General Ceramic Vocabulary
Bisque: once fired, unglazed pottery
Pottery: pots, dishes, and other articles
made of earthenware or baked clay.
Bone Dry: extremely or completely dry Pottery can be broadly divided into
earthenware, porcelain, and stoneware.
Ceramics: (ceramic) any nonmetallic
The craft or profession of making such
solid that remains hard when heated
ware: courses include drawing, painting,
and pottery. A factory or workshop where
Clay: a stiff, sticky fine-grained earth,
such ware is made.
typically yellow, red, or bluish-gray in
color and often forming an impermeable Raku: a kind of lead-glazed Japanese
layer in the soil. It can be molded when earthenware, typically irregular in shape
wet, and is dried and baked to make
and used esp. for the tea ceremony.
bricks, pottery, and ceramics
ORIGIN Japanese, literally ‘enjoyment.’
Coil: a length of something wound or
Refractory: noun ( pl. -ries) technical A
arranged in a spiral or sequence of rings: substance that is resistant to heat
a coil of rope
Score: a notch or line cut or scratched
Earthenware: pottery made of clay.
into a surface
Fired to a porous state that can be made
impervious to liquids by the use of a glazeSlab: a flat piece of clay
Firing: the heating of clay or glaze to a
specific temperature in a special oven
called a kiln
Glaze: a substance used to give a
smooth, shiny surface to something, in
particular a vitreous substance fused
on to the surface of pottery to form
a hard, impervious decorative coating
Slab Roller: a machine with a large
roller used to flatten clay
Slip: noun a creamy mixture of clay,
water, and typically a pigment, used esp.
for decorating earthenware
Stoneware: a type of pottery that is
impermeable and partly vitrified but
opaque
Greenware: dry clay pots or sculptures
ready for firing; dry, unfired clay
Underglaze: adjective (of decoration on
pottery) done before the glaze is applied
Kiln: a furnace or oven for burning,
(of colors) used in such decoration
baking, or drying, esp. one for calcining
lime or firing pottery
Ware: pottery, typically that of a
specified type: blue-and-white majolica
Leather Hard: Consistency of clay when ware (wares) Minoan potters produced an
moisture has evaporated, not completely astonishing variety of wares.
Pinch pot: method of making a hollow
form by opening a ball of clay with the
thumb and forefinger to make the walls
Wedge: to pack or fix tightly, to wedge
clothes into a suitcase, or to pound (clay)
in order to remove air bubbles