17th century decoration was in blue, and Chinese porcelain was closely imitated. In wares of the best quality this imitation is so exact that, without a fairly close inspection, it is possible to mistake them for the originals. Western decorations—biblical and genre scenes, landscapes and seascapes—were carried out in styles similar to Dutch paintings of the period. Tilework (tile) was frequently undertaken; many individual tiles have survived, although large panels made up of many tiles are very rarely complete. Blue painting was followed by the use of the usual underglaze faience colours, the outline (known as trek) being first drawn with blue or manganese and then filled in. Before firing, the object was covered with an additional transparent lead glaze known as kwaart, which made the surface more brilliant. Red was a difficult colour; often when it was to be used, an unpainted space was left during the first firing, and the red was applied afterward and fired at a lower temperature. Gilding is found on the finer specimens and required a further firing. Overglaze colours were introduced by Zacharias Dextra about 1720, and the Chinese famille rose patterns were frequently imitated. Among the rarer and more showy examples of delft may be numbered the Delft dorée, on which gilding is lavish, and the Delft noir, which has a black ground (suggested by Chinese lacquer work) in conjunction with polychrome decoration. Work of this kind is often attributed to Adriaen Pijnacker.

      Marks on Dutch delft are extremely unreliable, for many later copies were given the earlier marks of important potteries, especially during the 19th century.

      The medieval pottery of England was affected little by outside influences. Moreover, poor communications prevented the industry from concentrating in any one place; most wares, therefore, are made of local clay by local craftsmen. The potters worked alone or in extremely small groups, and their tools were few and simple. The clay used for the body ranges from buff to red, or, when fired in a reducing atmosphere, from gray to almost black. As with much Japanese pottery, little effort was made to disguise the method by which the vessel was formed, so that pronounced ridges are frequently visible. Both relief and inlaid decoration are found, especially on tiles, and brushed slip was also used to add simple patterns.

      Unglazed ware was common, especially in the early period, but a soft lead glaze came into more general use later, the knowledge probably being derived from France. The early glaze varied between yellow and brown according to the iron content of the clay, although a group having a particularly rich brown glaze was made by first washing the pot with slip containing manganese. The use of copper oxide to give a rich green of variable colour dates from the 13th century. During that period, the green, buff, and brown glazes were used in conjunction. Cistercian wares (Cistercian ware), made in the monasteries before their dissolution in 1536–39, are more precisely finished. They have a dark-brown glaze over a stoneware body and are sometimes decorated with white slip or incised. By far the greatest number of surviving specimens are jugs and vessels for storing liquids; since they have almost always been excavated, a reasonably perfect specimen is a rarity.

Tin-glazed ware
      Lead-glazed wares tended to die out after tin glaze reached England via the Netherlands about 1550. At first it was called gallyware, but, with the rise of the Dutch manufacturing centre at Delft (delftware), the ware came to be called delft. Its popularity was due to the fact that it could be painted in bright colours. The earliest surviving examples are the Malling jugs, so called because an early specimen of the kind was preserved in the church at West Malling, Kent. These were almost certainly made in London. The colour varies from turquoise to black; a variety with a blue ground flecked with orange was probably suggested by the tigerware from the Rhineland. The jugs usually have silver or pewter mounts. Similar mounts, often of English manufacture, are to be seen on Rhenish jugs imported into England and occasionally on Turkish jugs of about the same period.

      By 1628 a flourishing factory had been established at Southwark (Southwark and Lambeth delftware), London. Influenced by some Chinese blue-and-white porcelain of the Ming reign of Wan-li (1573–1620), some surviving specimens are decorated in blue, with birds amid floral and foliate motifs. Almost contemporary are some large dishes painted in polychrome colours. The earliest (1600), which is in the London Museum, bears the following couplet: “The rose is red the leaves are grene/God Save Elizabeth our Queene.” The dish has a border of blue dashes and is a forerunner of the so-called blue-dash chargers that were popular later in the century. These were decorated with biblical scenes (Adam and Eve being a special favourite), crude portraits of the kings of England, ships, armorial bearings, and the like. The influence of Italian maiolica (majolica) and Chinese porcelain can be seen in the border designs.

      Many wine bottles are extant, often with the name of the wine (Sack, Claret, etc.) painted in blue and a date. Others are more elaborately decorated, a few are in polychrome.

      Toward the end of the 17th century service ware became more frequent (although tea ware was now scarce). Blue-and-white was still made in large quantities, but a polychrome palette was more in evidence, and the influence of Dutch potters is often obvious.

      Chinese influence, which had been particularly strong in the early part of the 18th century, tended to persist, particularly at Bristol. The Rococo style was used to a limited extent. Later, some not very successful attempts were made to utilize The Neoclassical forms. Overglaze colours on tin-glazed wares appear after mid-century. These colours, a special pallet now called Fazackerly colours, were probably used only at Liverpool.

      The main centres of production of tin-glazed ware were in London (Southwark and Lambeth), Bristol, and Liverpool, although there were smaller potteries elsewhere. One of them—Wincanton in Somerset—made frequent use of manganese, which produces purple and purplish-black colours. The tin glaze fell into disuse about the turn of the 18th century, its place having been taken by Wedgwood's creamware. (In the mid-20th century manufacture has been successfully revived at Rye, Sussex.)

17th-century slipware
      Wares decorated with dotted and trailed slip were made at Wrotham, Kent, and in London during the first half of the 17th century. Wrotham is noted principally for drinking mugs with two or more handles, known as tygs; and London for dishes with such pious exhortations as “Fast and Pray,” obviously inspired by the Puritans. Manufacture was also started in Staffordshire (Staffordshire ware), and many surviving examples were signed by the potter in slip. The work of Thomas Toft (Toft, Thomas) is particularly valued. The best work of this kind was done before the end of the 17th century, and although it may fairly be described as peasant ware, many of the earlier specimens are vigorously decorated and amusing. Manufacture continued until the end of the 18th century.

      The popularity of Rhineland stonewares in England, as well as that of the newly imported Chinese stoneware teapots from I-hsing kilns (see below China: Ming dynasty (pottery)), led to attempts to imitate both kinds. The first patent for making copies of porcelain and Cologne ware known to have been exercised was awarded to John Dwight (Dwight, John) (c. 1637–1703) of Fulham in 1671. In addition to German stoneware, he made a brown-glazed stoneware decorated with stamped ornament that was continued at Fulham after his death and has been extensively reproduced since. He probably never made any porcelain, but he mentions red china, which can only refer to imitations of the I-hsing stoneware.

      The brothers John Philip and David Elers, of German origin, made red stoneware at a factory in Staffordshire. It is difficult to separate their work from that of Dwight (at Fulham), on the one hand, and that of their Staffordshire imitators, on the other. Most wares are decorated with stamped reliefs, the Chinese prunus blossom being comparatively common. The tendency to utilize patterns from silverwork, which is apparent on some examples, may be connected with the fact that the Elers had been silversmiths. The Elers' migration to Staffordshire perhaps can be regarded as the starting point for the large modern industry that has grown up in that area. Certainly from this time onward Staffordshire wares tend to lose their peasant character and to approach a factory-made precision that was to be general by the end of the 18th century.

      The earlier red- and brown-glazed stonewares were replaced about 1690 by a salt-glazed stoneware that was regarded as an acceptable substitute for porcelain. It varies in colour from drab to off-white, the glaze on later specimens often having a richer, more glassy appearance due to the addition of red lead to the salt. One of the earliest varieties is decorated with reliefs stamped from pads of clay that were applied to the surface.

18th-century developments
      The “scratched-blue” class of white stoneware dates from about 1730 and is decorated with incised patterns, usually touched with blue. Decoration is floral, and inscriptions and dates are fairly frequent. Its manufacture continued until about 1775.

      From the 1730s molded patterns in relief were popular, the clay being pressed into molds of metal, wood, or fired clay. The introduction of plaster of paris molds around 1745 gave much greater scope and led to the development of intricate shapes in the finer varieties of white stoneware. The patterns greatly increased in sharpness and elaborate piercing is to be seen.

      Transfer printing was first used about 1755, possibly at Liverpool, which produced wares of all kinds, including tiles, using this decorative technique.

      The earliest use of overglaze colours belongs to the same period—previously, white wares had been sent to Holland for decoration. The Englishman who first mastered the technique was William Duesbury. Established as a decorator in London by 1751, he concentrated on painting porcelain, but he also seems to have overglaze-painted stoneware from Staffordshire. Some extant brilliantly painted figures are probably from his studio. A little earlier than Duesbury's overglaze-painted figures are the uncoloured pew groups, which consist of two or three figures seated on a high-backed settle or pew, modelled in a primitive and amusing fashion. A rich blue overglaze ground, often called Littler's blue after William Littler, who is thought to have invented it, was much used on the salt-glazed stoneware, as well as the porcelain, made at Longton Hall (Longton Hall porcelain), a factory that operated in Staffordshire from about 1750 to 1760 and that was also associated with Sittler.

      John Astbury (Astbury, John) is particularly associated with a type of brown-glazed ware decorated with stamped pads of white clay. Some of the earliest Staffordshire figures in brown and white clay covered with a lead glaze have been attributed to Astbury.

      Thomas Whieldon (1719–95) of Fenton Low, Staffordshire, manufactured agateware—that is, ware made by combining differently coloured clays or by combing together different colours of slip. In the former method the clays were usually laid in slabs, one on the other, and beaten out to form a homogeneous mass in which the colours were inextricably mingled. Agatewares seem to have been made in Staffordshire between 1725 and 1750, the earlier specimens being salt glazed, while the later ones were covered with a colourless lead glaze. Whieldon is most famous for his use of coloured glazes that were mingled to give a clouded or tortoiseshell effect and were used on an earthenware body, sometimes over molded decoration. A few naïvely modelled figures with this type of glaze are attributed to him. From 1754 to 1759 he was in partnership with Josiah Wedgwood, who developed the fine green and yellow glazes to decorate molded wares in the form of pineapples, cauliflowers, and the like.

      Coloured glazes were also used by Ralph Wood I (1715–72) of Burslem, Staffordshire, for decorating an excellently modelled series of figures in a creamware (lead-glazed earthenware) body, the finest, perhaps, a mounted Hudibras in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Many of these figures are attributed to the modeller Jean Voyez, who was much influenced by the work of Paul-Louis Cyfflé at Lunéville (see above France and Belgium (pottery)). Ralph Wood I is also noted for the typical English Toby jug (first made soon after 1700), which is a beer jug in the form of a man, usually seated and holding a pipe and a mug, the hat (where present) forming a detachable lid. Very popular, it continued in production for many years. Enoch Wood, another member of the family, joined Ralph Wood II in partnership as Enoch Wood & Co., which lasted until 1790. They made most of the wares current in Staffordshire at the time, as well as some excellent figures decorated with overglaze colours.

      Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95), the most famous of all the Staffordshire potters and the most important exponent of Neoclassicism in the field of pottery, is celebrated chiefly for his fine jasper and black basaltes (basaltes ware) stonewares, but his creamware was undoubtedly the more influential in the 18th century. It was well finished and clean in appearance, with simple decoration in good taste, often in the popular Neoclassical style. His wares appealed particularly to the rising bourgeois class, both in England and abroad, and porcelain and faience factories suffered severely from competition with him. Surviving factories switched to the manufacture of creamware (faience fine or faience anglaise), and the use of tin glaze almost died out.

      Wedgwood secured the patronage of Queen Charlotte (wife of King George III) for his creamware in 1765 and renamed it Queen's ware. Much of it was transfer printed by John Sadler and Guy Green at Liverpool. Evidence of its popularity and importance is provided by the enormous service of 952 pieces made for Catherine the Great's palace of La Grenouillière, in St. Petersburg.

      The basaltes ware, also called black porcelain or Egyptian ware, was a type of stoneware introduced about 1768. Like the jasper that followed, it was used almost entirely for ornamental work—vases, ewers, candlesticks, plaques, medallions, and tea and coffee ware. Some of it was painted in what Wedgwood called encaustic enamel in imitation of Greek red- and black-figure vases, but most of the decoration was either molded and applied or incised by turning on a lathe.

      Jasper, introduced about 1775, is a fine-grained white unglazed stoneware, slightly translucent when thinly potted or fired above the normal temperature. Undoubtedly it was inspired by the biscuit porcelain of Sèvres. Its name derives from the fact that it resembles the natural stone in hardness. At first the body was stained blue (with applied decoration in white). Other colours, such as sage green, lilac, black, and yellow, followed speedily. Like basaltes, jasper was used mainly for ornamental wares, but perhaps the most interesting products are the portrait medallions of contemporary notables. Vases do not appear to have been made until after 1780. In 1790 Wedgwood produced the first copies of the Portland Vase, a magnificent Roman cameo glass vase of dark blue glass decorated with white figures, at that time owned by the Duke of Portland but now in the British Museum. The vase was reproduced in later years, particularly in Victorian times both by Wedgwood in jasper and by Northwood in glass. Wedgwood's jasperwares were imitated in biscuit porcelain at Sèvres, and Meissen produced a glazed version called Wedgwoodarbeiten. Less influential was the red stoneware (rosso antico), which sometimes had an enamelled decoration of classical subjects, and caneware, a buff stoneware.

      Lustre pigments introduced into England toward the end of the 18th century were used in a manner quite different from the earlier styles of other countries (see above Spain (pottery) and Islāmic (pottery)). To simulate silverwork, wares were completely covered with platinum lustre, which remains unchanged in colour after firing (silver itself yields a pale straw colour); the amount of metal used was extremely small. Such wares were known as poor man's silver. Wares were also painted or stencilled with lustre patterns. The most valuable type commercially were the resist lustres, which have a lustred background and the pattern reserved in white. They were made by painting or stencilling the pattern on the glaze with shellac, which resisted the subsequent application of the metallic pigment. Silver lustre was rarely used, but gold lustre, which gives variable colours from pink to purple, was fairly common. ( copper, the colour of which remains more or less unchanged in its lustre form, was used throughout the 19th century for common wares.)

      A factory for porcelain manufacture, using a soft-paste body similar to that of Saint-Cloud, was established in Chelsea (Chelsea porcelain), London, about 1743 by Charles Gouyn and Nicolas Sprimont, the latter a silversmith. The rare surviving specimens include jugs molded in the form of goats and further decorated with an applied bee, obviously based on a silver prototype that no longer exists. (Extant examples of the latter are 19th-century forgeries.) These goat and bee jugs are often marked with an incised triangle, which was then the mark in use. About 1750 a new body was adopted, together with the familiar mark of an anchor, which was raised on a small medallion until about 1752, painted in red until about 1756, and executed in gold thereafter. The work of the Chelsea (Kensington and Chelsea) factory was extensively influenced by Meissen until about 1756, the styles of Sèvres superseding it in the gold-anchor period. Wares marked with either the raised or the red anchor are the most highly valued; the painting of these is excellent in quality. Some of the best wares were painted by an Irish miniaturist, Jeffrey Hamet O'Neal. The gold-anchor-marked wares are noted for rich gilding and some fine coloured grounds that, on occasion, rivalled those of Sèvres. The figures in the later Rococo style are generally inferior to those of the earlier red-anchor period. Some Chelsea porcelain from 1760 onward was painted in the studio of James Giles of Clerkenwell. The factory was bought by William Duesbury of Derby (see below) in 1770 and entered a phase known as the Chelsea-Derby period. The Neoclassical style was introduced together with the figure in biscuit porcelain made fashionable by Sèvres. It closed finally in 1784.

      A group of figures, the best known examples of which are those portraying a girl in a swing, were made in the 1750s—possibly at Chelsea but more probably at a short-lived factory staffed by workmen who had seceded from Chelsea. A class of figures characterized by an apparent retraction of the glaze from the base—dry-edged figures—are attributed to a factory established at Derby (Derby ware) about 1750. This enterprise apparently petered out and another factory in Derby was started in 1756 by Duesbury (who was later to buy the Chelsea factory). It advertised itself as the second Dresden and is noted toward the end of the century for the excellence of its painting by Zachariah Boreman, William Billingsley, and others.

      Longton Hall (Longton Hall porcelain) in Staffordshire made figures and a good deal of service ware molded in the form of leaves. A rich blue ground (Littler's blue) was used on porcelain and salt-glazed wares alike. Its wares are rare and much sought.

      The Bow (Bow porcelain) factory (London) was started as early as 1744 with the aid of clay brought from Virginia by the American settler Andrew (André) Duché, who had discovered the secret of manufacture quite independently some years before (see below Colonial America (pottery)). An amusing and primitive class of Bow figures was executed by an anonymous artist known as the Muses Modeller, because the most typical figures portray the Muses. Generally speaking, Bow wares are unsophisticated, and the factory obviously catered to prosperous tradesmen, a market ignored by Chelsea. An important technical innovation took place at Bow in 1750, when calcined bones were added to the porcelain body. This was the first major departure from the French soft-porcelain formula, which was fundamentally a mixture of clay and ground glass. Bone ash was added to soft porcelain by Chelsea about 1755, by Lowestoft (which mainly copied Bow styles) in 1758, and by Duesbury to Derby porcelain in 1770, when he purchased the Chelsea factory. About 1800 at his factory at Stoke-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, Josiah Spode the Second added calcined bones to the hard-porcelain formula to produce the standard English bone-china body (see below 19th century (pottery)).

      Another variation on the original soft-porcelain body was introduced at a factory in Bristol started by Benjamin Lund about 1748. Clay was mixed with a fusible rock called steatite (hydrous magnesium silicate), the principle being similar to that used in the manufacture of hard porcelain. This factory was transfered to Worcester (Worcester porcelain) in 1752 and still manufactures fine porcelain. In the 18th century, scale grounds, which consisted of patterns of overlapping scales in various colours, were particularly popular. Transfers taken from engraved plates were also extensively used for decoration. After 1783 wares show a progressive decline in taste. A second factory was established at Worcester by Robert Chamberlain in 1786 (see below 19th century (pottery)).

      William Cookworthy (Cookworthy, William) discovered the secret of hard porcelain independently after many years of experiment. In 1768 he opened a factory at Plymouth (Plymouth porcelain) (which was transferred to Bristol in 1770) that made figures in the style of Bow and Longton Hall. Richard Champion acquired the patent for hard porcelain in 1772 and manufactured tableware Neoclassical in style and excellent in quality. The patent was bought by a syndicate that established a factory at New Hall, Staffordshire, in 1782 and made a humble variety of wares for about 40 years.

      The faience industry spread to Scandinavia mainly because of migratory workmen from Germany. A number of factories in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden during the 18th century made faience and creamware in the English manner. A distinctive Scandinavian production was that of bowls, made in the shape of a mitre, for a kind of punch called bishop. The most important factories are those of Rörstrand (Rörstrand faience) and Marieberg (Marieberg pottery) (Koja) in Sweden. A typical Rococo concept to come from Marieberg is a vase standing at the top of a winding flight of steps. Called a terrace vase it is often decorated with a rabbit or some other animal.

      In 1774 a factory at Copenhagen (Royal Copenhagen porcelain) directed by Louis Fournier, a modeller from Vincennes and Chantilly, began the manufacture of true porcelain. The factory was acquired in 1779 by King Christian VII of Denmark and Norway. In 1789 the factory started work on an enormous service, originally intended for Catherine the Great, each piece of which was painted with a detailed picture of a Danish flower. This service, the “Flora Danica,” is now in Rosenborg Palace, Copenhagen. Numerous skillfully made figures were also produced. The factory continues to produce fine porcelain.

      A factory started near Zürich (Zürich ware) in 1763 and directed by Adam Spengler made both faience and porcelain and, after 1790, creamware. Delicate figures, some modelled by J.V. Sonnenschein from Ludwigsburg, and good-quality service ware were produced.

      The factory of St. Petersburg (Saint Petersburg porcelain) was established about 1745. Later production was on a fairly large scale, and the work of Sèvres and Meissen was freely copied. Some good original work was also done, and well-modelled figures of Russian peasants were made toward the end of the century. Even better figures were made at a factory in Moscow founded about 1765 by an Englishman named Francis Gardner. Many factories at Moscow and elsewhere in Russia were established during the 19th century.

Colonial America (United States)
      There is little detailed information about the pottery made by the early European settlers in North America. Most of it was manufactured locally for local needs and from the clays that were nearest to hand. Since most of these contained iron in varying quantities, the pottery body burned to colours between buff and red. Until kilns capable of reaching a high temperature were constructed, manufacture was limited to earthenware. Lead glazes were commonly used. Slips, both as a wash and as trailed decoration, were employed, and sgraffito decoration is known. Most of this pottery was made for practical rather than decorative purposes. A few potteries were established in the 17th century in Virginia, Massachusetts, and New Jersey; and in eastern Pennsylvania, German settlers started work as early as 1735 making slip-painted and sgraffito earthenware in their own traditions.

      Perhaps the most important development in colonial America took place in Savannah, Georgia, where Andrew Duché started a pottery about 1730. He interested himself in the manufacture of porcelain and discovered the china clay and feldspathic rock necessary to its manufacture. By 1741 he appears to have made a successful true porcelain but failed to gain adequate financial assistance to develop it. He therefore travelled to London, arriving in 1744, and tried to sell the secret to the founders of the Bow factory in London. Their interest is certain, since the patent specification subsequently filed specifically mentions unaker, said to be the Cherokee name for china clay. Duché returned to Virginia by way of Plymouth and there spoke with William Cookworthy, later to be the first manufacturer of true porcelain in England. It is still not known to what extent Duché actually manufactured porcelain; but since the Bristol Journal for November 24, 1764, refers to the import of some specimens of porcelain said to have been made in Georgia, there is little doubt that the first porcelain to be made in an English-speaking country came from North America. The Cherokee clay was shipped to England from time to time during the 18th century. Wedgwood imported several tons of it to use in the development of the jasper body.

      By 1765 potteries were being established on a sufficient scale to warrant an attempt to recruit workmen from Staffordshire. Wedgwood wrote at the time: “They had a agent amongst us hiring a number of our hands for establishment of new Pottworks in South Carolina.”

      The manufacture of tin-glazed (tin-glazed earthenware) ware began in Mexico soon after the Spanish Conquest in the first half of the 16th century. Spanish styles predominated, especially that of Talavera, but Chinese influence occurs in the 18th century. The wares became a kind of inspired folk pottery in the 19th century.

19th century
      There is a fundamental difference between work done before the Industrial Revolution, the effect of which began to be felt in the pottery industry before 1800, and that done subsequently. A student of the older wares, particularly those of the East, may find much of the later work difficult to accept because of its machine finish. When an object is made by hand it is never exactly the same as any other object, nor are the processes by which it has been formed and decorated disguised. Consider, for example, a Sung dynasty pot or a specimen of Japanese tea ceremony ware, whose imperfections of finish by factory standards are an integral part of their beauty and character, or the glaze of a Kuan vase, which would lose its individuality if it possessed the smooth finish of a factory-made specimen. The technical precision of the 19th century, which made its products indistinguishable from one another, and the careful concealment of the means by which the end had been achieved, were both unprecedented and deleterious. Style and craftsmanship degenerated steadily in the factories. The situation was aggravated by the Great Exhibition of 1851, which encouraged manufacturers throughout Europe to vie with each other in producing wares displaying virtuosity unhampered by questions of taste; for example, from as far afield as St. Petersburg, theretofore outside the mainstream of European development, came some particularly colossal and hideous vases in a debased Neoclassical style—which were described by a contemporary writer as “second to few of the productions of Dresden and Sèvres for beauty of outline and perfection of finish.”

      Those who bought these wares—as well as those who produced them—contributed to the degeneration of taste. Before the advent of mass communications in the 20th century, new fashions originated in the wealthiest stratum of society (which was usually also the most cultivated) and filtered downward. As a result of the political and economic effects of the Seven Years' War (1756–63), combined with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the European bourgeoisie prospered, and their wealth enabled them to become patrons and arbiters of taste. Primarily interested in the arts as a means of display or as status symbols, they demanded an excess of intricate and expensive ornament. In East Asia the same process of degeneration began at the same time, at least partly as a result of the large number of export orders received. This pernicious influence was kept at bay for awhile by the emperor Ch'ien-lung, who stigmatized the English as cultural barbarians, but became more pronounced in the 19th century. Similar tendencies may be seen in Japanese pottery after 1853, when many factories worked almost entirely in styles demanded by their customers in the West.

      The Neoclassical style, which had been popular during the middle years of the 18th century, gradually lost its earlier simplicity. In France, the rise of Napoleon brought in its train the ostentatious Empire style (copied, for the most part, from the decorative art of imperial Rome), which had much influence in England during the Regency (Regency style) period (1811–20). It is noticeable on the porcelain vases made at such factories as Worcester, Derby, and Rockingham. They were often decorated with well-painted topographical subjects that were no longer confined by frames but ran around the vase as a continuous landscape. Flower painting was often of excellent quality and was much influenced by the work of William Billingsley, a flower painter who worked at Derby toward the end of the 18th century.

      At Worcester a factory established by Robert Chamberlain in 1786 produced porcelain decorated in a debased Japanese style. Because of their gaudy colour—iron red and underglaze blue coupled with lavish gilding—some Japan patterns are called thunder-and-lightning patterns. Similar Japan patterns were being employed at Derby and at an older Worcester factory, although much of the work of the latter was more restrained. Some of the best painting at the old factory was executed by Thomas Baxter, who used marine shells as a subject.

      It has been said, unfairly, that Josiah Wedgwood, by developing the factory system, was largely responsible for the degradation of the pottery art; Wedgwood wares have usually been in good taste even if they have not always been particularly adventurous. A far more malign influence was that of John Rose of Coalport (Coalport porcelain) (Salop). Rose admired the work of Sèvres and imitated it, buying or borrowing specimens to copy and using such ground colours as the rose Pompadour. He was one of the first English exponents of the revived Rococo style, which appeared about 1825, and made much porcelain encrusted with applied flowers. His work has been erroneously regarded as a close copy of old Sèvres. Coalport flower painting, however, is very fine in quality and much in the style of Billingsley, who actually worked at the factory for some years.

      Josiah Spode II, who with his father invented the standard English bone china about 1800, at first made good use of it. Some of his later wares, however, became increasingly pretentious copies of French styles, with highly coloured grounds, lavish gilding, and an excess of applied ornament. In about 1813 William T. Copeland became a partner in the firm, and in 1847 his son, William T. Copeland, Jr., took sole charge of it. In 1970 the company name became Spode, Ltd.

      The firm of Minton's was founded at Stoke-upon-Trent in 1793 by Thomas Minton, a Caughley engraver said to have devised for Spode the Broseley Blue Dragon and Willow patterns (Willow pattern) that are still in use. Like Coalport, the factory was much occupied in copying the work of Sèvres. From 1848 to 1895 they employed a Frenchman, Joseph-François-Léon Arnoux, as art director, and under his tutelage French artists were brought to England; for example, the sculptor Albert Carrier-Belleuse and also Marc-Louis Solon, who was responsible for introducing pâte-sur-pâte decoration into England (see below The European continent (pottery)).

      The Derby tradition of fine painting was carried into the 19th century, during which time the flower designs became somewhat overblown, although landscapes remained on a high level. The sets of so-called Campaña vases (more properly Campagna), distantly derived from Italianate copies of the Greek krater, were often decorated with landscapes by the brothers Robert and John Brewer and others. The Brewers were pupils of the topographical painter Paul Sandby.

      About 1840 Parian ware, an imitation of Sèvres biscuit porcelain, was introduced by Copeland & Garrett (formerly Spode), and a great many figures, some of them extremely large, were made in this medium. Most of them are either sentimental subjects or quasierotic nudes, which were popular subjects of Victorian art. Parian ware had some success in America, where it was manufactured by Norton and Fenton.

Stoneware and earthenware
      Production of earthenware and stoneware for the cheaper market continued on an ever-increasing scale. Lustre decoration, which had been revived in the preceding century, was used more frequently than before. A type of stoneware obviously inspired by Wedgwood's jasperware was made at Castleford, Yorkshire. ironstone china, a type of opaque stoneware sometimes called opaque porcelain, was introduced early in the 19th century. Pseudo-Chinese and Japan patterns were frequently used to decorate it.

      By 1830 new underglaze colours had been pressed into service for transfer printing. These new colours were particularly used by Ridgway & Co. of Hanley, Staffordshire. Transfer-printed earthenware in blue, which became increasingly popular after 1810, was soon being produced in enormous quantities. It was much used by Spode, who often employed American subjects for wares exported to the United States. Polychrome transfer printing, essayed tentatively at Liverpool during the 1760s, was also mastered.

      Earthenware figures were made in large quantities in Staffordshire and elsewhere, the best associated with Enoch Wood. They were intended as chimney ornaments, and the subjects range from bullbaiting to sentimental shepherdesses. Many of them are copied more or less directly from Derby porcelain figures, and they are a sad but accurate reflection of the times during which they were made.

      The Great Exhibition of 1851 completed the degeneration started by the revival of the Rococo style. Technical progress allowed the manufacturers ever-increasing elaborations with which they bludgeoned the few remaining sensibilities of their customers. Past styles were indiscriminately and ignorantly copied. Minton's (Minton ware), for example, made an earthenware decorated with coloured glazes that they miscalled maiolica. It was used not only for decorative wares but for domestic articles—such as umbrella stands—and for architectural purposes.

      The Paris exhibitions of 1867 and 1878 brought Japanese pottery and porcelain once more to the attention of European manufacturers, but it was not the superb porcelain of Arita that had had so much influence in the previous century. This time the Japanese exported cream-coloured earthenware with a closely crackled surface and lavish painting of poor quality, judging that it would appeal to Western taste. It became extremely popular under the name of Satsuma and was copied avidly at Worcester and elsewhere (see below Japan: 19th and 20th centuries (pottery)).

      By 1860 a few people had become profoundly disturbed by the level to which popular taste had sunk. Among them was the English poet and designer William Morris, who founded a firm of interior decorators and manufacturers in 1861. One of his pupils, William de Morgan, started a pottery at Fulham (London) in 1888 that made dishes and tiles inspired by Persian, Hispano-Moresque, and Italian wares. De Morgan used brilliant blues and greens and a coppery red lustre. His designs are a great improvement on those of the factories, although they, too, are derivative.

      After about 1860 Doultons of Lambeth (London) copied 18th-century brown stoneware, making small figures and repeating earlier designs. The incised decoration by Hannah Barlow is both pleasant and competent. From a Fulham pottery owned by the Martin brothers came grotesque and often amusing stoneware vases that were sometimes decorated with coloured slips.

The European continent
      In the 19th century Meissen (Meissen porcelain) and Sèvres continued to be the two principal factories and leaders of fashion, although at both places, as elsewhere, artistic standards declined considerably.

      In the first half of the 19th century Meissen adopted the revived Rococo style, and a large export trade with England was renewed. This was the period of the sentimental Dresden shepherdess, formerly much admired in England and the United States. Later productions include large and ornate candelabra, overdecorated mirror frames, clock cases, and the like, as well as vases and tureens based on the old Rococo models.

      From about 1870, styles altered somewhat and are afterward referred to as those of die Neuzeit (“the New Period”). Some of the figures and groups illustrating contemporary subjects throw an amusing sidelight on manners and customs of the time.

      At Sèvres, as a result of Napoleon's campaign in Egypt and the newly aroused interest in that country, the Empire style of the first decades of the 19th century incorporated many Egyptian motifs, which were somewhat incongruously translated into porcelain. Also produced were many porcelain plaques with minutely detailed overglaze painting in imitation of easel pictures.

      Technical improvements include the introduction, about 1855, of pâte-sur-pâte, a process later popular in England, particularly at Minton's. The design was painted in white slip onto a surface of coloured, lightly fired clay. After each coat of slip dried, another was superimposed upon it, until the desired degree of relief had been attained. Finally, it was scraped, smoothed, and incised by metal tools, and the whole object was glazed and fired.

      The sculptor Auguste Rodin (Rodin, Auguste) was employed at Sèvres for a short time but does not seem to have left any enduring marks of his presence. Artistically speaking, Sèvres porcelain has not been very distinguished since the 18th century.

      The Royal Porcelain (Royal Copenhagen porcelain) works at Copenhagen has made a great deal of porcelain with simple patterns in underglaze blue derived from Chinese sources by way of Meissen. Molded fluted shapes are characteristic. Production of the well-known biscuit figures after the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (Thorvaldsen, Bertel) (1768–1844) began in 1867. The factory later introduced a slightly amber-coloured biscuit that was used for figure modelling. Painting on a grayish-toned crackled glaze led to experiments with celadons (celadon) since, technically, the two have much in common. Other glazes inspired by early Chinese work followed. The firm of Bing and Gröndahl was established in 1853 and has done excellent and imaginative work.

      Although Andrew Duché had succeeded in making porcelain as early as 1741, the first man to produce porcelain in any quantity was William Ellis Tucker of Philadelphia. At first he was a decorator of whiteware, but he started to manufacture both creamware and bone china about 1826. Judge Joseph Hemphill became a partner in 1832, and workmen were imported from Europe. Copies of Sèvres porcelain and other European wares were made about this time in a fine white porcelain body. The first factory at Bennington, Vermont, founded by Capt. John Norton in 1793, made domestic wares, including salt-glazed (salt glaze) stoneware. The factory was removed to Bennington Village by his son, Judge Luman Norton, in 1831, and creamware and a brown-glazed ware were produced. In 1839 the factory became Norton and Fenton, and about 1845 the manufacture of Parian ware began. This unglazed near-white porcelain named after Parian marble had been made first in England by Copeland & Garrett (see above Britain (pottery)). John Harrison of Copeland's was hired by Norton and Fenton and brought with him a number of molds. An ironstone china called graniteware or white granite was also made.

      The East Liverpool, Ohio, industry was established in 1838 by James Bennett, an English potter. The first products made there were Rockingham (Rockingham ware) and yellow-glazed ware. In the decade following the Civil War, William Bloor, Isaac W. Knowles, and others introduced the production of whiteware. By the last decade of the 19th century, production had grown until it was the largest pottery-producing area in the world.

      At about the same time, Zanesville, Ohio, was also developing as a pottery centre. First production was salt-glazed and slip-decorated stoneware. At a later date much artware was produced in Zanesville plants operated by Samuel Weller, J.B. Owens, George Young, and others. This artware established the basis for a sizable modern interest in collecting. Another important centre during the 19th century was at Trenton, New Jersey, where the first factory was established in 1852. Connected with it was William Bloor, who had some responsibility for putting the industry on a successful footing in East Liverpool. Trenton, like East Liverpool, produced fine, skillfully decorated whiteware.

      A close study of the technical side of manufacture was not undertaken until Edward Orton, Jr., succeeded in getting support for the establishment of a department of ceramics at Ohio State University in Columbus in 1894. The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred, New York, was started soon afterward, with Charles F. Binns as its director. Binns was a member of an English family connected with the manufacture of porcelain at Worcester and Derby during the 19th century and had himself held a supervisory position at Worcester. Similar departments were added to other universities soon afterward, and in 1898 Orton took the lead in forming the American Ceramic Society. In this way knowledge was put on a more scientific basis, and the trained potters who soon became available to the industry were responsible for many technical improvements. Nevertheless, the artistic direction of the factories did not reach a high standard.

      Toward the end of the century it became fashionable for American women to study the art of painting on European pottery, and the Cincinnati Art Pottery Company was founded in 1879 to promote sound pottery design. As a result of its work, the Rookwood Pottery was established in 1880 by Maria Longworth Storer. Rookwood wares show a distinct Japanese influence and have excellent red and yellowish-brown glazes.

20th century
Pottery factories
      At the beginning of the 20th century the Wedgwood (Wedgwood, Josiah) factory, whose work has always remained at a high level, extended its already considerable business in the United States, and a service of nearly 1,300 pieces was supplied to the White House during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Roosevelt, Theodore) (1901–09). In 1940 the factory began to move to its present site at Barlaston, Staffordshire, after which the historic site at Etruria, Staffordshire, was progressively abandoned.

      The designs of Dorothy Doughty for the Worcester Royal Porcelain Company, in England, and those of Edward Marshall Boehm, at Trenton, New Jersey, established a new development in decorative porcelain. Characteristic of this kind of work are the American birds of Dorothy Doughty issued in limited editions by the Worcester Company. They are especially remarkable for technical advances in preparing the article for firing, which allow the material to be treated with much greater freedom than hitherto. Porcelain becomes very soft when it reaches the point of vitrification, but, using an elaborate series of props to support free-floating parts, the Worcester technicians succeeded in firing designs that would have been completely impossible earlier. Associated with these models are exact reproductions of natural flowers that also excel in complexity and verisimilitude anything made in the past.

      In the early part of the 20th century, Bernard Moore experimented with Chinese glazes (see below China: Ch'ing dynasty (pottery)). He produced some successful flambé and sang-de-boeuf glazes on a stoneware body at his small factory in Stoke-upon-Trent. He worked in association with William Burton of Pilkington pottery in Manchester, which made experimental decorative ware of all kinds.

      After World War I, figure modelling worthy of the old Meissen tradition was done by Paul Scheurich, Max Esser, Paul Börner, and others. The early red stoneware was also revived. This renaissance was halted temporarily by World War II, but production was resumed by 1950. The wares exported from the German Democratic Republic into western Europe were excellent in quality.

      A factory that has preserved its traditional reputation for fine porcelain is Nymphenburg, at Munich, now the Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Nymphenburg. At the beginning of the 20th century it began to use a wider range of underglaze colours with the aid of colour chemists from Sèvres (Sèvres porcelain) and, about the same time, reissued some of the old figures and services of Bustelli and Auliczek (appropriately marked). Attention was soon turned to services of fine quality in the modern idiom, and excellent figures by Resl Lechner and others were produced. Lechner succeeded in adapting the 18th-century styles to 20th-century purposes in a manner that is an object lesson to those manufacturers who insist, even today, on adding the scrolls and flourishes of the Rococo.

      Such factories as Rörstrand (Rörstrand faience) and Gustavsberg in Sweden and Arabia Oy in Finland have achieved a growing reputation for excellent design in the modern idiom. The emphasis on form in present-day pottery is to a great extent due to the import of Chinese wares of the Sung dynasty (see below China: Sung dynasty (pottery)) during the 1920s.

      The pottery of the United States bears comparison with that of any other country, and standards are constantly improving. Technically, the United States is perhaps ahead of much of the rest of the world. The growing appreciation of good pottery design has led the national government, as well as state and local governments, to sponsor pottery making as an art. There is also a pottery experimental station in the Tennessee Valley.

The artist-potter
      The artist-potter has had an important influence on modern design from the time that Bernard Leach (Leach, Bernard) (1887–1979) established the Leach Pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall, in 1920. Leach spent many of his early years in the Far East and learned the art of making raku and stoneware in Japan (see below Japan: Azuchi-Momoyama period (pottery)). He began working at a time when interest in early Chinese wares had greatly increased, and much of his work is obviously influenced by the work of Tz'u-chou (Cizhou kiln) (see below China: Sung dynasty (pottery)), as well as that of Japan. It is, nevertheless, strongly individual. One of Leach's pupils, Michael Cardew, has done good work in stoneware, which he often decorated with vigorous patterns drawn with a pleasing economy of outline. William Staite Murray, at one time the head of the ceramic department of the Royal College of Art, has made some important and interesting stoneware and has influenced many younger potters. Excellent work has been done by continental potters working in England, among them Lucie Rie from Vienna and Hans Coper from Germany. Amusing figures have come from Marion Morris, who was trained in Budapest.

      The artist-potters on the Continent tend to be less conservative than their English counterparts, and many new and interesting developments have occurred. Abstraction is particularly favourable to development, since the potter understood its principles long before the 20th-century painters and sculptors came to it. By the 1970s many art schools included pottery making in their curriculum, and students were increasing in numbers.

      Somewhat outside the mainstream of pottery tradition, and a markedly individual production related to their work in other media, is the pottery of such well-known artists as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Joan Miró, Henri Matisse, Ernst Barlach, and Pablo Picasso. A good many of these wares are unique, although some have been repeated by factory production methods.

East Asian and Southeast Asian pottery

China
      Nowhere in the world has pottery assumed such importance as in China, and the influence of Chinese porcelain on later European pottery has been profound.

      It is difficult to give much practical assistance on the question of Chinese marks. Most of the Chinese marks give the name of the dynasty and that of the emperor; however, many of them have been used so inconsequentially that, unless the period can also be assigned with reasonable certainty by other means, it is better to disregard them. The dating of Chinese pottery is further complicated by the fact that there were traditional and persisting types that overlapped; quite often, therefore, dynastic labels cannot be regarded as anything more than an indication of the affinities of the particular object under discussion.

      Chinese decoration is usually symbolic and often exploits the double meaning of certain words; for instance, the Chinese word for bat, fu, also means “happiness.” Five bats represent the Five Blessings—longevity, wealth, serenity, virtue, and an easy death. Longevity is symbolized by such things as the stork, the pine, and the tortoise, the ling chih fungus, and the bamboo, all reputed to enjoy long life. The character shou, which also denotes longevity, is used in a variety of ornamental forms. Together, the peach and the bat represent fu-shou, long life and happiness. The “Buddha's hand” citron, a fruit with fingerlike appendages, is a symbol of wealth, and each month and season is represented by a flower or plant. The pa kua, consisting of eight sets of three lines, broken and unbroken in different combinations, represent natural forces. They are often seen in conjunction with the Yin-Yang (yinyang) symbol, which represents the female-male principle, and which has been well described by the pottery scholar R.L. Hobson as resembling “two tadpoles interlocked.” The dragon generally is a mild and beneficent creature. It is a symbol of the emperor, just as the phoenix-like creature (feng-huang (fenghuang)) symbolizes the empress.

      There are three principal religious systems in China: Confucianism, Taoism (Daoism), and Buddhism. Taoist figures, in particular, appear frequently on porcelain as decoration. The most important, Lao-tzu (Laozi), has a large and protuberant forehead. He is usually accompanied by the “eight immortals” (pa hsien (Baxian)), and these are sometimes modelled as sets of figures. The eight horses of the emperor Mu Wang (Chou dynasty) are also frequently represented. The Buddhist goddess Kuan-yin and the 18 lohan, disciples of Buddha, were also modelled. The “eight Buddhist emblems” appear fairly frequently, as do the “eight precious things” and a collection of instruments and implements used in the arts and known as the “hundred antiques.” The “lions of Buddha” (often miscalled dogs) are frequently represented, as is the kylin (qilin) (properly ch'i-lin), which is a composite animal, not unlike a unicorn, that has a fierce appearance but gentle disposition.

      Most of these symbols were not used in pottery decoration before the Ming dynasty, although both the dragon and a phoenix-like creature (probably the Chinese pheasant), as well as some floral motifs, are earlier. The lei-wen, however, which resembles the Greek key fret (an ornament consisting of small, straight bars intersecting one another in right angles) and is sometimes used on the later ceramic wares, appears on bronzes as early as the Shang and Chou dynasties, where it is called the cloud-and-thunder fret. The t'ao-t'ieh (taotie), which is a grotesque mask of uncertain origin, also appears on early bronzes and on later pottery and porcelain. Decorations based on Chinese literary sources are usually extremely difficult to trace to their origin.

      The earliest Chinese pottery is of the Neolithic Period and has been discovered in the provinces of Honan (Henan) and Kansu (Gansu). Perhaps the best known of these wares is a series of large urns of red polished pottery with geometric decoration found in the Pan-shan (Banshan ware) cemetery and at Mach'ang, both in Kansu Province. These were made by hand, the latest specimens with perhaps some assistance from a slow wheel, and are at least as early as 2000 BC.

      The only known complete specimen of a fine white stoneware dating from c. 1400 BC (Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) is decorated with chevrons (linked V-shapes) and a key-fret pattern, the shoulder motifs being reminiscent of those seen on contemporary bronze vessels. This ware is much better in quality than most other surviving pottery of the Shang period (18th to 12th century BC) or of the following Chou dynasty (Zhou dynasty) (1111–255 BC). Much Chou pottery is decorated with rudimentary incised ornament, some of which resembles the impress of coarse textiles referred to as mat markings. The shapes used for these pieces were often inspired by bronze vessels.

      The development of glazing in China may have started with the application of glass paste to some of the later Chou wares. Stoneware vessels of about the 3rd century BC have a glaze that is little more than a smear but one that has obviously been deliberately applied. This type persisted for several centuries.

      The first pottery to survive in appreciable quantities belongs to the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220); most of it has been excavated from graves. Perhaps the commonest form is the hu, a baluster-shaped vase copied from bronze vessels of the same name and sometimes decorated with relief ornament in friezes taken directly from a bronze original. The hill jar, which has a cover molded to represent the Taoist “Isles of the Blest,” is another fairly frequent form, and many models of servants, domestic animals, buildings, wellheads, dovecots, and the like also have been discovered in graves. Some of this pottery is unglazed or decorated with cold (i.e., unfired) pigments, but much of it is covered with a glaze that varies from copper green to yellowish brown; often the colours have become iridescent from long burial. The body is usually a dark red and approaches stoneware in hardness.

      Han glaze is more glasslike than that of the Chou period and is of an excellent quality. It contains lead and was frequently coloured green with copper oxide.

      Yüeh yao (“Yüeh ware”) was first made at Yüeh-chou, Chekiang Province, during the Han dynasty, although all surviving specimens are later, most belonging to the Six Dynasties (AD 222–589). They have a stoneware body and an olive or brownish-green glaze and belong to the family of celadons, a term that looms large in any discussion of early Chinese wares. It is applied to glazes ranging from the olive of Yüeh to the deep green of later varieties. These colours were the result of a wash of slip containing a high proportion of iron that was put over the body before glazing. The iron interacted with the glaze during firing and coloured it.

T'ang dynasty (Tang dynasty) (AD 618–907)
      Chinese pottery reaches an important stage in its development during the T'ang dynasty.

      Nearly everything that has survived has been excavated from tombs, many of them found accidentally by railway engineers and latterly by more systematic excavations. Excavations at Sāmarrāʾ on the Tigris, a luxurious residence built by the caliph al-Muʿtaṣim (son of Hārūn ar-Rashīd) in AD 836 and abandoned in 873, have uncovered many fragments of T'ang wares of all kinds. Perhaps the most important finds from a historical viewpoint are the fragments of what is undoubtedly porcelain. An Islāmic record of travels in the Far East, written in 851, records “vessels of clay as transparent as glass.” There can be little doubt, therefore, that translucent porcelain was made in the T'ang period, although it was not until the Yüan dynasty (1206–1368) that it began to resemble the type with which the West is most familiar.

      Perhaps the most important single development was the use of coloured glazes—as monochromes or splashed and dappled. The T'ang wares commonest in Western collections are those with either monochrome or dappled glazes covering a highly absorbent, buff, earthenware body. The dappled glazes were usually applied with a sponge, and they include blue, dark blue, green, yellow, orange, straw, and brown colours. These glazes normally exhibit a fine crackle and often fall short of the base in an uneven wavy line, the unglazed surface area varying from about one-third to two-thirds of the vessel.

      Dappled glazes are also found on the magnificent series of tomb figures with which this period is particularly associated. Similar figures were made in unglazed earthenware and were sometimes decorated with cold pigment. Although the unglazed specimen or those covered only with the straw-coloured glaze are occasionally modelled superbly, many are crude and apparently made for the tombs of the less affluent and influential. Most of the glazed figures are much better in quality and occasionally reach a large size; figures of the Bactrian camel, for instance, are particularly impressive, some being nearly three feet high. The Bactrian pony, introduced into China about 138 BC, is to be found in many spirited poses. This fashion for tomb figures fell into disuse at the beginning of the Sung dynasty (AD 960–1279) but was revived for a short while during the Ming period (1368–1644), when T'ang influence is noticeable.

      Marbled wares are seen occasionally. The effect was achieved either by combing slips of contrasting colours (i.e., mingling the slips after they had been put on the pot, by means of a comb) or by mingling differently coloured clays. Another type of T'ang ware (probably from Honan) had a stoneware body with a dark-brown glaze streaked by pale blue. Most vessels stand on a flat base; although later T'ang wares sometimes were given a foot ring, for the most part this can be regarded as evidence in favour of a Sung dating.

Sung dynasty (Song dynasty) (AD 960–1279)
      The wares of the Sung dynasty are particularly noted for brilliant feldspathic glazes over a stoneware body and their emphasis on simplicity of form. Decoration is infrequent but may be incised, molded, impressed, or carved; a certain amount of painted decoration was done at Tz'u-chou in Chihli (now called Hopeh) Province (see below). The esteem accorded to the Sung wares accounts for the relatively large number that have survived. The principal varieties are Ju, kuan, Ko, Ting, Lung-ch'üan, Chün, Chien, Tz'u-chou, and ying-ch'ing.

      Ju ware (Ru kiln) has a buff stoneware body and is covered with a dense greenish-blue glaze that sometimes has a fine crackle. It was made in Honan at an Imperial factory that apparently had a life of about 20 years, starting in 1107.

      Kuan (Guan kilns) (“official”) is another Imperial ware that is also exceedingly scarce. It was probably first made in the north, the kilns being reestablished at Hangchow (Hangzhou) in Chekiang Province about 1127, when the court fled southward to escape the Chin Tatar invaders. The body is of stoneware washed with brown slip. The glaze varies from pale green to lavender blue, with a wide-meshed crackle emphasized by the application of brown pigment. Chinese references to “a brown mouth and an iron foot” can be identified with the colour of the rim and the foot ring.

      Ko ware (Ge kiln) is closely related to kuan ware. It has a dark stoneware body and a grayish-white glaze with a wellmarked crackle, which was induced deliberately for its decorative effect.

      Ting wares (Ding ware) are white. Some exhibit an orange translucency, while the coarser varieties are opaque. The finest examples are called “white” (pai) Ting. On the exterior of bowls and similar vessels the glaze of white Ting is apt to collect in drops, called teardrops. Many articles, particularly bowls, were fired mouth downward, leaving an unglazed rim that was afterward bound with a band of copper or silver. (Bands appear occasionally on other Sung wares, notably ying-ch'ing, and were sometimes used to conceal damage rather than an unglazed rim.) Coarser varieties are known as “flour” (fen) Ting and “earthen” (t'u) Ting, and there are also a few examples of black Ting. As in the case of kuan ware, the kilns are said to have been removed southward in 1127, but it has so far proved impossible to differentiate between the northern and southern varieties. Other white wares made elsewhere during the period include those of Tz'u-chou and a variety covered with a white slip over a grayish body from Chü-lu Hsien (both in present Hopeh Province).

 The celadons of Lung-ch'üan (Longquan ware) are, perhaps, the most common of the classic Sung wares (see photograph—>). The town is in the province of Chekiang, near the capital of the southern Sung emperors at Hangchow. The kilns probably date back to the 10th century. The glaze, of superb quality, is a transparent green in colour. It is thick and viscous, usually with a well-marked crackle. (The glaze on early specimens is less transparent and is denser.) The body is gray to grayish white, best seen at the rim, where the glaze tends to be thin. By far the most frequent surviving examples of Lung-ch'üan celadon are large dishes, for which there was a thriving export trade, due in part to the superstition that a celadon dish would break or change colour if poisoned food were put into it. Bowls and large vases, both of which are scarce, were also made with this glaze. Decoration is usually incised, but molded decoration is also found. On some pots the molding was left unglazed, so that it burned to a dark reddish brown—an effective contrast to the colour of the glaze. The more finely potted wares are the scarcest and often the oldest. The heavier varieties were intended to withstand the rigours of transport to overseas markets, and probably most of them belong to the Yüan dynasty (1206–1368), when the export trade was considerably extended.

      Chün ware (Jun kiln) comes from the K'ai-feng district of Honan Province. The body is a grayish-white, hard-fired stoneware covered with a thick, dense, lavender-blue glaze often suffused with crimson purple. This is the first example of a reduced copper, or flambé, glaze. Conical bowls are especially numerous, and dishes are not unusual, but the finer specimens are usually flowerpots, sometimes said to have been made for Imperial use. Characteristic are barely perceptible channels or tracks caused by the parting of the viscous glaze; these are called earthworm tracks by the Chinese. The kilns probably continued to produce this ware until the 16th century, and it is difficult to separate some of the later productions from the earlier.

      Chien ware (Jian ware) is called after the original place of manufacture, Chien-an, in Fukien Province. Manufacture was later moved to nearby Chien-yang, probably during the Yüan period. The glaze is very dark brown, approaching black, over a dark stoneware body, and it usually stops short of the base in a thick treacly roll.

      There are many variations in the colour of the glaze. Streaks in lighter brown are referred to by the Chinese as hare's fur. Silvery spots on the glaze are called oil spots. The most usual surviving form is the teabowl; these were much esteemed by the Japanese under the name of temmoku (Jian ware) and were used in the tea ceremony (see below Japan: Kamakura and Muromachi periods (pottery)).

      The kilns of Tz'u-chou (Cizhou kiln), formerly in Honan, are now in Hopeh Province. The earliest surviving examples are referable to the T'ang dynasty. In the Sung period, vases, wine jars, and pillows (which are more comfortable than they appear) were the most usual products. The body is usually a hard-fired, grayish-white stoneware that was first covered with a wash of white slip and then with a transparent glaze. For the first time painted decoration appears under the glaze, perhaps as a result of influence from the Middle East (see above Islāmic: Mesopotamia and Persia: 11th to 15th century (pottery)). Decoration is nearly always in brown or black; the motifs are usually floral and display a singular freedom of line that is very attractive. (The inclusion of human and animal figures suggests a Yüan or a Ming dating, at the least.) The slip covering was sometimes carved away, leaving a pattern in contrasting colour, a technique also used in conjunction with a dark brown glaze. A hare's-fur glaze, similar to that of Chien wares, was also employed. A blue glaze with painted decoration in black beneath it was obviously inspired by contemporary Persian pottery decorated in the same way. Another innovation, perhaps derived from the same source, is the use of colours applied over the glaze. These are limited to primitive reds and greens and yellows.

      An important and not uncommon ware is ying-ch'ing (yingqing ware) (“shadowy blue”). It was manufactured in both the south (Kiangsi) and the north (Hopeh). Moreover, it was extensively exported and has been found as far west as the ruins of al-Fusṭāṭ in Old Cairo. The body is pale buff in colour, usually translucent, and thinly potted, breaking with a sugary fracture. Most genuine examples seem to belong to the Sung and Yüan periods, but it is probable that, in the north at any rate, manufacture started late in the T'ang dynasty and lasted well into the Ming period. Bowls of conical form are the commonest survival, and many are decorated with incised floral and foliate motifs. Lightly molded decoration occurs, as does combing of the clay. The mei p'ing (meiping) vase is found with this glaze; it has a tall body with straight sides, high, rounded shoulders, and a short narrow neck and was intended to hold a single spray of prunus blossom. Stem cups, deep bowls, and ewers were also produced. Bowls sometimes have the rim bound with copper.

Yüan dynasty (Yuan dynasty) (1206–1368)
      The Yüan, or Mongol, dynasty is often regarded as being no more than transitional between Sung and Ming types. This is not entirely true. Undoubtedly, many Sung types were continued, just as the T'ang types were continued at the beginning of the Sung dynasty, but there are other wares that represent a new departure. The manufacturing centre of Ching-te-chen (Jingdezhen) increased in importance and first manufactured the white translucent porcelain that was to have a revolutionary effect on Chinese wares. The use of painted decoration, begun during the Sung period at Tz'u-chou, also became much more widespread, and the two techniques were combined in a manner that later affected the course of porcelain manufacture throughout the world.

      The Ko ku yao lun of 1387 refers to shu fu (shufu ware) ware, a type of white porcelain. The base is unglazed. Decoration in relief, painted in slip or engraved, is to be seen on some surviving examples of porcelain. It appears to be a development of the earlier Ting ch'ing. Much more unusual is the appearance of a few specimens of Yüan date that are painted with reduced copper red under the glaze. As mentioned above, the potters of Chün-chou had achieved this colour, but only in the glaze.

      The use of underglaze blue was introduced from the Middle East, where it had been employed at least as early as the 9th century, specimens thus decorated having been recovered at Sāmarrāʾ (see above Islāmic: ʿAbbāsid (pottery)). The best known example of Yüan porcelain decorated in this manner, which is usually referred to as blue-and-white, is a pair of vases in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art in London. They bear a date equivalent to 1351. The peony scroll, carved or in applied relief, appears on some of these blue-and-white wares.

Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
      The Mongol emperor Shun Ti was defeated in a popular uprising, and the Hungwu emperor, founder of the Ming dynasty, succeeded him in 1368. When the country had recovered from these internecine struggles, pottery art took a new lease of life, though under somewhat changed conditions. The Sung wares went out of favour, and the old factories sank into obscurity, while the fame and importance of the great porcelain town of Ching-te-chen, near the P'o-yang Hu in Kiangsi Province, overshadowed all the rest. The Imperial factory there was rebuilt and reorganized to keep the court supplied with the new porcelain. The staple product of Ching-te-chen was the fine white porcelain that made “china” a household word throughout the world; and as this ware lent itself peculiarly well to painted decoration, the vogue for painted porcelain rapidly replaced the old Sung taste for monochromes.

      The reign of the Yung-lo (Yongle) emperor (1402–24) is remarkable for some extremely thin-walled pieces, referred to as “bodiless” (t'o t'ai) ware. Engraved examples are known, and Chinese commentaries refer to specimens decorated in red.

      After this early period, Ming wares generally are fairly easily recognizable. Porcelain (eggshell porcelain) replaced stoneware as the usual medium, and polychrome decoration became widely employed. The largest single group of Ming porcelain is that painted in blue underglaze. Much of the pigment used was imported from Middle Eastern sources. Supplies of this so-called Mohammedan blue (hui-hui ch'ing), which came from the Kashān district of Persia, were not always obtainable and were interrupted on more than one occasion. The quality of the blue-painted wares, however, remained to a great extent dependent on its use until the end of the 16th century, when methods of refining native cobalt were devised.

      The wares lack much of the precision of the porcelain made during the following Ch'ing period (1644–1911/12), when a kind of factory system grew up that divided the work into a large number of repetitive operations. Little trouble was taken to smooth over imperfections of manufacture, and foot rings are often finished summarily. The glaze, too, frequently has minor defects, and articles, such as vases, are sometimes slightly distorted and carelessly finished. The shape of many examples can fairly be described as massive, in spite of the fact that most of them were made for export, and the difficulties of transporting them must have been considerable. None of these factors evinces a lack of skill, especially as the potters were quite capable of technical virtuosity when they wished to display it—some of the most thinly potted of all Chinese porcelain belongs to this period. It seems that the Ming potters disdained the attitude of mind that treated blemishes as important; occasional distortions, in fact, were regarded as lending interest to an object. The Chinese did not carry this aesthetic creed to the same lengths as the Japanese (see below Japan (pottery)), but the difference seems to be largely one of degree. Ming wares can fairly be described as masculine, in contrast to the more feminine, more precisely finished wares of the later Ch'ing period.

Reign of the Hsüan-te emperor (1425–35)
      In this period the arts were particularly fostered and a high level of achievement attained. The blue painting is blackish in colour, with dark spots at intervals where thick blobs of pigment were deposited by the brush—the so-called heaped and piled effect. The motifs are floral and foliate, with the occasional use of fish and waterfowl. Sometimes vessels are bordered by a pattern of conventional rock amid waves—the Isles of Immortality—often referred to as the Rock of Ages pattern. The pattern appears frequently throughout the Ming period and later.

      Contemporary Chinese commentaries refer to the use of underglaze copper red—often called sacrificial red for uncertain reasons. To a great extent sacrificial red was abandoned later in the dynasty in favour of overglaze iron red, although it was used again during the reign of the Ch'ing dynasty K'ang-hsi (1661–1722) and Yung-cheng (1722–35) emperors and appears in a rather primitive form from some provincial kilns. Both copper red and blue were used as monochromes and, occasionally, together; but since these pigments required a slightly different firing temperature, one or the other is usually deficient in quality.

      The use of overglaze colours was rare, and the technique had by no means been fully mastered.

Reign of the Ch'eng-hua emperor (1464–87)
      Much overglaze decoration can be attributed with a reasonable measure of certainty to the reign of Ch'eng-hua, the finest examples being, perhaps, the chicken cups, so-called because they are decorated with chickens. Their decoration is outlined in underglaze blue and filled in with soft overglaze colours called “contending colours” (tou ts'ai). Ch'eng-hua overglaze colours were thin, subdued in colour, and pictorial in effect.

      The practice of enamelling directly onto unglazed, or biscuit, porcelain instead of onto a glazed and fired body is sometimes thought to have begun in this reign, though that of the Chia-ching emperor (1521–67) is the more likely. Ming specimens are, in any case, extremely rare; most belong to the reign of the K'ang-hsi emperor (1661–1722) in the Ch'ing dynasty.

Reigns of the Hung-chih and Cheng-te emperors (1487–1521)
      The first use of a coloured overglaze ground can be attributed to the reign of the Hung-chih emperor (1487–1505), when a yellow of variable shade first appears. In the reign of the Cheng-te (Zhengde) emperor (1505–21) the influence of the Muslim palace eunuchs who supervised the Imperial kilns is seen in such blue-and-white motifs as the Mohammedan scroll, which is composed of somewhat formal flowers joined by S-shaped stems, with scroll-like leaves at intervals along them. Mohammedan blue was again available. The earliest versions of this theme, which seems orginally to have come from a textile pattern, are the least stiffly drawn. The linear style of painting characteristic of earlier porcelain altered to one in which outlines were filled in with flat ungraduated washes.

Reign of the Chia-ching (Jiajing) emperor (1521–67)
      This reign is notable for a deterioration in the quality of the porcelain body, offset by the use of rich dark blue. Wares painted overglaze, too, were executed in good colours, with well-marked outlines. A characteristic colour, the opaque iron red (fan hung), sometimes called tomato red, was used as a monochrome with gilt traceries over it on bowls that sometimes had interior decoration in underglaze blue. Various wares have decoration in red and green, a palette that became more familiar later. A yellow glaze is found in conjunction with incised decoration (usually a dragon) in green. Very rarely was a green or blue monochrome used.

Reigns of the Lung-ch'ing (Longqing) and Wan-li (Wanli) emperors (1567–1620)
      The styles of Chia-ching were, to some extent, continued in the following reigns of the Lung-ch'ing (1567–72) and Wan li (1572–1620) emperors. A palette containing underglaze blue in conjunction with green, yellow, aubergine purple, and iron red (the precursor of the later Ch'ing famille verte palette) was known as “Wan-li five-colour” ware (Wan-li wu ts'ai). The red and green Chia-ching decoration was also used, and vast quantities of blue-and-white porcelain were produced for export. The body is quite unlike that used earlier in the dynasty, being thin, hard, crisp, and resonant. It is the commonest of all Ming wares in the West. During the reign of the Wan-li emperor, much pierced work (ling lung) was done. Pierced objects range from small brush pots to vases with coloured glazes sometimes termed fa hua.

      The Ming dynasty ended in 1644. The wares of the last three emperors, for the most part, followed styles already established; perhaps an exception can be made for blue-and-white, which shows a number of new departures in both form and decoration. Many of the vases are without a foot-ring and stand on a flat, unglazed base. Forms based on European wares were obviously made for export.

Provincial and export wares
      Most of the wares hitherto discussed were made in the Ching-te-chen area; it remains to consider the other wares of the period. The export of celadons went on, not only to the countries west of China but also to Japan, where they were much esteemed. Most celadons attributable to the Ming period have incised under the glaze floral and foliate decoration of a kind that also appears on blue painted wares.

      The fine porcelain of Te-hua (Dehua porcelain) in Fukien Province was first made, perhaps, in the early part of the dynasty. Most of this porcelain was left undecorated, and received the name in Europe of blanc de chine. The glaze is exceptionally thick and lustrous, and early examples are often slightly ivory in tone. Overglaze painting is infrequent; virtually all early coloured speciments, figures or vessels, have been decorated in Europe, usually in the Netherlands. Figures especially were produced at the Te-hua kilns, with the Buddhist goddess Kuan-yin being a favourite subject.

      The stoneware of I-hsing in Kiangsu Province was known in the West as Buccaro, or Boccaro, ware and was copied and imitated at Meissen, at Staffordshire, and in the Netherlands by Ary de Milde and others. Its teapots were much valued in 17th century Europe, where tea was newly introduced. The wares of I-hsing are unglazed, the body varying from red to dark brown. The molding is extremely precise and was often sharpened by grinding on a lapidary's wheel. The body was sometimes polished in the same way.

      Most of the Ming stoneware ridge tiles and roof finials were made at kilns near Peking. Many of them are decorated in green, yellow, turquoise, and aubergine-purple glazes, recalling the wares of the T'ang dynasty. A Ming date is exceedingly optimistic for most of them. To this group belong, it is thought, a few large figures that have sometimes been somewhat doubtfully awarded a T'ang date.

      The provincial tile kilns also manufactured “three-coloured” (san ts'ai) wares, perhaps originally a product of the Tz'u-chou kilns. These were decorated with coloured glazes that were often kept from intermingling by threads of clay (cloisonné technique) or were used in conjunction with the pierced technique (fa hua). Others have engraved designs under the glazes. Most existing specimens are large vases, barrel-shaped garden seats, and the like. The best are extremely handsome and imposing, turquoise and dark-blue glazes being particularly effective.

Ch'ing dynasty (Qing dynasty) (1644–1911/12)
      With the Ch'ing dynasty came the beginning of the immense vogue for porcelain in Europe that was to reach its height during the first half of the 18th century. Many varieties of Ch'ing ware are common in the West. Its wares differ, for the most part, from those of the Ming period in a fairly distinctive manner. Potters had their medium under almost complete control, and their products are much more precisely finished. Their finesse contrasts sharply with the struggles of potters in Europe, where porcelain manufacture did not emerge from the purely empirical stage until the 19th century. Letters written in 1712 and 1722 by a Jesuit missionary who spent some years at Ching-te-chen record that some Ch'ing pieces were handled by as many as 70 men, each contributing a small part to the total effect, and this is one of the reasons why many Ch'ing wares are found to lack the freshness and the spontaneity of Ming decoration.

      The Imperial kilns of Ching-te-chen were fortunate in the support they received from the palace during the reigns of the K'ang-hsi (1661–1722), Yung-chen (1722–35), and Ch'ien-lung (1735–96) emperors. The K'ang-hsi emperor, in particular, was a patron of the arts on a considerable scale.

Underglaze blue and red
      The blue-painted porcelain of the Ch'ing dynasty has been somewhat neglected in the 20th century. This is probably due to the ridiculously high value placed on it during the latter years of the 19th century, when it was often called Nanking ware (Nanking porcelain). Even the best, which belongs to the reign of the K'ang-hsi emperor, hardly bears comparison with the finer Ming wares, though its influence on European porcelain was far-reaching. Blue-and-white (blue-and-white ware) porcelain was exported to Europe in vast quantities, and many of the forms were especially made for export; the condiment ledge on plates and dishes, for instance, which first appeared in the reign of the Wan-li emperor (Ming dynasty), had been added for Western customers (the Chinese used the saucer dish). The blue-and-white of the K'ang-hsi period has an extremely white body, and the blue is exceptionally clear and pure. It is variable in shade, and the design is executed in graduated washes within lightly drawn outlines, a point of difference from Ming wares. Many of the designs of the Ming period were in use, and, of the later patterns, those illustrating literary and historical themes are probably of the highest quality.

      Ginger jars decorated with prunus blossom reserved in white on an irregular blue ground, intended to represent the cracked ice of spring and sometimes described as pulsating, were once valued highly; in the mid-20th century a more realistic attitude was taken toward them.

      Underglaze copper red was also used during the 18th century. The stem cups of the Yung-cheng period with three fruit or three fish in silhouette, which imitate those of Hsüan-te, are much better known than the wares they copied. Copper red also appears in conjunction with underglaze blue, and a greenish-toned glaze is common with pieces thus decorated.

      Underglaze blue was sometimes used as a monochrome ground colour. It was blown on the surface in powder form before glazing; a bamboo tube, closed with gauze at one end, was employed for the purpose. It is thus called powder blue, or, in Chinese, ch'ui ch'ing (“blown blue”), and is distinct from the sponged blue grounds of the Ming dynasty. It was subsequently used at several of the porcelain factories in Europe. Clair du lune (yüeh pai, “moon white”), a cobalt glaze of the palest blue shade, was also used.

Coloured glazes
      Copper red, called oxblood (sang-de-boeuf (sang de boeuf)) by the French, appears in monochrome form as Lang yao. This glaze was also known to the Chinese as “blown red” (ch'ui hung). It was certainly used as a monochrome in early Ming times and possibly even earlier, and is the direct ancestor of the showy flambé glazes (yao pien) of the Ch'ien-lung period that are often vividly streaked with unreduced copper blue.

      Another variation, no doubt at first accidental, is the glaze known in the West as “peach bloom,” a pinkish red mottled with russet spots and tinged with green. The Chinese have various names for it, but perhaps the commonest is “bean red” (chiang-tou hung). It is used on a white body. Most objects glazed in this way are small items for the writer's table.

      Monochromes of all kinds are a distinct and important section of Ch'ing wares, and many reproductions of Sung monochromes were made. The use of iron as a pigment can be seen in a revival of the celadon glaze. The Ching-te-chen celadons have, generally, a pale-green glaze over white porcelain, the foot-ring being given a wash of brown to simulate the old ware. Meanwhile, celadons of the Lung-ch'üan type were still being made. In addition to the celadon glaze, iron was used to produce colours varying between café au lait and pale yellow and also “deadleaf” brown.

      Sometimes panels were reserved in white and painted in overglaze colours. Specimens thus glazed appear in the old Dutch catalogues as Batavian ware, because the wares were imported via the Dutch centre of trade and trans-shipment at Batavia (modern Djakarta), in Java. They are also related to “mirror black” (wu chin), a lustrous colour obtained by the addition of manganese, and sometimes decorated with gilding or even, as in at least one extant specimen, with both gilding and silvering. Imperial yellow, a lead glaze often used over engraved dragons and similar designs, was again employed during the 19th century.

      Brilliant turquoise glazes derived from copper have been produced up to the mid-20th century, although later examples seldom have the quality of the earlier ones. The glaze is usually covered with a network of fine crackle, and in some examples there is engraved decoration under the glaze. Related glazes are the copper greens—for example, leaf green and cucumber green, the latter being speckled with a darker colour. Apple green is an overglaze colour used as a ground and applied over a crackled gray glaze. Most greens are relatively late.

      Purple, or aubergine, glazes derived from manganese are seen occasionally. Brinjal bowls, decorated with engraved flowers, have an aubergine ground in conjunction with dappled green and yellow glazes. (Brinjal, in fact, means aubergine, or eggplant, which is a favourite food in parts of the East.) Bowls with engraved dragons and a combination of only two of these colours are somewhat better in quality.

Overglaze colours
      Overglaze colours were sometimes used as monochromes; for example, iron red or, as it is sometimes called because it varies a little in shade, coral red. The surface is usually glossy but occasionally mat. The rose colour, discussed below, was used both as a monochrome and as a ground colour.

      The wares enamelled on biscuit are a much sought after group. They are a development of the Ming san ts'ai wares, which were still being made during the Ch'ing period. The effect of painting directly on biscuit was to produce a soft and distinctive colouring that is extremely attractive. The outlines were first painted directly on the unglazed surface in brownish black; some of the colours were then painted within these outlines and others were washed over them; however, red or blue overglaze colours, when they appear, are usually provided with a patch of glaze underneath them. The practice seems hardly to have survived the K'ang-hsi (Kangxi) period, except for deliberately made later copies.

      During the reign of the K'ang-hsi emperor the wares decorated overglaze were painted in the famille verte palette, usually over a white glaze. The name famille verte (“green family”) is derived from the distinctive green employed, but the wares are a development of the Wan-li five-colour ware, the major difference being the replacement of the earlier underglaze blue by an overglaze blue. On most genuine examples it is possible to see a distinct halo around the overglaze blue, but its absence does not condemn the piece as not genuine. The famille noire has the verte palette in conjunction with a black ground; the famille jaune uses the same colours, but is used in conjunction with a yellow ground. In each case the white porcelain disappears under the colours.

      During the reign of the K'ang-hsi emperor (c. 1685) an opaque rose-coloured overglaze appears. This and its related colours were called “foreign colours” (yang ts'ai). It soon formed the characteristic colour of a group of wares, referred to as the famille rose, which was particularly developed during the reign of the Yung-cheng emperor. It more or less replaced the verte palette. The translucent overglaze colours of the earlier period tended to become opaque, and painting has a more feminine quality.

      During the 18th century the white wares of Ching-te-chen were made mostly for the home market, though a few were exported. They included examples of the bodiless ware (eggshell porcelain) and the an hua (literally “secret language”). The latter, copied from a traditional Yung-lo (Yongle) (1402–24) type, has designs lightly incised or painted with white slip. The body is white, and the whole is covered with clear glaze. The decoration can only be seen plainly if light is allowed to shine through it. pierced work was revived in certain rare pieces inspired by jade; the use of piercing that was filled with glaze was derived from Persian Gombroon ware.

European influence and the export trade
      Before the mid-18th century, some European wares had found their way to China, as witness certain copies of early Meissen porcelain. The taste of the European trader, though hardly representative of the more cultured section of Western civilization, also began to have influence.

      Much decoration was done in studios in and around the port of Canton, white porcelain being sent from Ching-te-chen for the purpose. Enormous quantities of famille rose porcelain were painted there, including most of the “ruby-backed” dishes, which are completely covered on the reverse, except for the interior of the foot ring, with a ground of overglaze opaque rose. They often have an elaborate arrangement of minutely delineated border patterns around the central subject (usually pretty women), demonstrating the new, and later widespread, idea that the beauty of an object is directly proportional to the amount of decoration on it. This theory was to be one of the causes of the degeneration of later Chinese and Japanese wares; it was, however, by no means confined to the Orient and can be seen in most 19th-century European porcelain.

      The Yung-cheng painters were the first to carry foliate decoration over on to the back of the dish, usually as a prolongation of the stem. This was repeated later during the reign of the Tao-kuang emperor (1820–50). The European tendency to draw flowers in a naturalistic manner also appears in China from the Yung-chen period onward, although the practice was not carried to the same lengths.

      An attempt to imitate the European method of overglaze painting, in which colours were applied in flat washes that partly sank into soft porcelain glazes, can be seen in the “ancient moon pavilion” (ku yüeh hsüan) wares. These will sometimes have a European subject, for example, a Watteau shepherdess, but Chinese subjects were also used.

      Of the wares more directly due to European intervention perhaps the best known is Chinese export porcelain, still sometimes known as Oriental Lowestoft. The name is due to an error on the part of William Chaffers (the author of a book on pottery marks), who persisted in attributing these wares to the small English factory at Lowestoft. If this porcelain is important at all, it is as a curiosity; the artistic value is nearly always negligible. The styles are usually based on those of European pottery or metalwork or on a combination of Western and Oriental motifs in an unpleasing jumble. The designs were provided by Western traders, and coats of arms are comparatively common.

      Other wares connected with the export trade are those decorated with the Mandarin patterns; these came from Cantonese studios and were introduced toward the end of the 18th century. They have figure subjects in panels that are surrounded with coloured grounds and an excess of floral and other ornament in unprepossessing combinations of colours.

      Much white porcelain was sent to Canton to be decorated, but much, too, was shipped to Europe for the same purpose. Many examples were painted by German studio painters, by Dutch enamellers, and by English “outside decorators.”

      Europe, of course, was not the only export market open to the Chinese. Much blue-and-white was exported to the traditional markets in Persia (art and architecture, Iranian) and the Near East (Arabic inscriptions can be seen on some specimens) and elsewhere—India, Thailand, Burma, and Tibet.

      The wares discussed so far have been principally those of Ching-te-chen. Those of Te-hua (Dehua porcelain) in Fukien Province, however, are also important. Figures of the Buddhist goddess Kuan-yin in particular were exported in enormous quantities, and the an hua and pierced decorations often came from Te-hua. Vessels, such as libation cups with applied prunus sprigs, were copied by European factories in the 18th century, notably by those at Meissen, Chelsea and Bow, and Saint-Cloud. The body is usually white, sometimes with an ivory tone, and the glaze is thick, rich, and lustrous. European forms are to be seen occasionally, and most coloured examples have been decorated in the West. The kilns of I-hsing also continued making the traditional wares.

19th and 20th centuries
      The 19th century has little to offer that is new or of good quality. Snuff bottles painted with miniature designs were first made toward the end of the 18th century, but most belong to the reign of the Chia-ch'ing (1796–1820) and Tao-kuang (Daoguang) (1820–50) emperors. Bowls with circular medallions painted in overglaze colours with yellow or rose grounds are, perhaps, among the finer wares. Also of good quality are bowls covered with an opaque ground, rose or yellow, with designs engraved into it. These were first made in the 18th century and extend to the reign of the Tao-kuang emperor.

      Most of the wares of Tao-kuang are poor in quality, although some examples in the style of Yung-cheng are better. The glaze has a musliny texture similar to that seen on some early Ming wares and on Japanese porcelain from Arita. Translucent overglaze colours over underglaze blue are a Yung-cheng type that had a revival at this time. In addition, the rose-verte palette was commonly used.

      In 1853 the Taiping Rebellion led to the destruction of the kilns at Ching-te-chen, which were not rebuilt until 1864. The reign of the T'ung-chih emperor (1861–75) is principally notable for poor copies of earlier monochromes, including the peach-bloom glaze. Nearly all wares from this time onward are slick copies of older work.

Korea
      Because Korea lies to the north of China and close to the islands of Japan, it has usually formed a cultural link between the two countries. During the Japanese invasion of 1592, for instance, many Korean potters were taken to Japan, where they were set to work making tea ceremony wares, which had hitherto been imported, and they later helped to found the porcelain industry.

      It is difficult to distinguish some Korean wares from those made in the northern provinces of China during the contemporary Han to T'ang period. The wares of the Silla period (57 BC–AD 935) include some reminiscent of those of the Chou dynasty. Specimens of stoneware obviously based on metalwork are distantly related to some of the Han bronzes. Patterns on these wares are geometric and incised into the clay before firing.

      An olive-green glaze was introduced later in the Silla dynasty, probably about the 9th century. Roof tiles and finials have a brown or a green glaze and may be contemporary with the Han dynasty.

      The wares of the Koryŏ Dynasty (918–1392; roughly corresponding to the Chinese Sung and Yüan dynasties) exhibit a much greater diversity and fall into rather more clearly defined groups. The attribution of certain black-glazed temmoku types (see above China: Sung dynasty (pottery)) is controversial, but it seems that at least some of them were made in Korea. Many celadons (celadon), too, have typical Korean lobed forms, based on the melon or the gourd. These are also to be seen in porcelain, much of which has a bluish-white glaze. Some lobed boxes, usually circular, are decorated with impressed designs and are probably always Korean.

      One of the difficulties in the study of Korean pottery is that practically everything has been recovered from tombs; few actual kiln sites have been discovered. Nevertheless, one such excavation at Yuch'ŏn-ni has disclosed shards of both the celadon glaze and of white porcelain from which it seems evident that white porcelain resembling both the ying-ch'ing and Ting types was made (see above China: Sung dynasty (pottery)). The earliest vessels were probably fairly close copies of Chinese styles, while the distinctive Korean style followed rather later. A crazing of the glaze and a certain amount of flaking are characteristic. A mere handful of specimens, some fragmentary, of inlaid white porcelain have survived. They are best represented by a vase in the Natural Museum of Modern Arts in the Tŏksu Palace of Seoul that has panels of black-and-white inlay beneath a celadon glaze. Decoration on much Korean porcelain of the period is either incised (foliage being a frequent motif), combed, or molded in shallow relief.

      Korean celadons have a stoneware body covered with a glaze varying from bluish green to a putty colour; some are obviously analogous to the celadons of Yüeh-chou. pottery Characteristic of Korean pots are the stilt or spur marks to be seen on the otherwise glazed base; these are the points on which the pots rested in the kiln. Many of the forms are lobed. Perhaps the most important divergence from the usual Chinese celadon is the presence of inlaid decoration beneath the glaze of many specimens, later examples of which are often referred to as mishima (punch'ŏng pottery).

      The designs were first incised into the clay, and the incisions were then filled with black and white slip. The inlaid patterns are diverse, but most of the subjects are floral; birds are to be seen occasionally. Isolated flowers with symmetrically radiating petals are also found, principally on boxes.

      While most Korean wares of the Yi dynasty (Chosŏn dynasty) (1392–1910) are distinctly rougher than those of China in the Ming and Ch'ing periods, the decoration is often magnificent in quality. Most can be clearly distinguished from Chinese wares by their forms, which show distinct differences in almost every case. Lobed forms suggested by the melon are very characteristic, and the pear-shaped bottle differs in its proportions from that of the Chinese. The large rugged jars with high shoulders are not so precisely potted as similar jars from China, often showing a marked degree of asymmetricality. Twisted rope handles are also peculiar to Korea. Many of the ewers are obvious adaptations from metalwork.

      Painting in brownish black beneath a celadon glaze, which had begun in the Koryŏ dynasty, continued in the Yi dynasty. Inlaid decoration was also executed during the early part of this period, the pattern often being engraved by stamps rather than incised freehand. Sgraffito decoration, in which patterns were incised through a grayish-white slip, is also seen occasionally.

      Some excellent painted designs in an underglaze blue of variable colour but usually distinctly grayish in tone were executed on a rough porcelain body that is almost stoneware. The designs are particularly notable for great economy of brushwork and superb drawing. Their affinities are much more with Japanese pottery than with contemporary Chinese wares. A typical Japanese technique, “brush” (hakeme), or brushed slip, is used in conjunction with painted decoration in the early part of the dynasty, but later it is used alone. Korean influence on Japanese pottery was probably at its strongest during the ascendancy of the Japanese warrior Hideyoshi (1536–98), who invaded Korea. It is unlikely that much important work was done in Korea itself after this invasion.

Japan
      Since Japan is a well-wooded country, wood has always been used for domestic utensils of all kinds, either in a natural state or lacquered. Until recent times, therefore, pottery and porcelain were not employed extensively for general domestic use but were reserved for such special purposes as the tea ceremony (see below). In pottery the Japanese especially admire accidental effects that resemble natural forms. Objects that appear misshapen and glazes that exhibit what would normally be regarded as serious imperfections in the West are admired by the Japanese connoisseur. The Japanese potter liked his work to reveal the impress of the hand that had made it. Marks, such as the ridges left by the fingers in a newly thrown vessel, were frequently accentuated instead of being obliterated, and marks made by tools were often left untouched.

      Hand modelling was practiced long after the wheel was known, and asymmetries and irregularities of form were purposely sought. Similar accidental effects were encouraged in glazing: coloured glazes were allowed to run in streaks and were irregularly applied. They were often thick, with many bubbles, and with a semifluid or treacly appearance. Crackled glazes and those deeply fissured (the latter called dragon skin or lizard skin) were deliberately induced. Painted decoration, frequently blue, brown, or iron red, is often summary and almost calligraphic in its simplicity. The aim was to give an overall effect that resembled such natural objects as stones, in being largely uncontrived.

      From the 15th century onward, the art of the potter was also affected by the elaborate tea ceremony (the cha-no-yu). In its original form it was probably introduced from China by Zen priests, but at the court of the shogun (military governor) Yoshimasa (Ashikaga Yoshimasa) (1435–90), in Kyōto, it developed into a fixed ceremonial pattern. Possibly the ceremony was first exploited as a means of settling feudal disputes. It is held in a small room or pavilion, usually surrounded by a carefully designed garden. When the guests are summoned they enter a sparsely furnished room through a very low doorway. The fact that guests must crawl into the room is thought to have served the purpose of preventing them from concealing a sword under their robes.

      In a recess called the tokonoma, a picture mounted on brocade or silk is hung, and the guests bow to this in appreciation. The tea master puts a little powdered tea in a bowl and pours on it water that has been heated over a charcoal brazier. The tea is whipped to a froth with a bamboo whisk and then passed from hand to hand. The various utensils (the teabowl, tea caddy, water container, boxes, plates, and iron tea kettle) have been carefully selected by the tea master and are often of great age. The tea drinking is followed by a discussion and appreciation of the qualities of the utensils. The bowls are valued for their heat-retaining properties and the way in which they fit the hand as well as for their appearance. Sometimes a newly acquired work of art is produced by the host for the delectation of his guests. Since the tea masters were the aesthetic arbiters, their influence on Japanese pottery was profound.

      The early history of Japan is considerably more obscure than that of China. The first Japanese pottery belongs to the Jōmon (Jōmon culture) period (c. 2500–250 BC). It has a black body, and the decoration is usually an impressed representation of coiled rope or matting (jōmon means “coiled”). Jōmon-shiki (“pottery”) is widely distributed throughout the islands, but complete specimens are very rare. It was followed by Yayoi pottery, specimens of which have been excavated throughout Japan. The body is somewhat finer in quality than Jōmon pottery and is usually red or gray. Decoration is simple, and forms will sometimes show the influence of Korean pottery of the period. It ceased to be produced about the 6th century AD.

      Meanwhile, from about the 3rd to the 6th century AD, large tombs were constructed in the form of oval or circular tumuli from whose bases have been recovered the haniwa (“clay circle”) figures of warriors, women, horses, and so forth. They are hollow, and, though vigorously modelled, they are more primitive than analogous tomb figures from China.

      In the Asuka (Asuka period) or Sueki period (AD 552–710) that followed, wares are much more sophisticated. Unlike the preceding types, they were made with a wheel, and firing took place in a rudimentary kiln at a much higher temperature than previously. Widespread manufacture continued through the Nara period (710–794) and the early part of the following Heian (Heian period), or Fujiwara, period (794–1185). Some examples have a smear glaze, no doubt at first caused accidentally by wood ashes coming into contact with the surface. Three colours of glaze—green, yellowish brown, and white—were used either alone or in combination and resemble those of T'ang earthenware. Pottery of this kind has been found around Ōsaka and Kyōto. The principal pottery productions of the period were vases, dishes, bowls, and bottles of various descriptions.

      The influence of Korea and of T'ang China is noticeable. Toward the end of the Heian period contacts with China were severed, and there was a corresponding decline in the art of pottery; even the traditional Sueki ware disappeared.

Kamakura and Muromachi periods (Muromachi period) (1192–1573)
      A revival in the Kamakura period (1192–1333) followed the visit of the potter Katō Shirōzaemon (Tōshirō) to China in 1227, where he learned the secrets of pottery making. He established himself at Seto (Seto ware), Owari (now Aichi Prefecture), which speedily became a large centre of manufacture. There were soon about 200 kilns in the vicinity making a variety of wares, some of which were glazed in black in imitation of the temmoku wares of China (see above China: Sung dynasty (pottery)). The early wares were mainly for ritual purposes, but by the beginning of the Muromachi, or Ashikaga, period (1338–1573) teabowls, plates, jars, and saucers of domestic utility were also being made. Wares of the Kamakura period are decorated with incised designs or with impressed or applied ornament. The Muromachi wares are much plainer as the result of the growing influence of the tea ceremony, especially the wabi school of the cult, which concentrated on rustic simplicity. The wares of both of these periods have a feldspathic glaze, but the Muromachi glaze is more even in quality than the Kamakura, which has a tendency to run in rivulets. A transitional type has a soft-yellowish glaze or a dark-brown glaze sometimes called Seto temmoku.

      A large number of kilns were in existence, the more important known as the “six pottery centres of ancient Japan.” These were Seto; Tokoname (also in Aichi Prefecture), which may have exceeded Seto in the size of its production; Bizen (Bizen ware) (Okayama Prefecture), which has produced an excellent unglazed stoneware from the Heian period to the 20th century; Tamba (Kyōto Prefecture); Shigaraki (Shiga Prefecture); and Echizen (Fukui Prefecture). The wares of Seto, especially those made for Buddhist ceremonies, were regarded as the finest pottery of this period.

Azuchi-Momoyama period (1573–1600)
      Production had been interrupted during the civil wars of the 15th and 16th centuries. Toward the end of the 16th century the Seto kilns were removed for a time to the Gifu Prefecture of Mino Province, where they received the protection of the feudal baron (daimyo) of Toki. The Mino pottery was founded by Katō Yosabei, whose sons started other potteries in the vicinity, notably that under the aegis of the tea master Furuta Oribe Masashige. New kilns were also built elsewhere, and pottery, while retaining its importance in the tea ceremony, became much more widely used for ordinary purposes. The inspiration for most of its shapes and designs came from the Mino region. The later wares of these kilns are much less austere than those attributed to the Muromachi period, since the cult of the tea ceremony, now widespread, had lost something of its earlier simplicity. Characteristic tea ceremony wares of the early years of the 17th century are Shino (Shino ware), which has a thick, crackled glaze and is sometimes summarily painted in blue or brown; yellow Seto (ki-Seto), whose crackled yellow glaze covers a stoneware body; and, at Narumi, in the adjoining Owari region, a ware of the kind associated with Oribe (Oribe ware) (which had become a generic term for pottery influenced by the tea master of that name), which is glazed in white, straw colour, yellowish green, and pinkish red, with sometimes the addition of slight painting in brown.

      Toward the end of the 16th century the tea ceremony was reformed by Sen Rikyū (1521–91), the tea master to the military dictator of Japan, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Sen Rikyū was principally responsible for the replacement of the hitherto much admired temmoku bowls from China by others patterned after unsophisticated Korean wares (Jian ware); his influence has persisted to the 20th century. In the 1590s Hideyoshi twice invaded Korea, and as a result of these wars many Korean potters were taken to Japan, where their influence was considerable.

      A tilemaker named Ameya, who is said to have been a Korean, introduced a type of ware that was covered with a lead glaze and fired at a comparatively low temperature. His son Tanaka Chōjirō and his family extended this technique to the tea bowl, and in about 1588 their wares were brought to the notice of Hideyoshi, who awarded them a gold seal engraved with the word raku (raku ware) (“felicity”). The raku, made in Kyōto, are among the most famous of all Japanese wares. The shape of the vessels is extremely simple: a wide straight-sided bowl set on a narrow base. At first the glaze was dark brown, but a light orange red was developed later, to be followed in the 17th century by a straw colour. Still later, green and cream and other colours were introduced. Tea-bowls attributed to the first Chōjirō are greatly valued in Japan.

      The kilns of Karatsu (Karatsu ware), a district in the north of Hizen Province, may have been established by Korean potters, since the influence of Korea is perceptible in some of them. The term Karatsu ware encompasses a great variety of shapes and styles: “undecorated” (muji), “painted” (e), “speckled” (madara), in the Korean style (Chosen), which has a thick opaque glaze, and in the style of Seto, which has a white glaze. The earliest Karatsu ware belongs probably to the end of the 16th century, although it is sometimes awarded a still earlier date. Most surviving examples belong to the 17th century. The most valued pieces are those made for the tea ceremony.

George Savage

Edo period (Tokugawa period) (1603–1867)
      According to tradition, the first Japanese porcelain was made in the early 16th century after Shonzui Goradoyu-go brought back the secret of its manufacture from the Chinese kilns at Ching-te-chen (Jingdezhen). Another account claims that Ri Sampei, a Korean potter who was brought to Japan by Hideyoshi, discovered porcelain clay in the Izumi Mountain near Arita (Saga Prefecture); this version is feasible since no porcelain made before the end of the 16th century has been identified.

      The first Arita manufacture was decorated in blue underglaze, simple and excellent in quality. Specimens soon found their way to Europe in Dutch ships, and the Dutch were awarded a trading monopoly in 1641. Some of these early Japanese export wares are based on contemporary European metalwork and faience.

      The family of Sakaida (Sakaida Family) is especially connected with the Arita kilns. The first recorded member, born about 1596, worked in underglaze blue until the family learned the secret of using overglaze colours. According to tradition, it was told to them by a Chinese met by chance in the port of Nagasaki. This overglaze technique was perfected soon after the middle of the 17th century. It was continued by the family, and, since many of them were called Kakiemon (Kakiemon ware), the style has become known by that name. The palette is easily recognized—iron red, bluish green, light blue, yellow, and sometimes a little gilding; many examples have a chocolate-brown rim. Octagonal and square shapes are especially frequent. Themes of decoration are markedly asymmetrical, with much of the white porcelain surface left untouched. This technique and style spread rapidly to other provinces, and its influence on porcelain that was manufactured in Europe during the first half of the 18th century was at least as great as that of Chinese porcelain. A later Kakiemon development in which “brocade” (nishikide) patterns in compartments were used (at the suggestion of Dutch traders) proves to be less pleasing. These later coloured wares from Arita became known as Imari (Imari ware), after the port from which they were shipped.

      Like 18th-century Chinese white porcelain, Japanese white wares were shipped to Europe, where they were decorated by Dutch and other European enamellers.

      Of considerable importance but more rarely seen in Europe is the porcelain called Kutani (Kutani ware). The kiln at Kutani in Kaga Province (now in Ishikawa Prefecture) operated in the latter half of the 17th century. Greatly valued, Old Kutani (ko- Kutani) porcelain is among the finest of the Japanese wares. The body is heavy, approaching stonewares, and the designs are executed boldly and in rich colours. Old Kutani was revived and other styles arose when kilns in the area resumed operation in the early 19th century and again in the 1860s, the latter resulting in the establishment of modern “Kutani ware” as a major export item.

      The Mikawachi (Mikawachi porcelain) kilns under the protection of the prince of Hirado made porcelain principally for his use. The delicate, very white body is usually decorated in miniature style with underglaze blue. Kyōto imitated Sung celadons and the Ming green and red wares. Seto made no porcelain until about 1807; the first production was decorated in underglaze blue (sometsuke). Overglaze colours date from about 1835.

      The manufacture of earthenware was continued during the 17th and 18th centuries, and much of it is notable for its decoration. Toward the end of the 17th century, Ninsei (Nonomura Seisuke) began work at Kyōto and was responsible for much finely enamelled decoration on a cream earthenware body covered with a finely crackled glaze. Also produced at Kyōto, the works of Kenzan (Ogata Kenzan), who used rich and subtly coloured slips often as a background for plant motives, and of the Dōhachi family, famous for their overglaze decoration, are much sought after in Japan.

19th and 20th centuries
      Japanese productions during the 19th century, in common with those in most other parts of the world, greatly deteriorated in taste. Typical of the period is the so-called Satsuma pottery, most of which was made not at Satsuma but at Kyōto and then sent to Tokyo to be decorated especially for export. The designs are overcrowded and debased, and its popularity undoubtedly retarded an appreciation of work in the true Japanese taste among Western students and collectors.

      Like Western pottery manufacture in the mid-20th century, Japan's is largely industrialized, and most products are derivative, but the Japanese tradition of pottery making in small and private kilns continues.

George Savage Ed.

Thailand and Annam
      Pottery was made in the old Siamese capitals of Sukhothai and Sawankhalok. It is also thought that potteries persisted at Ayutthaya until the 18th century. Little is known of the early history of the region, and definite information on its pottery is almost nonexistent. Dating of the pottery from these regions for the most part has been by analogy with related Chinese wares, which greatly influenced Siamese (Thailand) work.

      Kilns have been excavated on the site of old Sawankhalok, about 200 miles (320 kilometres) north of Bangkok. The principal type of ware is a grayish-white stoneware covered with a translucent celadon glaze, usually grayish green in colour. The glaze is commonly crackled; this appears to be fortuitous, since little trouble was taken to achieve a precise finish. A particularly common decoration consists of roughly scored vertical flutes, with incised circles at the shoulder to accentuate the form. Decoration of a more definite kind is always incised under the glaze and is usually floral. Flowers are stylized, sometimes with combed lines on the petals. Covered bowls, dishes, ewers, and bottles with two small loop handles at the neck are the most common forms.

      Another type of ware, with similar forms, has a rather treacly-brown glaze. Some well-modelled animals are found with this glaze. There are also tiles and bricks with crudely modelled figures in relief on them. They are analogous in form and technique to Chinese pottery of the Sung dynasty and are generally regarded as being contemporary with the Sung or Yüan period. Some small covered jars of a gray porcelaneous ware, summarily decorated with stylized floral and foliate patterns, appear to have been made at Sawankhalok (the date is probably equivalent to that of the early Ming period). These Martabani wares were widely exported throughout the East during this period.

      Little is known of wares made in Annam, but some brownish celadons are regarded as likely to have been made there, as well as some small covered jars painted in a poor underglaze blue.

American Indian pottery
      The American Indians are of Asiatic descent; their route to the New World was from Siberia into Alaska across the Bering Straits. The usually quoted period of their migration is between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago. Since they were nomadic peoples, it is unlikely that they brought the knowledge of pottery making with them. When pottery making did begin, it was fundamentally unlike any known work from the Old World, and the few remote resemblances to Oriental motifs are almost certainly fortuitous. The wheel remained unknown until the arrival of Europeans, although there is reason to think that a turntable, or slow wheel, may have been used occasionally. Most of the pottery was made by coiling, some by molding—both are techniques that could have arisen spontaneously. It is likely that most of the work was done by women rather than by the men. This is nearly always the case with primitive potters when the wheel is not used, and Pueblo Indian women still do this kind of work.

      Slips were used to cover the body, and coloured slips provided the material for much of the painted freehand decoration. Glazes are rare, although examples can be found among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico from about AD 1300 onward, on a few vessels from the Chimú area in the Andes, and occasionally in Central America. The effect of a reducing atmosphere was understood, so that gray and black pots are found as well as the red and brown ones fired in an oxidizing flame. Undecorated surfaces were often highly polished.

North America
      The most important North American pottery (Native American art) was made in the southwest—an area including Arizona, New Mexico, and also parts of Utah and Colorado. The people who inhabited the plateau land from about 100 BC are often referred to as the Ancestral Pueblo (Ancestral Pueblo culture). They are the ancestors of the Pueblo, who began to emerge about AD 700. The Ancestral Pueblo were nomadic hunters; although they did not at first make pottery, they did make excellent baskets. Fixed dwellings appear about AD 50, and this probably marks the beginning of pottery manufacture. The earliest pots appear to have been baskets that were smeared with clay and then dried in the sun.

      Next came basket-shaped wares coiled in a gray body, used principally for cooking. They were followed by more decorative bowls and pots, with striking black and white geometric designs that seem to have been executed about AD 700. Slightly later there is another type of ware that has black decoration on a red slip. After the 12th century the earlier types began to disappear and were replaced by polychrome wares decorated with stylized birds, feathers, animals, and human figures amid the geometric patterns. The principal colours are yellow and red. A small quantity of glazed ware was made in the Zuñi area of New Mexico.

      The Hohokam (Hohokam culture) tribes (a Pima word meaning “those who have gone”), who lived in the desert of southern Arizona and were approximately contemporary with the Ancestral Pueblo, made pottery figures for religious purposes, usually of crudely modelled naked women. Some of this pottery is a gray ware, but most of it is buff, with decoration in iron red that has a quality lacking the stiffness of the Pueblo designs.

      The Mogollon culture of New Mexico produced, during the Mimbres period of the 11th and 12th centuries, a ware remarkable for its lively black and white decoration depicting human, animal, and insect forms in a much less stylized manner than the paintings on most other wares from the southwest.

      There is little pottery of importance from other parts of the United States. Primitive pots have been found on the Atlantic coast, in Georgia and Florida, on the Gulf Coast, and elsewhere, some of which are based on basketwork. Geometric decoration, usually incised, is the rule. Eskimo pottery, which is generally rather crude, bears some resemblance to early Asiatic types.

      The pottery of Mexico and the rest of Central America is of considerable interest, but the wares are so diverse that it is impossible to summarize them adequately. They probably date from the 2nd millennium BC onward and were made by the Mayas (Maya), the Zapotecs (Zapotec), the Toltecs (Toltec), and the Aztecs (Aztec). Generally speaking, geometric patterns are common, and slips in black, brown, white, or red were frequently used. A curiosity of Central America (possibly adopted from South America) is a technique that resembles to some degree the batik method of dyeing textiles.

      The surface of the pot was coated with either wax or gum. This was then scraped away in part to form a predetermined pattern, and the whole surface of the pot was covered with pigment. In firing, the gum burned away, leaving only the scraped parts in colour. Ornament carved in low relief after firing is to be seen occasionally and has few parallels outside the Americas. An unusual technique from the Mexican highlands consisted of covering the whole surface of the pot with a kind of thick slip, most of which was then scraped away, leaving only thin partitions. These compartments were filled with slips of a contrasting colour. The commonest shapes are bowls and wide-mouthed vases; many of these were made with legs, usually three, so that they could be set down on uneven ground. Figurines, some of which are painted, have also been found.

      Between about 600 BC and AD 1000, the Mayas were making an excellent polychrome pottery in which designs in red and black were painted on a cream or orange slip. Between roughly the 4th and the 10th centuries AD, the Zapotecs, whose chief ceremonial site was Monte Albán in Oaxaca State, made striking urns in the forms of their gods. An orange-coloured pottery decorated in a great diversity of styles is associated with the Toltecs, as is a dark-coloured pottery with a glossy appearance and incised ornament (plumbate ware). Both of these types were widely distributed throughout Central America from the 11th to the 14th century. Little is known of the Aztecs until about 1325, the date of the foundation of Tenochtitlán (Mexico City). Much of their later pottery utilizes an orange-burning clay that was painted with black curvilinear geometric motifs, in contrast to their earlier rectilinear style. During the period of Montezuma I in the 15th century, designs became more naturalistic, and birds (animal), fish, and plant forms were freely utilized. European motifs first appear after the conquest, and such techniques as tin glazing were used from the 17th century onward.

South America
      Most South American pottery (Native American art) was made at centres in the Andes and on the west coast, particularly in Bolivia and Peru. Pottery of lesser importance comes from Ecuador, Colombia, northwest Argentina, and northern Chile. In some places a very high degree of skill was attained, especially in the central Andes, where the earliest wares seem to date from the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Much of the pottery was made in molds. The stirrup-shaped spout on many jars is a characteristic feature. The batik type of decoration already mentioned was also used. Vessels were modelled in the shape of animal or human figures, which were also used as motifs for painted decoration. The puma god worshipped by the early peoples appears in many forms. Depictions of erotic themes also appear in South American pottery, particularly in the Mochica (Moche) and Chimú cultures.

 The work of the Mochica culture, which flourished around the northern coast of Peru, is at its best about the 7th century AD. Jars in the form of human heads, some of which may be portraits, are remarkable both for the naturalism of the treatment and the skill of the potter. These have the stirrup spout (see photograph—>). Painted decoration is often stylized although with a considerable degree of realism, and the subjects are nearly always ceremonial or religious nature.

      The pottery of the Nazcas (Nazca), who lived on the southern coast of Peru at much the same period, is noted for its painting. A varied palette included several shades of red and blue, yellow, orange, green, brown, black, gray, and white. The stirrup spout here becomes two spouts joined by a flat bridge. The earliest painting is on a red ground, white grounds becoming more common later. Geometric patterns are to be seen in conjunction with stylized birds, human heads, and the like. The naturalistic portrait jars of the Mochica do not appear, but there are some vessels in the form of figures modelled in a much more conventional style and similarly painted. Puma's heads occur in relief, with the body of the animal completed in brushwork. The centipede god is a motif that does not appear elsewhere.

      The people of Tiwanaku, who lived in the region around Lake Titicaca, were influenced by the Nazca wares, though painted decoration, often carried out on a red slip ground, is more limited in colour than the Nazca. The puma head was used as a motif. In general, decoration is extremely stylized with a very strong geometric flavour.

      The Chimú culture succeeded the Mochica in the northern area and lasted until the arrival of the Incas. The most familiar ware is in a body that varies from gray to black, although a red polished ware, sometimes painted in white slip, was also made. The influence of the Mochica tradition can be seen in the retention of the stirrup spout on some jars; others have the double spout connected by a flat bridge. The modelled wares of the Mochica culture were also revived but are of a generally inferior quality.

      The Incas (Inca) originally settled in Cuzco, the old capital of Peru, at the end of the 11th century. During the 15th century they established themselves over a wide area, including the territory of the Chimús. They were principally soldiers and administrators with small inclination toward luxury; and their pottery, of excellent quality particularly in the 15th century, is designed without an excess of decoration. Most Inca pottery is red polished ware. It is usually painted with geometric designs in red, white, and black, although relief decoration is also seen on black ware, especially from the Chimú region.

      The commonest surviving form has been called an aryballos, although its resemblance to the Greek form is remote and fortuitous. It has a conical base, and the neck finishes in a flaring mouth. Two loop handles are set low on the body. The assumption that this vessel was made for carrying water on the back seems a little doubtful in view of its shape and the disposition of the handles. Little fine pottery was made after the arrival of the Spaniards in the 16th century.

George Savage

Additional Reading
Books on pottery are fairly numerous, but of those that have been written for the popular market many are not always reliable and much information is duplicated among them. The following titles may be regarded as standard or major works. Two good introductory surveys are George Savage, Pottery Through the Ages (1963) and Porcelain Through the Ages, 2nd ed. (1963). Robert J. Charleston (ed.), World Ceramics (1968), is a lavishly illustrated history of ceramics written by many noted specialists in Europe and the United States. Highly recommended is W.B. Honey, European Ceramic Art, from the End of the Middle Ages to about 1815, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1963), which has a comprehensive list of marks and an excellent bibliography. Also useful is Emil Hannover, Keramisk Haandbag, 2 vol. (1919–24; Eng. trans., Pottery and Porcelain, 3 vol., 1925); and Warren Cok, The Book of Pottery and Porcelain (1944). George Savage, The Dictionary of Antiques (1970), includes information about continental wares on a less comprehensive scale, but its extensive bibliography has been brought up to date. It also differentiates between works in print and those available only in libraries or secondhand. For the technical side of pottery, see Bernard Leach, A Potter's Book (1940); W.B. Honey, The Art of the Potter (1946); and Paul Rado, An Introduction to the Technology of Pottery (1969). Factory marks are discussed and listed in W.B. Honey and John P. Cushion, Handbook of Pottery and Porcelain Marks, 3rd rev. ed. (1965); Cushion has also published separate handbooks on English Ceramic Marks and Those of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland (1959), on German Ceramic Marks and Those of Other Central European Countries (1961), and on French and Italian Ceramic Marks (1965). Geoffrey Gooden, Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Procelain Marks (1964), is another recommended source. William Chaffers, Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain, 14th ed. (1931), formerly the standard work, has now been superseded and is sometimes inaccurate. More specialized is Arthur Behse, Deutsche Fayencemarken–Brevier (1955), which should be consulted for German wares. Ceramic terms are defined by George Savage and H. Newman in the Illustrated Dictionary of Ceramic Terms (1973). See also Robert Fournier, Illustrated Dictionary of Pottery Form (1981). Books dealing specifically with the pottery of the ancient Near East and Egypt are scarce. See Walter Andrae (ed.), Coloured Ceramics from Assur (1925); and Henry Walles, Egyptian Ceramic Art (1898). More information will be found in books dealing with the arts of the ancient Near East and Egypt. Works on ancient pottery from the Aegean region and pottery from ancient Greece and Italy are fairly numerous. A comprehensive selection is listed below. Henry B. Walters, A History of Ancient Pottery, 2 vol. (1905, reprinted 1971); Charles F. Seltman, Attic Vase-Painting (1933); Vincent d'Arba Desborough, Protogeometric Pottery (1952); G.M.A. Rechfer, A Handbook of Greek Art, 6th ed. (1969); Ancient Italy (1955); Attic Red-Figured Vases: A Survey, 2nd ed. (1958); and The Craft of Athenian Pottery (1923); Arthur Lane, Greek Pottery, 3rd ed. (1971); Robert H. Cook, Greek Painted Pottery (1960); T.B.L. Webster, Greek Terracottas (1951); Robert J. Charleston, Roman Pottery (1955); John D. Beazley, Etruscan Vase Painting (1947). Historical comparisons with modern methods and procedures are the basis of D.P.S. Peacock, Pottery in the Roman World (1982).There are few works on Islāmic pottery easily available. The best are Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery, rev. ed. (1958) and Later Islamic Pottery, 2nd ed. (1972); see also Maurece S. Dimand, A Handbook of Muhammadan Art, 3rd ed. rev. (1958); and Robert L. Hobson, A Guide to Islamic Pottery of the Near East (1932). Where they exist, the titles of English works on Western pottery are given below. Those listed in other languages are illustrated works that will supplement the deficiency of works in English. In the case of porcelain, English works that discuss the wares of individual factories are given only in special cases since they are extremely numerous and most general works on the subject include a bibliography. Contemporary European and American developments are well covered in Tamara Préaud and Serge Gauthier, Ceramics of the 20th Century (1982); and Richard Zakin, Electric Kiln Ceramics (1981). (Spain): Alice W. Frothengham, Catalogue of Hispano-Moresque Pottery in the Collection of the Hispanic Society of America (1936); Talavera Pottery, with a Catalogue of the Collection of the Hispanic Society of America (1944); Lustreware of Spain (1951); Albert van der Put, Hispano-Moresque Ware of the XVth Century (1904). (Italy): Joseph Chompret, Repertoire de la Mojolique Italienne, 2 vol. (1949); Bernard Rackham, Guide to Italian Maiolica (1933); Catalogue of Italian Maiolica, 2 vol. (1940); and Italian Maiolica (1952)—Rackham's books are the best source of information in English; Arthur Lane, Italian Porcelain (1954); Giuseppe Morazzoni, Le Porcellane Italiane (1935). (France and Belgium): Charles Damiron, La Faience artistique de Moustiers (1919) and La Faience de Lyon (1926); Jeanne Giacomoffe, Faiences françaises (1963; Eng. trans., French Faience, 1963); Hans Haug, Les Faiences et porcelaines de Strasbourg (1922); Arthur Lane, French Faience, 2nd ed. (1970), the best introduction to the subject; Francois Ponceiton and George Salles, Les Poteries Françaises (1928); Paul Alfassa and Jacques Guerin Porcelaine française du XVIIe au milieu du XIXe siecle (1932); Emile Bourgeois, Le Biscuit de Sevres au XVIIIe siecle, 2 vol. (1909); W.B. Honey, French Porcelain of the 18th Century (1950); Eugene J. Soil de Moraine, La Manufacture imperiale et royale de porcelain de Tournay, 3rd ed. of his Ceramique tournaisienne by Lucien Delplace de Formanoir (1937); George Savage, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century French Porcelain (1960); Pierre Verlet, Serge Grandjean, and Marcelle Brunet, Sevres (1953). (Germany and Austria): Karl Koetschau, Rheinisches Steinzeug (1924); Hans Meyer, Böhmisches Porzellan and Steingut (1927); Gustav E. Pazaurek, Deutsche Fayence and Porzellan-Hausmaler, 2 vol. (1925, reprinted 1970) and Steingut: Formgebung and Geschichte (1921); D. Riesebieter, Die deutschen Fayencen des 17. and 18. Jahrhunderts (1921), the most comprehensive general work on the subject; Edmund W. Braun and Joseph Folhesics, Geschichte der K.K. Wiener Porzellan-Manufaktur (1907); Hans Christ, Ludwigsburger Porzellan-figuren (1921); John F. Hayward, Viennese Porcelain of the Du Paquier Period (1952); Friedrich H. Hofmann, Frankenthaler Porzellan, 2 vol. (1911); Geschichte der Bayerischen Porzellan-Manufaktur Nymphenburg, 3 vol. (1921–23); and Das Porzellan-Manufaktur Nymphenburg, 3 vol. (1921–23); and Das Porzellan der Europäischen Manufakturen im 18. Jahrhundert (1932); V.B. Honey, Dresden China, 2nd ed. (1954) and Germain Porcelain (1948); Georg Lenz, Berliner Porzellan: Die Manufaktur Friedrichs des Grossen, 1763–1786, 2 vol. (1913); Hugo Morley-Fletcher, Antique Porcelain in Color: Meissen (1971); E. Poche, Bohemian Porcelain (n.d.); Karl Roeder and Hiche Oppenheim, Das Höchster Porzellan (1925); Hak Sauerlandt, Deutsche Porzellanfiguren des XVIII. Jahrhunderts (1923); George Savage, 18th–Century German Porcelain, 2nd ed. (1967); Christian Scherer, Das Fürstenberger Porzellan (1909). (Switzerland): Siegfried Ducret, Zürcher Porzellan des 18. Jahrhunderts (1944). (The Netherlands); Caroline H. de Jonge, Delft Aardewerk (1965; Eng. trans., Delft-Ceramics, 1969) and Nederlandse tegels (1971; Eng. trans., Dutch Tiles, 1971); Ferrand W. Hudig, Delfter Fayence (1929); Jean Justice, Dictionnaire des marques et monogrammes de la faïence de Delft (1920; Eng. trans., Dictionary of Marks and Monograms of Delft Pottery, (1930); Elisabeth Neurdenburg, Old Dutch Pottery and Tiles (Eng. trans., 1923); Bernard Rackham, Early Netherlands Maiolica (1926), a discussion of the earliest pre-Delft wares. (Scandinavia): Richard Karsson, Die Stralsunder Fayencefabrik, 1757–1790 (1920); Arthur Hayden, Royal Copenhagen Porcelain (1911); Erik Vettergren, The Modern Decorative Arts of Sweden (Eng. trans. 1926). (Russia): Georgy Lukomsky, Russisches Porzellan, 1774–1923 (1924); Karvin C. Ross, Russian Porcelains (1968). (England): Harry Barnard, Chats on Wedgwood Ware (1924); Geoffrey Bemrose, Nineteenth Century English Pottery and Porcelain (1952); Frederick H. Garner, English Delftware (1948); John E. and Edith Hodgkin, Examples of Early English Pottery, Named, Dated and Inscribed (1891); Eliza Heteyard, The Life of Josiah Wedgwood, 2 vol. (1865); Ernest Korton Nance, The Pottery and Porcelain of Swansea and Nantgarn (1942); V.J. Pountney, Old Bristol Potteries (1920); E. Stanley Price, John Sadler, a Liverpool Pottery Printer (1949); Bernard Rackham, Mediaeval English Pottery (1947) and Early Staffordshire Pottery (1951); Bernard Rackham and Herbert Read, English Pottery: Its Development from Early Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1924); George V. Rhead, The Earthenware Collector (1920); Josiah Wedgwood, Selected Letters, ed. by Ann Finer and George Savage (1965); Donald Touner, Handbook of Leeds Pottery (1951); Frederick Williamson, The Derby Pot Manufacturing Known as Cockpit Hill (1931); Hugh Wakefield, Victorian Pottery (1962); Patterson D. Gordon Pugh, Staffordshire Portrait Figures and Allied Subjects of the Victorian Era (1971); Muriel Rose, Artist-Potters in England (1955); Joseph L. Dixon, English Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century (1952); English Ceramic Circle, English Pottery and Porcelain: Commemorative Catalogue of an Exhibition Held at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1949); Stanley W. Fisher, The Decoration of English Porcelain (1954) and English Blue and White Porcelain of the 18th Century (1947); Geoffrey Godden, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Porcelain (1966); V.B. Honey, Old English Porcelain (1948); William King, English Porcelain Figures of the Eighteenth Century (1925); George Savage, 18th-Century English Porcelain, new ed. (1964); Cyril Cook, The Life and Work of Robert Hancock (1948); William Duesbury's London Account Book, 1751–1753, with an introduction by Mrs. Donald Mcalister (1931); William H. Tapp, Jefferyes Hamett O'Neal, 1734–1801 (1938). (American Indian pottery): G.H.S. Bushwell and Adrian Digby, Ancient American Pottery (1955); Wolfgang Haberland, The Art of North America (1964). (United States): John Ramsay, American Potters and Pottery (1939); Edwin A. Barber, Tulip Ware of the Pennsylvania-German Potters (1903); Warren Cok, The Book of Pottery and Porcelain, vol. 2 (1944). (China): The best general work is still V.B. Honey, The Ceramic Art of China, and Other Countries of the Far East (1945); but Robert L. Hobson, Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, 2 vol. (1915), is often consulted. Hobson's Wares of the Ming Dynasty (1923) and Later Ceramic Wares of China (1925), are scholarly works, well illustrated for their period. Chinese Art, 4 vol. (1960–65), by a number of internationally known experts, covers the whole field of Chinese art, including pottery and porcelain, and is of considerable value to the student. The earliest Chinese wares are discussed in English by Chin-ting Wu in Prehistoric Pottery in China (1938). Wares till the Sung dynasty are discussed by Basil Gray in Early Chinese Pottery and Porcelain (1952); and by Arthur L. Heterington in Early Ceramic Wares of China (1922) and Chinese Ceramic Glazes, 2nd rev. ed. (1948). For wares of the Ming dynasty and subsequently, see Roger Soake Jenyns, Ming Pottery and Porcelain (1953) and Later Chinese Porcelain, 2nd ed. (1959). See also Yutaka Mino, Freedom of Clay and Brush Through Seven Centuries in Northern China (1981); Mary Tregear, Song Ceramics (1982). (Korea): G. St. G.K. Gompertz, Korean Celadon, and Other Wares of the Koryö Period (1963); and Chevon Kim, The Ceramic Art of Korea (1961); V. B. Honey, Corean Pottery (1947). (Japan): Japanese porcelain is better documented than the pottery of that country. Roger Soake Jenyns, Japanese Porcelain (1965), is the definitive work in English on the subject. See also Taoanare Mitsuoka, Ceramic Art of Japan (1949); and Roger Soake Jenyns, Japanese Pottery (1971). (Chinese and Japanese export porcelain): This includes works on the erroneously termed Oriental Lowestoft. Michel Beurdeley, Porcelaine de la compagnie des Indes (1962; Eng. trans., Porcelain of the East India Companies; U.S. title, Chinese Trade Porcelain; 1962); Sir Harry M. Garner, Oriental Blue and White, 3rd ed. (1970), discusses early blue-and-white export wares; John A. Lloyd Hyde, Oriental Lowestoft (1954); Jean Mcclure Mudge, Chinese Export Porcelain for American Trade, 1785–1835 (1962); John G. Phillips, China Trade Porcelain (1956); Walter A. Staehelin, The Book of Porcelain (1966), a book of Chinese illustrations relating to the export trade in the 18th century; Sir A. Tudor Craig, Armorial Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century (1925); T. Volker, Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company (1954), an examination of the records in relation to the import of Chinese and Japanese porcelain in the 17th century.

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Universalium. 2010.

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