A Lesson on Pottery History

admin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:29:13 +0000

Pottery history can be traced back to 29,000-25,000 years ago at Dolni Vestonice, Czech Republic where ceramic objects have been discovered such as the Venus figurine. This is a nude female figure statuette, and animal models.

Other early forms in early pottery history are those excavated from Yuchanyan Cave, Southern China. These are said to be from 18,000 years ago. Pottery fragments from Catal Huyuk, Turkey date back to 6,500 BC and were made by stacking coils or rings of clay from a circular base, after which the walls are smoothed and thinned from both the inside and outside, then fired inside a bread oven or a basic kiln. Early wares in the history of pottery were usually bare and undecorated, but where there’s decoration, the methods used are often only incising or pressing into the damp clay.

The invention of the potter’s wheel in 3,000 BC proved to be a very important milestone in pottery history, as even now when one thinks of a symbol for the art, the potter’s wheel is usually what comes to mind. Making pots or any kind of wares perfectly round is now possible through the use of it.

History is actually littered with a lot of traces of pottery. There were the vases made by the Greeks in so sophisticated manners that you might not think they were made between the 6th and 5th centuries BC. There are the blue and white ceramics from China which many people associate to the thought of porcelain and fine china; the African terra cotta figures that date back to 5th century BC; glazed ceramics from the 9th to 1st century BC. Whichever item you look at, whether in a museum or the Internet, and no matter how severely undecorated they are, they all paved the way for pottery to be what it currently is today.