While sipping your morning coffee or your evening tea, to grubbing lunch from your artisanal hand-made dish, ever wondered which of these are ceramic or pottery? Well if you have, then we have the answer for you.
Let us learn how these two are distinguished:
What is Ceramic made of?
Ceramics can be technically classified as things that are made from non-metal materials that permanently change when they’re heated. The classic example is clay: even a dried clay product will disintegrate in water, but once it’s heated to between 350°C and 800°C (or above), it can get as wet as you want it. Glazes, which are a type of glass, are also ceramic; the firing process makes them stiffer than glass that’s poured or blown, allowing them to stick to clay surfaces.
Other ceramic materials include the stuff that’s used in industrial or “advanced” ceramics, like silica carbide and zirconium oxide; these are the materials that things like spaceships are made of, and they’re able to withstand the super-hot temperatures generated upon re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.
What is Pottery made of?
Also, a type of ceramic, but specifically containers that are made out of clay. (So, an art piece made out of clay would not be pottery—it’d just be ceramics.) There are three major categories of pottery: earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain.
Earthenware is made of clay that’s fired at relatively low temperatures (1,000°C to 1,150°C). The resulting product is porous and coarse, which then gets glazed and fired a second time.
Stoneware is made of clay that’s fired at a high temperature (1,200°C) until it’s the consistency of glass, a process called vitrification. Because stoneware is non-porous, any glaze applied to it is purely decorative.
Porcelain is a very hard, translucent white ceramic. To make it, small amounts of glass, granite, and feldspar minerals are ground up with fine, white clay and then mixed with water until the mixture is malleable. The resulting products get fired between 1,200°C and 1,450°C; decorated with glaze, and then fired again. This is also known as fine china. Bone china, which is stronger than porcelain, is made by mixing feldspar minerals, fine silica sand, and ash from cattle bones into that fine, white clay, and then is shaped and fired in the same manner.
You can buy above ceramics and pottery items from Velha Goa gallery that is located both at Panjim and Margao. All the products are hand-made with love and passion, so each piece is specifically designed for you.
