CERAMICS VOCABULARY
Part I - Handbuilding
1. Banding wheel: A round turntable on which hand-built pottery may be
constructed or on which forms are decorated or glazed.
2. Bat: A wood or plaster disc on which pottery is formed or dried.
3. Bone dry: Very dry clay; ready for firing.
4. Burnishing: Rubbing moist or leather hard clay with a smooth pebble, wooden
stick or steel tool to polish the surface.
5. Carving: Areas of design cut into the surface of a ceramic piece with a sharp
tool.
6. Ceramic: The art and science of forming objects from earthy material
containing silica with the aid of high-heat treatment.
7. Clay: A plastic body consisting of fine particles of decomposed granite or other
feldspathic rock.
8. Earthenware: Low-fire pottery with a porous body usually fired under 2000 F.
9. Engobe: White or colored slip used to decorate clay ware.
10. Foot: The base of a ceramic piece.
11. Greenware: Clay that has not been fired.
12. Grog: Ground bisqued clay that is added to a clay body to reduce shrinkage and
warping and to add texture.
13. Incising: Linear decoration cut into the surface of a ceramic piece with a sharp
tool.
14. Leather-hard: The slightly flexible yet firm condition clay reaches after
partially drying. Leather-hard ware is damp enough to be joined to other pieces
with slip.
15. Mishima: Incised designs on greenware that are filled with a slip of a
different color.
16. Pottey: Ceramic objects made from clay and hardened by heat.
17. Plasticity: The property of a material enabling it to be shaped and to hold its
shape.
18. Raku: A pottery method developed in Japan that utilizes high-fire heavily
grogged clay, low fire glazes and a rapid firing and cooling process.
19. Relief: The projection of figures and forms from aflat surface so that they
stand wholly or partly free.
20. Scoring: To scratch a moist piece of clay with a sharp tool before joining it
to another piece of clay.
21. Sgraffito: A decorating technique in which a sharp tool is used to scratch
through slip or glaze to expose the clay body.
22. Shrinkage: Contraction of the clay in either drying or firing.
23. Slip: Clay mixed with water to about the consistency of thick cream.
24. Slip trailing: A method by which slip is trailed over a leather hard piece of
clay in much the same as decorating a cake.
25. Stamped patterns: Designs that are carved, pressed or incised in soft clay,
bisque fired and used to create repetitive patterns on a ceramic surface.
26. Stoneware: A clay body generally fired to a temperature between 2150 F
and 2350 F, at which the clay body vitrifies.
27. Texture: The surface quality of any object.
28. Throwing: To make pottery by hand on a potter’s wheel.
29. Warping: Distortion of a pot in drying because of uneven wall thickness.
30. Wedging: Keading the clay like kneading bread.