WHAT IS TERRA-COTTA POTTERY & WHATS IT’S HISTORY?

terra-cotta,  (Italian: “POTTERY”)  literally, any kind of fired clay. Pottery may be the oldest artwork of human beings. As far back as the Neolithic Age (more than 8,000 years ago), people began mixing clay and water then baking it until it held its shape. Ancient people attached the word 'pottery' to their discovery and used it to create various vessels and tools to improve the quality of life. Over the course of thousands of years, pottery became dominant wares in people's daily life: used to cook, to store things, and to hold cuisine or waters as dishes.

As time passed, the technique became more and more consummate. Different kinds of pottery appeared in different times and regions. Yangshao Culture, 5,000 - 7,000 years ago to today, developed a technique for painted pottery. Qujialing Culture and Longshan Culture, dating back about 4,000 years ago, were known for their black pottery. During the Shang Dynasty (16th - 11th century BC) bronze vessels grew into somewhat of a status symbol; common people, though, still used traditional clay pottery. Workshops of grey and white potters took the artistic features of bronze wares and decorated their articles ornately.

From the Warring States Period through the Han Dynasty, the art and culture of pottery thrived. In addition to creating everyday pieces, pottery beasts and warriors were created and buried with the grandees. The Terra Cotta Warriors, discovered in Xian, are the finest representatives of artworks of that time. Visitors to the Warriors are continually amazed by the grandeur and elaborate displays of the well-preserved army. During the Three Kingdoms Period (220 - 280), the forging technique of porcelain gradually replaced traditional pottery handiwork.

Another fine example of beautifully crafted pottery is the tricolor glazed pottery of the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907). The pieces were created by adding various metals oxide and baking at a low temperature. The glazed pottery would appear to be light yellow, reddish brown, shamrock or light green. The most popular were those of yellow, brown and green. The sculpting of figures, animals or daily appliances was amazingly in accord with the characteristics of Tang art - graceful and lively. Preferred by many foreigners to the region, the tricolor glazed pottery had been transported all over the world.

WHAT IS CLAY?

Clay is very fine particles of dirt which float in a stream or river and then sink to the bottom, where they press on each other and stick together. You generally find clay along the banks of a river or stream, wherever the river is pulling dirt down off the mountains or hills and dropping it in a quiet part of the river lower down. So people who live in river valleys, like the Harappans or the Egyptians, generally can find a lot of clay. What is so cool about clay (besides that it is easy and cheap to get) is that it is squishy when it is wet, so you can make it any shape you like, and then it dries hard in the sun, pretty fast, as the water evaporates out. If you dry clay in the sun you can make it soft again just by throwing it in a bucket of water and waiting a week or two.

But if you put your clay pot or sculpture in a fire, or in an oven (an oven for clay is called a kiln) and bake it for a while very hot, the clay is even harder and it will not get soft again even if you put it in water for a long time. This is called firing. People first began to fire clay about 6000 BC.

But potters also used fired clay to make dishes and plates and cups and cookpots. Builders generally fired their roof tiles, which had to be more waterproof than the walls.

Their are many famous potteries in market some of them are given below

1.   CHINESE POTTERY

2.   ITALIAN POTTERY

3.   EGYPTIAN POTTERY

4.   GREEK POTTERY

5.   PAKISTANI POTTERY (Our Pottery)

CHINESE POTTERY

Chinese Pottery is one of the oldest in the world. Ceramics were used for making pots before bronze was invented. Vessels of clay were used mostly for rituals or for any other utility purpose. Thereafter Kilns were discovered in China.

Chinese were one of the first people to use Potters wheels after a couple of years. The Neolithic Culture was developed soon after in China. Some of the Neolithic cultures are Miao-ti-kou, Lung Shan, and Yang-Shao.

Various types of Vessels were used in Ancient China especially Earthenware Vessels which were usually handmade and had striations. The concept of using jars in funerals and also for pulling out drinking water from pools which were very famous in the ancient history of Asian countries was very well developed and in use in Ancient China.

The Yang-Shao Water Vessels are very famous all over the world. Yang-Shao Culture was practiced in around 5000 BC and it corresponds to the modern henaan and Shanxi culture known today which was excavated in 1977.

The Neolithic Culture belongs to 10,000BC. It was during this period that the Chinese Villages were first found. Introduction of different forms of art and architecture was at its peak in this period. Carvings became very famous during this period.

The Credit of discovery of the fruitful uses of clay can be given to a great extent to Ancient China and its creativity. Different forms of Pots were made in Ancient China especially in the Ancient Chinese Villages. Different designs and motives were engraved on the pots in the Villages in Ancient Chinese Villages and sold in the Urban Markets.

Chinese motives have been various famous all over the world and often the motives engraved on these pots show the ancient culture, tradition, history. It also is of a lot of evidentiary value. A few of the pots belonging to the Ancient Chinese cultures are also very important from the archaeological perspective.

Although the Neolithic period was very famous however it has also come under scrutiny and dispute because of a lot of ambiguity which exists between facts and fiction. Clarification and classification between the two is very essential, however Ancient Chinese art and architecture as well as its inventions.

GREEK POTTERY

The scholars of Greek history are loud in their assertions of Greek priority in all the arts; and if in her fictilia they fail to find external evidences sufficient upon which to base their assertions, they reply, "he is the inventor of the art who first practices it artistically." To Greece really belongs the honor of giving the first real impetus to artistic expressions in clay, for the mould was invented by a Greek practician who first discovered the art of producing any number of copies from one original. Here originated the process, which was carried forward to such remarkable perfection.

The reddest and most ancient wares were produced at Sicyon, at Corinth the coarse, black ware, while Athens presented the lightest and most elegant, having the most perfect forms which are accepted as the standards of excellence to this day.

The decorations were mostly in black, being silhouettes of those exquisite groups, figures and heads known in their mythology and classic literature, these were fre quently accompanied by borders in representation of the laurel, ivy, and vines, their peculiarity being that each leaf was formed with a single stroke of the brush. This one fact affords considerable assistance in the detection of counterfeits; the freedom of the originals is lost by repeated touching.

With the exception of the paintings at Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabia, Greek art found no expression more perfect than that exhibited upon the vases from her souterrains.

There are four methods very generally used in the determination of the relative ages of the Greek vases:

1. The most ancient are decorated with historical characters, the figures being black, upon a red ground.

2. The toilet, dances, and games, are represented.

3. Details of the subject portrayed evidence the age. Clisthenes reduced the two poles of the car to one, consequently a car with two poles antedates these.

4. The vases of Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabia are all black and varnished, none painted: these are more recent.

Others are of more elaborate and elegant form, exhibiting a more advanced stage of the art, as, for instance, the Barberini or Portland vase, which is probably the most beautiful of existing forms. This vase, as being the most celebrated, the most valuable and the most beautiful in existence, is worthy of more than a passing consideration here. It was discovered in the sixteenth century in the Monte del Grano, about three miles from Rome, where it had been deposited in a sarcophagus, and from which it was transferred to the Barberini palace, and became known as the Bayberini Vase. It afterward came into the possession of an English gentleman, who disposed of it to Sir Wm. Hamilton, and it was by him sold to the late Duchess of Portland, hence it is now termed the Portland Vase. The family have since deposited it in the British Museum, where it rests as a single and noble monument, eloquently asserting the high state of ceramic art, and the art of design, which was attained in its own unknown era.

It is nine and three-quarters inches high, with a circumference of twenty-one inches and three-quarters, but notwithstanding its inferior size among all the large and elegant vases which surround it, this stands in imperial eminence. It is composed of two bodies of vitrified pasteapproaching glass-of different color, but nicely united in two distinct strata, like a cameo, the outer strata of white, which serves in the formation of figures, the under strata being of deep blue, which throws forward the figures in fine relief. The whole is wrought with extreme precision, the workmanship, in every part, being most perfect. It is unnecessary here to explain a design which has long been discussed by antiquaries and scholars of eminence abroad, few of these being of concurrent opinion. The last and most accepted of these explanations was advanced by Dr. Darwin, the philosophic-poet, who describes the design as representing part of the ceremonies of the Eleusinian mysteries. He divides the vase into two compartments. The first is emblematic of moral life, and expressed by a Libitina seated upon ruins beneath a tree of deciduous leaf. She holds an inverted torch, and two companions with her seem to express the terror with which humanity gaze upon death.

The next compartment is immortal life, represented by a hero entering the gate of Elysitim, conducted by Divine Love and received by Immortality, who is to present him to Pluto, the judge of what company he is fit to keep in Elysium. How true this rendition may be, its general acceptance by the world of critics must bear tes timony. Certainly the idea is full of grace, and worthy the poet's mind. That this vase contained the ashes of Alexander Severus and Julia Mammoea, Darwin denies. In form and design the Greek vases have never been exceeded. They are today the true standards of excellence, regarded by all as the climax of artistic effort, the chefs doeuvre of antique ceramic art, by comparison with which we judge of modern success

EGYPTIAN POTTERY

The people which built and wrought a history which they failed to write could scarcely do else than convey to us by their handiwork abundant evidences of their en deavors in the various thoroughfares through which, by necessity, they were obliged to develop their arts. Their tombs, burial places, and other inclosures are pregnant with material proofs of their industry and indomitable energy, and most prominent among the various relics there found are those belonging in the catalogue of ceramics.

Denon remarks that the arts of other nations are only the spoils of the Egyptians, but the scholars of Greek history declaim almost as stoutly for Greece, yet impartial consideration would doubtless allow to Egypt a wellestablished precedence in the application and use of fictile wares. Good authorities represent that crockery-ware was invented by the Egyptians, who introduced it into Greece in the year 1490 B. C., and in one hundred years from that time it was in general use.

The first form that Egypt gave to clay was of exceeding simplicity, being nothing but plain beads of earthenware, in their natural red color, and used only for personal ornament. These constituted, according to a French author, their b bijouterie. How long this primitive form continued without improvement it is impossible to state; but probably the next step was the application of glazing, which was of green or blue color. The earliest approach to significant form is the clay Scarabaeus, or sacred beetle, and peculiarly crude representations of Isis, with the hawk's head-cap, and Osiris.

Often as the Scarabocus has been repeated by them it is not surprising that this, as a very simple figure, should have been attempted. These also were worn as orna ments in the shape of amulets, bracelets, and seal ringsa hole being bored through them longitudinally to admit of a cincture by which they were secured.

Another form of pottery frequently met among these remains, and doubtless of very great antiquity, is the cinerary urn, a conical vessel in which reposed the ashes of cats, the ibis, the ichneumon, and other sacred animals, these also being deposited in the tombs; but the utmost excellence to which the Egyptians succeeded in this art is found in their vases, some of which are far from uncomely in shape, although the decoration is crude and conventional, the colors used being chiefly brick red, blue and green, sometimes applied in outline to produce the figures commonly known in Egyptian portrayal.

One extraordinary feature of these wares is the enamel. A blue enamel of cobalt, now unknown in the arts, is of such exceeding hardness as to produce sparks when applied to the emery wheel. This probably accounts for the freshness and perfection in which some of the specimens have reached their present age.

ITALIAN POTTERY

The first instance in which pottery attaches itself to a recognized school of art occurs in Italy. In merit and value it improves more upon this soil, where, treated by eminent hands, it became a vehicle of artistic expression, which has given it a value not inferior to canvases and frescos of the same period. While these latter are less available to foreign seekers, the beautiful vessels of pottery, with their decorations, as bright and fresh as when they first left the workman's hands, have found lodgment and appreciation in galleries distant from their native soil.

As early as the ninth century the Saracens had colonized in Sicily and Apulia, and they were expert potters. When expelled from the Spanish dependencies, they sought refuge in the Papal States. Italy had thus twice thrust upon her the opportunity of forming a practical acquaintance with the potter's art, but we have no substantial evidence of her real acceptance until two centuries after the introduction of the Moorish work-six hundred years after the arrival of the Saracens, so we take up the history where we may follow it with consecutive precision.

How the art of pottery-making was introduced into Italy is a question. That it came by the Moors there is no doubt; but vagarious as were their movements, there seems no certainty of its direct import.

An Italian antiquary of distinction, Passeri by name, claims the discovery and introduction of the ware for Pesaro. His claim is not well established, and the fact that every Latin country asserts the same individual distinction, adds to the doubt.

Still another and more valuable testimony is the fact that the first wares of Italy exhibited the splendid metallic lustre which identifies the Moorish work. This alone would seem to bespeak its Moorish extraction. The records of history itself almost decide the question.   

In the year A. D. 1113 the Crusader galleys departed from Pisa on their errand of deliverance. After various vexatious delays and mishaps, and a sanguine but victorious struggle at Ivica, they succeeded in reaching the little Island of Majorca, where the encroaching Moors had held in long and toilsome bondage their Christian brothers. Here the scenes of their former struggle were renewed, and the prisoners of the infidels released. Their work finished, the triumphant galleys returned to Pisa, laden with valuables and the products of art of their vanquished enemy. Probably not least among these were the tiles and plates which were most extensively produced at Majorca, and the poor prisoners who held the secret of their making. In the summer of the year 1115, the galleys reached their native port.  

That Majorca ware had even then become famous is evidently a fact, and Mr. Dawson Turner, writing from Pisa in the year 1825, says:

"After having returned to the conservatory the keys of the Campo Santo, he was kind enough to show me several specimens of plates from Majorca, imbedded in the walls of sundry churches in the city, to which they form singular ornaments. It was a custom at Pisa, with the warriors returning from the crusades, and stopping at Majorca, to bring home this peculiar earthenware, by way at once of testimony and trophy.