Pottery Art in China with A Long History III – History of Ceramic Pottery in The World (up)

Pottery is the most significant symbol of the immortal ancient culture that passed down by human, and pottery is the best reflection for the progress of human culture, it also marked the culture descension and continuation of human beings.

A heap of pottery fragments has confused us about the Mayan’s previously living sites, but just like as geologist analyzing the different geological periods of the Earth had experienced, we can make use of the same technology of analysis too. The technology, known as "geological setting", followed a unified principle of – materials which produced or formed former will deposited earlier. As a result, the pottery found in the deepest reactor bottom of the sediments is the oldest pottery.

In the areas of pottery makers who lived together, pottery relic piles of ceramic fragments were gradually formed, and mixed with other debris. These relic piles usually were found in exposed places, of which most perishable materials have disappeared. Aside from those relic piles that in rare dry climate or with covers, in those exposed relic piles only those hardly damaged objects could been found, such as stones, shells, bones, as well as ceramic flakes, some of them are valued with archaeological meanings and are most important for the recording of break-off ears.

These relic sites always near to the areas the maker lived in, the depth of which usually as deep as several rules. The cross-section of the sediment has displayed that it is no doubt that the Mayas who lived near to the accumulation site of debris has a long period of history of pottery making. The sediment layer just like the ceramic flakes could provides us a reliable and related order about pottery, but does not offer us with an absolute chronology of the pottery development.

This technology of judging the era according to the typical pottery of various pottery species had improved the Pueblo’s Indian culture in the southwestern United States greatly.

Pottery Art in China with A Long History II --- About Pottery

Pottery refers to the project that with a model of clay, through a processing of pinching, ring forming and molding, then sintered under a temperature of 800-1000 ℃, thus finally formed into a molding, the model body is non-transparent, has tidy poles, and water-retaining, and sounds dull when knocked on it.

Pottery can be divided into groups of coarse ceramic and fine ceramic, colored or white ceramic, naked ceramic or glazed ceramic, and the varieties of which are grey pottery, terracotta, white pottery, painted pottery, black pottery and so on, which are full with thick flavors of life and unique artistic styles.

As seen to the discovery of the ceramic flakes produced in late Paleolithic Age that found in the Nihe district of Hebei province China, from now there is a long history of 11,700 years of the birth of Chinese pottery. As early as in the Shang Dynasty of China, the glazed pottery and hard-glazed pottery which initially possessed the characters of porcelain had just already appeared. The contents expressed by the pottery are also various, such as peoples, animals, pavilions and a variety of utensils used in daily life were all been involved in.

The invention of pottery is an important process of human civilization, it is the first try that human took advantage of natural materials to create a brand-new article in accordance with their own purpose.

People mixed clay with water and use the mixture to produce a variety of utensils and housewares, which formed into ceramics through a process of baking and whose quality changed consequently, it opened a new chapter of human’s using nature and reconstructing nature, it was an important occasion in the development life of human and has historical and epoch-making significance. At the same time, the appearance of pottery also is a mark of the beginning of the Neolithic Age.

The invention of pottery also greatly improved the living conditions of human beings, it opened up a new era in the history of human’s development. However, the invention of pottery is not a patent of ancient ancestors of some or other region or a tribe, it is an invention that could be created out by any ancient agriculture tribes or groups independently in the long-term practice of human.

The appearance of pottery is also one of major stamps of the Neolithic age in China, it enhanced the settlement stability of early humans, and made people’s daily lives more rich and colorful.

Pottery Art in China with A Long History I --- Preface

"Tao (pottery)", according to the figure described in oracle bone inscriptions, it implies a person who was squatted and sit on the ground, with a tool just like a wood stick modeling clay. Through sintering adobes will form into ceramics, which we called pottery today.

Archaeological discoveries have proved that as early as in the Neolithic Age (about 8000-2000 BC) the Chinese people had invented pottery. The agricultural production emerged in later primitive society had bought a relatively more fixed life to the ancestors of the Chinese people, which also produced the demand for pottery objectively. So, in order to improve the quality of life and make their lives more convenient, gradually Chinese people invented pottery through the burning of clay.

The word first appeared on pottery, it was found on a ceramic flake left by Shang Dynasty, and which is the only piece so far, while there are many pieces of ceramic flakes without words on. With a long history of pottery, China has left a great number of ceramic heritages, among these historic treasures, the oldest pottery was been produced out in BC 9,000 (with carbon isotope C14 detection).

The original pottery were been burned into in open-air, and these primal pottery are rough and fragile. About BC 8000, people started to put the ceramic model into pottery kiln, and with the method of controlled burning to improve the pottery, quality, through this method the pottery produced became not only more strong but also more beautiful, and turned into one kind of artworks.

Before the Shang Dynasty, the main colors of the pottery are only three: red, gray and black. Later based on the development of enamel coating technology, the color of pottery became more abundant and bright. In the Tang Dynasty, faience ware, also called painted pottery or colored pottery, one kind of Tang handicrafts was created out, among which, the Tang tri-colored pottery is the most well-known typical work.

On the basis of the high-level ceramic technology accumulated long-term, China produced porcelain ware in the world, which has become an important medium of the exchanges between the East and West cultures and economy, and people in the West just called porcelain as CHINA namely the country of China, it can be also said to describe China with Chinese porcelain (china). In Western languages the word “china”, whose meaning also includes pottery. In the history of the development of Chinese ceramics, the pottery was appeared before porcelain, and the porcelain was took birth from pottery.