What is Pottery?

pottery

Pottery is a handicraft that uses a soft, brittle, yet highly durable, natural material to create functional objects. Using either hand-built or wheel-thrown methods, the clay body is formed into a particular shape and heated in a kiln to remove water from it.

The pottery that survives today can date archaeological sites, but most often it provides evidence of trade and exchange networks that can extend the timeline of written records. Archaeological research into the mounds of prehistoric societies, such as those around Egypt and Crete, may reveal the dates of pottery production.

In prehistoric times, clay was molded from the woven baskets of hunter-gatherers into containers for transporting and storing food. In a few cases, these clay vessels were fired to harden the molded forms and make them more durable.

Eventually, potters developed more sophisticated techniques to mold clay into shapes that could be worked and decorated. This included a variety of methods including rolling, shaping with the finger and thumb, and forming flat slabs that were luted together.

Most modern pottery is made by machines that take a shaped piece of clay and push it through a machine with a mold on the inside. The machine takes the rough edges off the shaped clay and transfers it to tunnel dryers where the moisture content is reduced to 1%, before glazing and firing. This is a difficult task and requires a great deal of manual dexterity and exactness in order to achieve the required results.

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