Pottery

range, which does not vitrify in the kiln but remains slightly porous is often called earthenware or terra cotta. Clay bodies formulated to be fired at higher temperatures, which is partially vitrified is called stoneware. more...

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Fine earthenware with a white tin glaze is known as faience. Porcelain is a very refined, smooth, white body that, when fired to vitrification, can have translucent qualities

Techniques

A person who makes pottery is traditionally known as a potter. The potter's most basic tool is his or her hands, however many additional tools have been created over the long history of pottery manufacture, including the potter's wheel, various paddles, shaping tools (or ribs), slab rollers, and cutting tools.

Forming techniques

Pottery can be shaped by a range techniques, including:

Handwork can be considered both the most primitive and the most individualized techniques, where pieces are constructed from hand-rolled coils, slabs, ropes, and balls of clay body, often joined with a slurry of clay body, known as slip. No two pieces of handwork will be exactly the same, so it is not suitable for making precisely matched sets of items such as dinnerware. Doing handwork enables the potters to use their imagination to create one-of-a-kind works of art. These methods are often referred to as "handbuilding".

The potter's wheel. A ball of clay body is placed in the center of a turntable, called the wheel head, which is turned either using foot power (a kick wheel or treadle wheel) or a variable speed electric motor. Oftentimes, a bat (a disk of plastic, wood, or plaster) is affixed to the wheel head, and the ball of clay body is attached to the bat rather than the wheel head so that the finished piece can be removed easily without distorting the piece. The wheel is made to revolve rapidly while the body is pressed, squeezed, and pulled gently into shape. The process of pressuring the body into a rotational symmetry, so that it does not move from side to side as the wheel head rotates is referred to as "centering" the body — a most important skill to master before the next steps, "throwing" (forming and raising the walls of the piece) and "trimming" or "turning" (removing excess clay to refine the shape or create a bottom or foot can be taken.

Potter's wheels can be used for mass production, although often it is employed to make individual pieces. Wheel work takes a lot of technical ability, but a skilled potter can produce many virtually identical plates, vases, or bowls in a day. Because of its nature, wheel work can only be used to initially create items with radial symmetry on a vertical axis. These pieces can then be altered by impressing, bulging, carving, fluting, faceting, incising, and other methods to make them more visually interesting. Often, thrown pieces are further modified by having handles, lids, feet, spouts, and other functional aspects added using the techniques of handworking. Pottery that is thrown on the wheel is often finished in a process known as trimming.

Read more at Wikipedia.org