As its title suggests, we will give an overview of specific features on ceramics through the ages. To them, it will study the various periods into which it divides the presence of man on earth (or better Prehistory Early History, Ancient History, Medieval, Modern and contemporaries) if not we’ll see the most salient features of some civilizations.

Early History

The first news we have of the appearance of pottery is during the Neolithic period, around 6400 BC. It is a very crude pottery imitating handmade basketry.

At the age of metals appear ovoid bowls and pots and bell. Its decoration consisted of the fingerprints in their clothing. At this time it was discovered that the clay lost its plasticity when subjected to fire and for their decoration were used different colored land.

The theme of the decoration was simple geometric elements plants, bird forms, composing a frieze or border.

The richest regions in this type of pottery have been discovered in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and in central Europe, in Tène and Hallstatt.

In this period include the first performances of the human figure, the famous “Venus”, representing fertility, both human and earth.

Egypt:
In the ancient kingdom of Thebes and Beni-Hassan, was aware that since the disnastia IV and V (2600-2350 BC) was used around ceramic

For their religious beliefs, buried their dead with all his earthly belongings: dishes cups glasses, necklaces and clothing items.

The glazed ceramic objects using colors were green and blue, decorated blue highlighting beetles using cobalt oxide.

Mesopotamia:
The civilizations of the Near East, Babylon, Chaldea and Assyria, are located in the strip known as “fertile crescent” between the Tigris and Euphrates and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Chaldean-Assyrians applied the clay mud used not only for the construction of vessels, also for the brick built buildings with which both civil and religious kind. We can see the remains of the palace of Khorsabad.

Sometimes these were decorated bricks from siliceous paste that produced colored vitreous enamel. We recorded that in the West was not yet known enamel. The “Frieze of the Archers” in the palace of Darius at Susa is one example. (Louvre).

In this civilization is the cuneiform script.
It is recorded that the Babylonians knew about.
The decoration of the ceramics are of geometric shapes using colors brown on white.

Greece:
Rhodes and Corinth highlighted in archaic pottery production, reaching its fullest expression in the V century Attic pottery, decorated with red figures on black background. This decoration was done by applying a slip or colored paste that was applied to the piece in the drying process “leather hardness” and then screen printed with a punch figures, revealing the original clay, usually red.

The Greeks were prolific in creating ceramic vases variety, although we know well the role each played. Among others we can mention: amphora, Pelikan, hidrya, Krateros, Kyat, skyphos …, it is assumed that this wine benefited from the booming trade, using the various vessels to transport all kinds of goods, oil, wine, water, wheat, perfumes, preserves, fish … etc. What asociaríais with each?

Etruria:
In the Etruscan culture, notes on how the graves, urn-shaped vases. The main feature is that they were made up in mud with many impurities, so it is believed that used it as found in nature, with a uneven grain of dark color. Manufacturing was thick walls, showing a cooking imperfect.

Rome:
He was the heir of Greek civilization, always shown as a practical people. Not bothered to improve or embellish the pottery inherited but sought a practical use, so the ordinary Roman pottery is a perfect technique but with legions of Augustus spread throughout the empire ceramics “sigillata” as useful table.

The most common forms are cups, pots with lids, bowls, lanterns, and stressing over all of them in the bowl representative erecting the amphora elongated, slender, high-collared, tapered and with two side handles.

Arabia.
It makes its appearance during the eighth century that reflects the tradition of the Syrian-Persian peoples, but made an application, the white enamel (opaque white glaze misnamed) using tin dioxide. The most striking feature of Arab pottery, you can specify that all she has a metallic luster, which was achieved through a mixture of cinnabar, copper sulfate, iron oxide, sulfur, silver, acting sometimes as vinegar solvent. This application is provided at a lower temperature baked enamel base that consists of sulphide of lead, tin dioxide, silica sand and cobalt blue detailing.

A characteristic of primitive pottery is that it is a single firing. The shapes of the vessels were simple and daily use were decorated mainly with geometric motifs. The predominant colors are brown-purple, made from manganese oxide and green with copper oxide. Also used as decoration incisions and perforations.

The biggest boost was forged in the era of the Caliphate of Cordoba. Leaden apply the varnish or glaze, while the colored using MOX. It starts the technique of “dry rope, which involves applying a thin fat lines so that adjacent colors are not mixed. The brick also a breakthrough experiment.

The most important centers of ceramic production in Spain is Toledo, Cordoba, Medina Azzahar, Elvira and the Nazarite Almeria, Malaga, Granada and Manises. By the fourteenth century this influence will shift towards Paterna and Teruel.

China and Japan:
The first news we have of Chinese belong to the period from 618 to 906, which is a paste figurines porous compact colored and lined with a veneer that gives turquoise green and blue colors. It was in the Sung Dynasty when endowed compact pasta stoneware and porcelain from an unmistakable appearance, based on the nature of the paste and enamels with incised ornament decorating or in low relief, with a green color Since then known as Green Celedon.

In the Yuan Dynasty united the Middle and Far East, and ceramics are making progress especially in the field of decoration, painted in turquoise, peonies, chrysanthemums, dragons, birds, clouds, … although rarely the human figure.

With the Ming Dynasty (s.XIV – XVII), continued to be used and expanded on the previous drawings and white porcelain, with Chiang will, when widespread use of the human figure in ceramic decoration, consolidating some palettes three to five colors in the decoration on the deck along with the monochrome.

In Japan, the ceramic has played an important role in socio-cultural life of this people, with a direct influence from China and Korea, so they have assimilated all imparting technical personal.

Europe.
Europe did not know the secret of making porcelain until the eighteenth century in which the alchemist F. Böttger discovered the secret of kaolin. Since the time of Marco Polo through the route of the species and silk to Europe began arriving vessels that are admired for their strength, for its texture, its transparency, but as he knew how to make was a coveted and rare pieces .

Many attempts had to imitate the Chinese parts with so-called tender pasta “in St Cloud, Chantilly Mennec and subsequently promoted by the actual manufacturing of Louis XV, emerged Vincennes and Sèvres. At the same time become important Meissen in Germany. Once that is discovered in Europe were made of porcelain figures and all sorts of figurines, vases and ornaments clearly reflecting the spirit of the Baroque period, reaching baptize this century as the “century porcelain.

When Charles of Bourbon, King of Naples, married a daughter of Frederick Augustus of Saxony, it brings into the marriage an enviable collection of pots and vases of Meissen porcelain, causing her husband Carlos deep emotion because of its perfection and beauty and now he decided to found a factory at Capodimonte. When in 1759 he was named king of Spain, Capodimonte dismount and move the factory to the Buen Retiro palace in Madrid.

But the end of the century would bring bad omens for porcelain in Europe. From England, in an attempt to obtain a Rhine-like stoneware, pottery came to make a paste with a more refined, more porous, whiter light and infinitely cheaper, rapidly gaining market already inspired neoclassical decoration, which caused the decline of the porcelain

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