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stoneware
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What is stoneware?
Stoneware is a type of pottery fired at high temperatures (around 2,200° F), resulting in a vitrified, glass-like, nonporous material. Originating in China around 1400 BCE, it spread to Korea and Japan, and later to Europe in the 16th century.
Often opaque, though sometimes translucent in thinner forms, stoneware's body varies in color from red and brown to gray, white, or black. Because it is nonporous, stoneware does not require glazing, but when a glaze is applied, it serves a decorative purpose. Glazes can be lead, salt, or feldspathic.
Artist-potters such as Bernard Leach have used stoneware, influencing modern design.
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How is stoneware different from other types of pottery, like earthenware or porcelain?
Stoneware differs from other pottery types through its vitrification process. Clay, the basic pottery material, is plastic and hardens when fired. Stoneware is created when clay is mixed with a substance that vitrifies at around 2,200 °F (1,200 °C). This makes the clay hold its shape while the other substance vitrifies, forming a nonporous, opaque body.
Earthenware, unlike stoneware, isn't vitrified, resulting in a slightly porous and coarser material. Porcelain is made by adding feldspar or soapstone to clay and exposing it to heat, creating a translucent material. Stoneware is very hard and usually opaque, with colors ranging from red to black.
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What materials are used to make stoneware?
Stoneware is a type of pottery made from clay mixed with other materials. The primary material in stoneware is clay, which provides plasticity, allowing it to be molded and retain its shape.
To achieve vitrification at a lower temperature, the clay is mixed with a substance that will vitrify at around 2,200 °F (1,200 °C). This mixture results in a nonporous, opaque body known as stoneware. Common additives include silica and feldspar. Silica acts as a filler, giving strength to the unfired object and maintaining its shape during firing, while feldspar acts as a fluxing agent, reducing the melting temperatures of the aluminosilicate phases.
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How is stoneware made and fired in a kiln?
Stoneware is a hard, typically opaque pottery made by mixing clay with substances like feldspar and exposing it to temperatures between 2,000 to 2,650 °F (1,100 to 1,450 °C). This process vitrifies the mixture, creating a nonporous, opaque body.
After shaping, the pottery is fired in a kiln. Early kilns were simple holes in the ground with a wood pyre built over them. Modern kilns use gas or electricity and include intermittent kilns and continuous tunnel kilns, where items move slowly from a cool entrance to the heat in the center, gradually cooling as they exit. The kiln's atmosphere and the clay's composition determine the pottery's fired color.
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What are common uses for stoneware throughout history and today?
Stoneware is pottery fired at high temperatures until vitrified, resulting in a glass-like, liquid-impervious material. Originating in China around 1400 BCE, it spread to Korea, Japan, and eventually Europe in the 16th century.
Historically, stoneware was used for wine pots, especially in Europe, which imitated Chinese Yixing ware. Red stoneware was developed in Germany around 1707, but its manufacture declined due to the popularity of porcelain. Salt-glazed stoneware was common in the Rhineland and England but was later superseded by other materials like creamware and porcelain.
Today, stoneware is primarily used by artist-potters, such as Bernard Leach and his followers.
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Why is stoneware valued for its durability and appearance?
Stoneware is valued for its durability because it is vitrified at high temperatures, rendering it glasslike and impervious to liquids. This process makes it virtually indestructible and resistant to corrosion from various agents.
Though usually opaque, some thinly potted stoneware can be somewhat translucent. Stoneware can be glazed, but the glaze is purely for decorative purposes since the pottery is already nonporous. The color of the body varies considerably and can be red, brown, gray, white, or black. Because of its beauty and functionality, artist-potters have used stoneware in their work.
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stoneware, pottery that has been fired at a high temperature (about 1,200° C [2,200° F]) until vitrified (that is, glasslike and impervious to liquid). Although usually opaque, some stoneware is so thinly potted that it is somewhat translucent. Because stoneware is nonporous, it does not require a glaze; when a glaze is used, it serves a purely decorative function. There are three main kinds of glaze: lead glaze, salt glaze, and feldspathic glaze (the same material used in the body and glaze of porcelain).
Stoneware originated in China as early as 1400 bce (Shang dynasty). A fine white stoneware, Yue ware, produced during the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) and perfected during the Tang dynasty (618–907 ce), has an olive or brownish green feldspathic glaze and belongs to the celadon family. Stoneware of the Song dynasty (960–1279) is particularly noted for its emphasis on beauty of form and its brilliant feldspathic glazes; Jun ware, for example, is covered with a thick, dense, lavender-blue glaze often suffused with crimson purple. Stoneware made in Cizhou, formerly in Henan, has a grayish white body covered with white slip (liquefied clay washed over the body before firing) and then a transparent glaze. The slip was sometimes carved away, revealing the contrasting colour of the clay body beneath. Also from the Song dynasty are the red to dark brown Jian wares known in Japan as temmoku ware. In the 17th century, China exported to Europe stoneware made in Yixing, in Jiangsu province; red to dark brown in colour, it was unglazed but cut, faceted, and polished. Yixing (or, as it was called in Europe, boccaro) wine pots were highly prized in Europe for making tea, which had been newly introduced; the ware was copied and imitated in Germany, England, and the Netherlands.
In Europe, at Meissen in Saxony, E.W. von Tschirnhaus and J.F. Böttger developed a red stoneware (in fact, varying from red to dark brown) about 1707. Decoration included applied reliefs, engraving, faceting, and polishing. Because of the vogue for porcelain, stoneware manufacture declined in Germany in the 18th century and was finally abandoned about 1730. In the Netherlands, also during the 17th century, red stoneware was made by Ary de Milde of Delft and others in imitation of Yixing ware. In 17th-century England such men as John Dwight at Fulham and John Philip and David Elers at Staffordshire also worked at producing red stoneware in imitation of Yixing. About 1690 these wares were largely replaced in England by salt-glazed stoneware, though as late as the 18th century a red stoneware was produced by Josiah Wedgwood, who called it rosso antico.
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Perhaps the majority of extant glazed stonewares are salt-glazed. They were made in the Rhineland from the 15th century and in England from the 17th. In 18th-century England, salt-glazed stoneware was superseded by lead-glazed earthenware, or creamware, by porcelain, and by Wedgwood’s unglazed stonewares—the black basaltes and white jaspers. In the early 19th century it was superseded in the Rhineland by porcelain. In the 20th century stoneware has been used by artist-potters such as Bernard Leach of England and his followers.