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Ceramic Arts — Babel Nexus Index

The Applied Art of Clay & Fire

A Level I science chamber of the Babel Nexus Index · 21 primary public-domain works.

What Ceramic Arts argues

  • This is the hexagonal gallery of Ceramic Arts — the applied art of clay and fire: the making of pottery and porcelain and the long study of how it is shaped, glazed, and fired. It is the shelf of the potter's manual, the connoisseur's handbook, and the history of the kiln, from prehistoric earthenware to the porcelain of China and the great factories of Europe.
  • It gathers the founders of ceramic history and the teachers of the craft — Marryat, Chaffers, and Jewitt on the wares of the world, Hobson on the porcelain of China, Petrie and Richter on the pottery of the ancient world, and the studio manuals of Binns, Cox, and White that taught the wheel and the glaze. Each is a record of the potter's art made teachable and reproducible in print.
  • Every card carries an authentic public-domain likeness of its author where one survives, or a scan of a public-domain edition where none does; all the works are in the public domain.

Primary works in Ceramic Arts (21)

Chambers connected to Ceramic Arts

  • Handicraft — Ceramic art is handicraft in clay — the same disciplined making of useful and beautiful things that the pattern book and the workshop manual teach in thread and letter. The potter's wheel and the kiln belong to the same world of technique passed hand to hand and set down in print.
  • Chemistry — Pottery is applied chemistry — the transformation of earth by fire. Clay bodies, glazes, and the control of the kiln are matters of composition and reaction, and the potter's craft advanced hand in hand with the chemistry of materials.
  • Engineering — The Staffordshire potteries and the Wedgwood works were engineering as much as art — kilns, moulds, and the division of labour that turned the potter's craft into a modern industry. Ceramic making is construction by rule and method, shaped for production.