Ceramic

Description

Molded or shaped items made from clay then fired to form a hard, vitrified material. Porcelain, a fine-grain, high-fired ceramic, was developed in China about the 7th century CE. Porcelain, or hard paste, becomes hard, translucent and resonant when fired. In an attempt to imitate porcelain in the 18th century, Josih Spode developed Bone china.

Synonyms and Related Terms

ceramics (pl.); keramiek (Ned.); céramique (Fr.); Keramik (Deut.); ceramica (It.); cerámica (Esp.); cerâmica (Port.); keramik (Sven.);

Examples include: bone china; porcelain; hard paste; soft paste

Additional Images

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  Contemporary commercial ceramic cup

Authority

• G.S.Brady, Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1971 Comment: p. 291

• Richard S. Lewis, Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 10th ed., 1993

• Robert Fournier, Illustrated Dictionary of Practical Pottery, Chilton Book Company, Radnor, PA, 1992

• Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia, Douglas M. Considine (ed.), Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1976

• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997

• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998

• Dictionary of Building Preservation, Ward Bucher, ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York City, 1996

• Tom Rowland, Noel Riley, A-Z Guide to Cleaning, Conserving and Repairing Antiques, Constable and Co., Ltd., London, 1981

• Website address 1 Comment: Multilingual Glossary for Art Librarians at http://www.ifla.org/VII/s30/pub/mgl.htm

• Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000