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NOW FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE…
HANDMADE FOLK ART
THIS SYRO - PHONIECIAN STYLE WATER VASE
GLOSS GLAZE INSIDE AND ROUGH PRIMITIVE EXTERIOR.
IT IS EMBELLISHED WITH WHAT LOOKS LIKE
A HAND PAINTED SCRIPT "G"
HAND MADE BY
SDW
OUT OF SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA (CA)
CIRCA 1970
MEASURES ABOUT 7" AT THE MIDDLE
11" TALL
4" OPENING AT MOUTH AND BASE
LATE CENTURY ARTS AND CRAFTS.
THE HANDY CRAFT OF HIPPIES COMMUNE LIVING
IN THE GOLDEN GATE CITY
INSPIRING WARM SALT WATER AIR OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN.
HOW ENTHRALLING.
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FYI
Pottery is the ceramic act of making pottery wares, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery (plural "potteries"). Pottery also refers to the art or craft of a potter or the manufacture of pottery.
The definition of pottery used by ASTM is "all fired ceramic wares that contain clay when formed, except technical, structural, and refractory products." Some archaeologists use a different understanding of this definition by excluding ceramic objects such as figurines which are made by similar processes and of similar materials but are not vessels.
Pottery originates during the Neolithic period. Ceramic objects like the Gravettian culture Venus of Dolní Věstonice figurine discovered in the Czech Republic date back to 29,000–25,000 BC, and pottery vessels discovered in Jiangxi, China date back to 20,000 BP. Early Neolithic pottery has also been found in Jomon Japan (10,500 BC), the Russian Far East (14,000 BC), Sub-Saharan Africa and South America.
Pottery is made by forming a clay body into objects of a required shape and heating them to high temperatures in a kiln which removes all the water from the clay, which induces reactions that lead to permanent changes including increasing their strength and hardening and setting their shape. A clay body can be decorated before or after firing. Prior to some shaping processes, clay must be prepared. Kneading helps to ensure an even moisture content throughout the body. Air trapped within the clay body needs to be removed. This is called de-airing and can be accomplished by a machine called a vacuum pug or manually by wedging. Wedging can also help produce an even moisture content. Once a clay body has been kneaded and de-aired or wedged, it is shaped by a variety of techniques. After shaping it is dried and then fired.
History
A great part of the history of pottery is prehistoric, part of past pre-literate cultures. Therefore, much of this history can only be found among the artifacts of archaeology. Because pottery is so durable, pottery and sherds from pottery survive from millennia at archaeological sites.
Before pottery becomes part of a culture, several conditions must generally be met.
First, there must be usable clay available. Archaeological sites where the earliest pottery was found were near deposits of readily available clay that could be properly shaped and fired. China has large deposits of a variety of clays, which gave them an advantage in early development of fine pottery. Many countries have large deposits of a variety of clays.
Second, it must be possible to heat the pottery to temperatures that will achieve the transformation from raw clay to ceramic. Methods to reliably create fires hot enough to fire pottery did not develop until late in the development of cultures.
Third, the potter must have time available to prepare, shape and fire the clay into pottery. Even after control of fire was achieved, humans did not seem to develop pottery until a sedentary life was achieved. It has been hypothesized that pottery was developed only after humans established agriculture, which led to permanent settlements. However, the oldest known pottery is from China and dates to 20,000 BC, at the height of the ice age, long before the beginnings of agriculture.
Fourth, there must be a sufficient need for pottery in order to justify the resources required for its production.
Early pottery
Methods of forming: Hand-shaping was the earliest method used to form vessels. This included the combination of pinching and coiling.
Firing: The earliest method for firing pottery wares was the use of bonfires Pit fired pottery. Firing times were short but the peak-temperatures achieved in the fire could be high, perhaps in the region of 900 °C (1,650 °F), and were reached very quickly.
Clay: Early potters used whatever clay was available to them in their geographic vicinity. However, the lowest quality common red clay was adequate for low-temperature fires used for the earliest pots. Clays tempered with sand, grit, crushed shell or crushed pottery were often used to make bonfire-fired ceramics because they provided an open-body texture that allowed water. The coarser particles in the clay also acted to restrain shrinkage during drying, and hence reduce the risk of cracking.
Form: In the main, early bonfire-fired wares were made with rounded bottoms to avoid sharp angles that might be susceptible to cracking.
Glazing: the earliest pots were not glazed.
The potter's wheel was invented in Mesopotamia sometime between 6,000 and 4,000 BC (Ubaid period) and revolutionised pottery production.
Biscuit moulds were used to a limited extent as early as the 5th and 6th century BC by the Etruscans and more extensively by the Romans.
Slipcasting, a popular method for shaping irregular shaped articles. It was first practised, to a limited extent, in China as early as the T'ang dynasty
Transition to kilns: The earliest intentionally constructed were pit-kilns or trench-kilns—holes dug in the ground and covered with fuel. Holes in the ground provided insulation and resulted in better control over firing.
kilns: Pit fire methods were adequate for creating earthenware, but higher-fired stoneware and porcelain required more sophisticated methods of firing using high-fire kilns (see below kilns).
The Arts and Crafts Movement was an international design movement that flourished between 1860 and 1910, especially in the second half of that period, continuing its influence until the 1930s. It was led by the artist and writer William Morris (1834–1896) during the 1860s, and was inspired by the writings of John Ruskin (1819–1900) and Augustus Pugin (1812–1852), although the term "Arts and Crafts" was not coined until 1887, when it was first used by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at a preliminary meeting of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society.
The movement developed first and most fully in the British Isles, but spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and North America. It was largely a reaction against the perceived impoverished state of the decorative arts at the time and the conditions in which they were produced. It stood for traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and often applied medieval, romantic or folk styles of decoration. It advocated economic and social reform and has been said to be essentially anti-industrial.
The aesthetic and social vision of the Arts and Crafts Movement was first developed in the 1850s by a group of friends at the University of Oxford, including William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and a group of Burne-Jones' friends from Birmingham at Pembroke College who became known as the Birmingham Set. Although at this stage Morris was largely apolitical, the Birmingham Set had first-hand experience of industrial society, and combined their love of the Romantic literature of Tennyson, Keats and Shelley with a strong commitment to radical social reform. By 1855 they had discovered the writings of John Ruskin and the art of the Pre-Raphaelites and – conscious of the contrasts between the perceived splendours of the pre-industrial age and what they saw as the barbarity of contemporary culture – had formed themselves into a "Brotherhood" to pursue their literary and artistic activities; in Burne-Jones' words, to "wage Holy warfare against the age".
In the United States, the terms American Craftsman or Craftsman style are often used to denote the style of architecture, interior design, and decorative arts that prevailed between the dominant eras of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, or approximately the period from 1910 to 1925.
In Canada, the term Arts and Crafts predominates, but Craftsman is also recognized.
While the Europeans tried to recreate the virtuous crafts being replaced by industrialisation, Americans tried to establish a new type of virtue to replace heroic craft production: well-decorated middle-class homes. They claimed that the simple but refined aesthetics of Arts and Crafts decorative arts would ennoble the new experience of industrial consumerism, making individuals more rational and society more harmonious. The American Arts and Crafts movement was the aesthetic counterpart of its contemporary political philosophy, progressivism. Characteristically, when the Arts and Crafts Society began in October 1897 in Chicago, it was at Hull House, one of the first American settlement houses for social reform.
In the United States, the Arts and Crafts style initiated a variety of attempts to reinterpret European Arts and Crafts ideals for Americans. These included the "Craftsman"-style architecture, furniture, and other decorative arts such as designs promoted by Gustav Stickley in his magazine, The Craftsman and designs produced on the Roycroft campus as publicized in Elbert Hubbard's The Fra. Both men used their magazines as a vehicle to promote the goods produced with the Craftsman workshop in Eastwood, NY and Elbert Hubbard's Roycroft campus in East Aurora, NY. A host of imitators of Stickley's furniture (the designs of which are often mislabelled the "Mission Style") included three companies established by his brothers.
Also influential were the Roycroft community initiated by Elbert Hubbard in Buffalo and East Aurora, New York, Joseph Marbella, utopian communities like Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock, New York, and Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, developments such as Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, featuring clusters of bungalow and chateau homes built by Herbert J. Hapgood, and the contemporary studio craft style. Studio pottery—exemplified by the Grueby Faience Company, Newcomb Pottery in New Orleans, Marblehead Pottery, Teco pottery, Overbeck and Rookwood pottery and Mary Chase Perry Stratton's Pewabic Pottery in Detroit, as well as the art tiles made by Ernest A. Batchelder in Pasadena, California, and idiosyncratic furniture of Charles Rohlfs all demonstrate the influence of Arts and Crafts.
