ETYM Greek, earthenware. Related to Keramic.
Of or relating to or made from a ceramic.

The art of making and decorating pottery. Art of making pottery. Objects made from clay, hardened into a permanent form by baking (firing) at very high temperatures in a kiln. Ceramics are used for building construction and decoration (bricks, tiles), for specialist industrial uses (linings for furnaces used to manufacture steel, fuel elements in nuclear reactors, and so on), and for plates and vessels used in the home. Different types of clay and different methods and temperatures of firing create a variety of results. Ceramics may be cast in a mold or hand-built out of slabs of clay, coiled, or thrown on a wheel. Technically, the main categories are earthenware, stoneware, and hard- and softpaste porcelain (see under pottery and porcelain).
Ceramics: examples through Western history
Roman period potter’s wheel; lead glazing; decorative use of slip (watered-down clay)
Medieval period sgraffito (scratched) tiles and other products (earthenware decorated with slip of a contrasting color, which is then scratched through) such as those made in Bologna, Italy. Lead-glazed jugs made in England and France, colored bright green or yellow-brown with copper or iron oxides. Tin-glazed ware in S Italy and Spain by 13th century, influenced by established Islamic techniques
14th-century Germany stoneware developed from hard earthenwares; tin glazes developed; color added by thin slips mixed with high-temperature colors. Later, mottled brown glaze recognized as characteristic of Cologne, referred to as “tigerware” in Britain
15th century
Hispano-Moresque painted ware imitated by Italians, developing into majolica by mid-century, using the full range of high-temperature colors; centers of the craft included Tuscany, Faenza, Urbino, and Venice. Some potteries, such as that at Gubbio, additionally used luster glazes. Typical products are dishes and apothecary jars
16th century potters from Faenza spread tin-glazed earthenware (majolica) skills to France, Spain, and the Netherlands, where it became known as faience; from Antwerp the technique spread to England. The English in the 17th century named Dutch faience “Delftware”, after the main center of production
17th century faience centers developed at Rouen and Moustiers in France, Alcora in Spain, and in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. Blue underglaze was increasingly used, in imitation of Chinese blue and white designs, reflecting the growth of orientalism
18th century
European developments in porcelain, also in using a rich palette of low-temperature enamel colors. The vitreous enamel process, first developed at Strasbourg about 1750, spread around N Europe.
The earliest ceramics date back to the beginning of the Neolithic in the Near East, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Africa. + prikaži više