|
|
The
origin and ceramic history
The ceramics term drift from the Greek "kéramos",
agrees all that is come true through the baking of the clay.
we can place the first period of the fabrication of the same one in the neolithic one.
This age is characterized for two fundamental aspects:
1) The vases shaped is gone through excavation of an argillaceous block and the construction
through the system of the "colombino", that is a stamp in a container
2) covering lack (film mails for fine
decorated on the surface).
Although they were not covered, prehistoric vases
could however be decorates with several systems
by painting, impression or incision.
Towards the 5000 a.c., it was begun to manufacture crokery
with cooked clay. Terra-cotta vases were always
shaped through the superimposition of strip of clay rods that,
put one on the other formed the appearance
of the object that agreed to realize.
These various parts, already knit between them,
they came then amalgamated between smoothing
down them and bathing them; then the vase came struck
in order to render the strip more
homogenous and in order to improve of the aspect they came smooth
with straw, leaves or skins.
The decoration came painted on the vase with pigments drawn from
colored lands, ocher, or impressing on the still fresh object small shells,
seeds, realizing geometric designs through scratch with sharpened stones.
In order to harden the objects, the prehistoric ceramist used furnaces
constituted from simple holes in the land, that they
came covered of leaves buckets and woods to which the fire hung.
The temperature that was obtained was 500 degrees and it not
guaranteed a perfect baking, moreover in this period
did not exist a true market of the ceramics, therefore every
village produced for them, how much it was necessary.
In Protostoric age two fundamental evolutions of the ceramics
technology happen:
1) the invention of the lathe;
2) the invention of a varnish adapted to cover, the vases surface.
A slow progress regards also the furnaces, than thanks
elevated temperatures are obtained more.
In the rooms of baking of the furnace abundant oxygen
and the mineral contained in the pigment,
transforming itself in oxide, stretching to blacken
this vascular painting of dark color finds
employment in the micenee cities, than towards the 700 a.C.
it comes said black varnish technical with prevalence
of geometric figures and it is distinguished from that
one with red figures, that it consists in coloring the parts
that encircle the figures realizing one fate of image in negative
on the black background.
In the period of the high Middle Ages they circulate
nearly exclusively ceramic crude, lacking in
covering and the lack of a wider market determines
the birth of regional production and tradition.
With the beginning of the low Middle Ages it resume the
commerce in the Mediterranean and in Italy
arrive the Tunisine ceramics, Moroccans, Egyptians
who were inserted in the above all religious architectures.
Towards 1250 in great part of Italy the fabrication
of the ceramics with enameled covering
begins to practice itself, notes also like majolica.
The first majolica produced in Italy is therefore the "archaic majolica".
In the first phase the closed shapes predominate,
the decoration are painted, with subjects
of geometric type or inspire to compositions vegetables
, after the 1400 the opened shapes predominate,
and the decoration becomes rather monotonotes;
while in the third phase it is stretched to add to
the orange and yellow.It is introduced, then, the
blue color, above all in the centers of the Romagna
(Faenza), the Lazio (Viterbo), of the Umbria (Deruta) and of the Tuscany (Montelupo).
With this technique, said "zaffera"
the Tuscany ceramist imitated the language
of the majolica of the Mediterranean orients
(Syria and Egypt) which maintained to them
an advantage thanks to the propriety of the metallic
lustre, technical that is based on a third baking of the manifactures.
Towards 1480, the pictorial representation becomes of
of realistic type, so was born therefore renaissance
decoration that will influence the production of Montelupo
workshops until the productive crisis of 1620
that it reduced for an entire century the level of the Italian economy.
It was determined therefore a decrement in the number
of workshops, and a worsening of the
qualitative level of the productions.An incurable divorce between cheap.
ceramics and baluable ceramics was born therefore.
In the second half of the eighteenth century the income
on the European market of English earthenwares produced with
industrial criterion and to low cost will reduce in part this
difference, this system will place aim to the small Italian
handicraft removing also portions of market.
|
|
|
|
|
