Pottery


 
 
Concept Explanation
 

Pottery

Pottery: Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard, durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made by a potter is also called a pottery

Pots  were needed for storing excess grain and milk and water. During the Neolithic Age, humans learnt to make vessels of clay and bake them on fire.

Many kinds of earthen pots have also been found. These were sometimes decorated, and were used for storing things. People began using pots for cooking food, especially grains like rice, wheat and lentils that now became an important part of the diet. They began weaving cloth, using different kinds of materials, for example cotton, that could now be grown. In many areas, men and women still continued to hunt and gather food and elsewhere people adopted farming and herding slowly, over several thousand years.

Pottery is made by forming a ceramic (often clay) body into objects of a desired shape and heating them to high temperatures (600-1600 °C) in a bonfire, pit or Kiln and induces reactions that lead to permanent changes including increasing the strength and rigidity of the object. Much pottery is purely utilitarian, but much can also be regarded as ceramic art. A clay body can be decorated before or after firing.

Clay-based pottery can be divided into three main groups:

  • earthenware,
  • stoneware
  • Porcelain.
  • These require increasingly more specific clay material, and increasingly higher firing temperatures. All three are made in glazed and unglazed varieties, for different purposes. All may also be decorated by various techniques. In many examples the group a piece belongs to is immediately visually apparent, but this is not always the case. The fritware of the Islamic world does not use clay, so technically falls outside these groups. Historic pottery of all these types is often grouped as either "fine" wares, relatively expensive and well-made, and following the aesthetic taste of the culture concerned, or alternatively "coarse", "popular", "folk" or "village" wares, mostly undecorated, or simply so, and often less well-made.

    Sample Questions
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    Question : 1

    ___________________ is the raw material for pot making in Neolithic Age.

    Right Option : B
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