Exploring Ancient Ceramics

1. Exploring Ancient Ceramics Coil Construction: One of the oldest ways of forming pottery. Long strands of clay which are laid on top of each other and joined through blending coil to coil.  Coil pieces can be fashioned into almost any shape or size.

2. Ceramic Art of North America In many parts of the United States and Canada, "prehistoric" cultures extend as far as 12,000 years ago. Most of the surviving art objects, however, come from the past two thousand years. "Historic" cultures begin with the earliest date of prolonged contact with Europeans, which varies from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The materials from these cultures usually reflect changes wrought by the impact of alien tools, materials, and values on the native peoples.

3. Georgia Performance Standards MEANING AND CREATIVE THINKING • VAHSCRMC.3 Cultivates critical thinking and logical argumentation in aesthetics. CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDING • VAHSCRCU.2 Demonstrates an understanding of how art history impacts the creative process of art making. PRODUCTION • VAHSCRPR.2 Engages in an array of ceramic processes, techniques, and aesthetic stances. • VAHSCRPR.3 Develops complex ceramic artworks using a variety of surface treatments and technology. • VAHSCRPR.4 Keeps a visual/verbal sketchbook journal, consistently throughout the course, to collect, develop, and preserve ideas in order to produce works of art around themes of personal meaning. ASSESSMENT AND REFLECTION • VAHSCRAR.2 Critiques clay works of others individually and in group settings. CONNECTIONS • VAHSCRC.2 Develops 21st century life and work skills and habits of mind for success through the study and production of art.

4. INDEGIOUS NORTH AMERICA • Scholars divide the vast and varied territory of North America into cultural regions based on the relative homogeneity of language and social and artistic patterns. • Native lifestyles varied widely over the continent, ranging from small bands of migratory hunters to settled agriculturalists.

5. Native American Potters • Much of the history of America before colonization is mysterious. We know that several thriving civilizations declined rapidly and crumbled or simply vanished.  • These two civilizations are called the Moundbuilders, or Mississippians, and the Mogollon Mimbres. They existed at about the same time in two separate parts of the United States.

6. Southwest: Mimbres pottery Most Native American art forms span great periods. Detailed chronological sequences of pottery styles are the historian's tool for dating and reconstructing the cultures of the distant past, especially in the Southwest. Many fine specimens of ceramics from the Southwest date from before the Christian era until the present, but pottery became especially fine, and its decoration most impressive, after about 1000 A.D.

7. Southwest: Mimbres pottery A rendering of two cranes on a bowl from the Mimbres culture of southwestern New Mexico is typical of designs that emphasized linear rhythms balanced and controlled within a clearly defined border. Compositions range from lively and complex geometric patterns to often-whimsical pictures of humans and animals. Countless sophisticated shapes, built by the coiling method, are characterized by technical excellence.

8. Southwest: Mimbres pottery Although historians have no direct knowledge about the potters' identity, the Mimbres potters may have been women. Mimbres bowls have been found inverted over the head of the deceased and ritually "killed" by puncturing a small hole at the base, perhaps to allow the spirits of the deceased to join their ancestors in the sky.

9. Creating Coiled Pottery in the Mibres Style The project is constructing a Mimbres style bowl with a coiled foot. The bowl will be decorated with the black and white surface qualities of the traditional Mimbres Bowl

10. Black and White Mimbres Design

11. Black and White Mimbres Design ABSTRACT MOTIFSThe iconography of Mimbres Classic Black-on-White pottery refers, often with great specificity, to Mimbres life and culture. Highly stylized imagery of animals and human figures relate directly to Mimbres life and religion.

12. Black and White Mimbres Design Triangles and circles are the most common shapes used (Brody 148). Variants include diamonds, squares, crosses, and spirals. These, combined with amazingly fine and consistent lines, form complex yet balanced arrangements. Structural motifs tend to be oriented to the center of the vessel, reaching outward or framing the base of the bowl. Non-structural zone fillers usually border the rim of the bowl (Brody 148).

13. Black and White Mimbres Design Nonobjective designs are usually split into four or more sections radiating from the center of the bowl. Banded divisions and overall patterns also common. Radiating sections are subdivided and filled with an endless array of triangle-based formations. Excluding those with all-over patterning, the center of the bowl is left white.

14. Black and White Mimbres Design The term Black-on-White is misleading as varied firing temperatures produce hues ranging from bright orange to russet brown to black. The bold iron ore paste designs were painted on a white kaolin clay slip using yucca brushes. Mimbres pottery is usually hemispheric in shape, about 10 inches (25.4 cm) in diameter and 5 inches (12.7 cm) deep. The pots were fired in large above ground kilns. Mimbres potters were primarily women, though men may have contributed to some stages of production.

15. Black and White Mimbres Design A wide variety of animals, including many religiously symbolic animals, is depicted in Classic Black-on-White pottery, including fish, birds, bats, lizards, frogs, rabbits, and turtles. While the images of animals, fish, birds and human figures are highly stylized, details are often emphasized. Images of animal and fish species provide tremendous insight into Mimbres life ways.

16. Black and White Mimbres Design In your Sketchbook create a series of drawings abstracting an animal into a stylized solid shape or geometric design.

17. Project Instructions: • To begin constructing your pot start with a grapefruit sized ball of clay and knead it until it is very smooth with no lumps or air bubbles in it. • Next, pull off a golf ball size piece of clay and form it into a smooth hamburger patty shape. It should be about 3/8 inch thick. • Try not to handle it so much that it starts to get cracks on the surface. If this happens, work moisture back into the clay. The trick is to not handle it too much.

18. Project Instructions: • Pull off another golf ball size lump of clay. Form it into a ball, then, using gentle pressure, roll it to make it into a rope of clay. • Once the coil is about 3/8 inch in diameter and pretty even along its whole length, place the coil on the top edge of the patty shaped piece (the base). Score and add slip then start attaching it by using your thumb or finger to press and smooth one side of the coil down onto the patty.

19. Project Instructions: • When the bowl is about 10” in diameter, smooth the top edge and loosely cover the whole bowl with plastic so that it slowly dries to a leather hard consistency.

20. Project Instructions: When the bowl is leather hard, turn it over and lightly draw a circle on the bottom. Score and slip the circle and attach a coil in a circle on the bottom to add a foot to your bowl. Cut the coil off when you reach the starting end of it so that the coil is a perfect circle.

21. Surface Decoration When the bowl is no dryer than leather hard, you can use brushes to brush designs with engobe or underglaze onto the clay in a freehand style, or templates can be cut in order to create beautiful and very precise images and geometric designs in the clay.

22. Surface Decoration • In your Sketchbook create a series of drawings abstracting an animal into a solid color shape or a solid stylized design. • Apply two coats of white engobe or underglaze over the entire surface of the bowl – let it dry. • Choose one of your animal designs to create a template with the white card stock. Your template should be big enough to lay into the bottom of your bowl. It should barely adhere to the damp, leather hard clay. [The clay can be misted with water to ensure that it doesn’t dry out too much, but wait until the water has soaked into the clay before laying the paper on it.] • With a brush or sponge, dab the black slip onto the clay so that the template masks the edges. Let it sit a few minutes until the slip is not runny, then gently remove the template. You may need a needle to pick up an edge of the tracing paper. What is left should be your image. • Templates can be used for the inner or outer border of the bowl, also. • The bowl will need to dry slowly and thoroughly to bone dry before being fired.

23. Jomon Pottery Jomon pottery, a whimsical type of Japanese ceramics, is the oldest recorded earthenware in the history of man, dating back approximately 12,000 years from today. That's a long time ago.

24. Jomon Pottery Deep Vase Fukushima Prefecture

25. Jomon Pottery • Jomon is a primitive, primordial energy that fascinates beyond compare. Not only is it the genesis (beginning) of Japanese ceramics, but it is one of the first instances of man's flirtations with science, industry, and art. • The world's earliest ceramics have been identified as being from the Jomon culture which was roughly contemporary with the civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Nile and the Indus Valley.

26. Mystery of the Jomon • According to archeologists, Jomon pottery is unique in that it represents the only example of vessel making by nonagricultural peoples. In all other parts of the world, vessel making only developed alongside agriculture and hunter-gatherers did not make pottery. • Jomon potters decorated their clay vessels by marking/pressing into clay with sticks wrapped with cords. These forms are hand built from coils, as no potters' wheel was known at this time. Many are quite large and the scale and design are impressive.

27. Mystery of the Jomon • The Jomon hunter-gatherers lived on the island now known as Japan about 12,000 years ago. The earliest art objects created in Japan are the pottery vessels known as Jomon koki, or rope design ware and the idols which are called dogu, or clay dolls. • Both the vessels and the figures not only show a great variety of form, but also have an extraordinary expressiveness which renders them one of the most remarkable artistic achievements of any Neolithic culture. There is a feeling of mystery about them, as well as a strange beauty which appeals to modern taste because it recalls contemporary expressionist and surrealist art.

28. Jomon Pottery Ensui Dogu Late-Middle Yamanashi Prefecture, Important Cultural Property

29. Jomon Pottery • Yet the strength of Japan’s science can hardly unravel the history of clay pots from a civilization that appears much more advanced than how history depicts it to be.

30. Jomon Pottery Figure-patterned Deep Vase, Important Cultural Property

31. Jomon Pottery • Little is known about Jomon pottery. Many will be surprised to find that Jomon was first excavated by the American Edward S. Morse in 1877, 9 years after the Meiji Restoration. It was Morse who discovered earthenware that appeared to date from the Stone Age, along with human remains and stone tools.

32. Jomon Pottery • The advent of stratigraphic dating in later years, or the analyzing of rock and sedimentary strata, evidenced that the geographic layer in which the earthenware was found was considerably older than any sedimentary layer found in the early civilizations of the world, including Egypt and China.

33. Jomon Pottery Fire-patterned Vessel, Niigata Prefecture, National Treasure

34. Jomon Pottery • Jomon pottery reaches a zenith of artistic beauty in the middle Jomon, and its legacy mysteriously vanishes as we enter the Yayoi. It is not until the advent of Hajiki and Sueki wares from Korea in the 5 to 6th centuries AD that we see a new progression in Japanese pottery, especially with the arrival of the potter's wheel and high-temperature kiln firing (which were both techniques from the continent.

35. Jomon Pottery Hachi Vase Hand-patterned Hachi Vase, Gunma Prefecture

36. Jomon Pottery • Unlike the earthenware of China and Korea, Jomon pottery was made through clay coiling, decorated by imprinting rope patterns on the clay body (hence the name Jomon), and were fired in ditches at temperatures of only 500 to 700 degrees Celsius. These techniques are considerably older and more primitive techniques, but were indigenous and original techniques developed well before the emergence of pottery in other continents.

37. Jomon Pottery • Were the early Japanese so advanced, even though some authorities think of them as simple-minded, nomadic hunter/gatherers?

38. Jomon Pottery • The ability to collect, preserve, and cook food with earthenware was surely a huge step for civilization. But if Jomon culture were a primitive look at early man, why would they need to decorate their pottery? It seems as if aesthetics was a large factor in the way they made their pots. And moreover, utility was hardly the focus for such sculptural works as the dogu, or wares such as incense burners. These were undoubtedly religious or talismanic objects, but are made with an extreme and compelling eye for detail and craftsmanship.

39. Jomon Pottery Shako Dogu,  Miyagi Prefecture, National Treasure

40. Jomon Pottery • The shako dogu, for example, appears to be wearing some sort of armor or clothing that is unlike anything seen throughout history. What sort of mind could have imagined such a thing, especially if the culture had no conception of clothing aside from the hides of beasts? And even if such a primitive mind could dream of such a decorative figure, isn't it incredible to think that the early mind of Jomon man could actually materialize the internal image into a clay figurine?

41. Jomon Pottery • And this is not simply one person's doing. A handful of dogu that look extremely similar to the shako dogu has been excavated in numerous locales throughout northern Japan. In other words, a single clan or group did not concoct a singular image in his head. It seems, rather, that the image was readily accepted by all clans that lived in Japan at the time. The figure might have been, in other words, common knowledge. The same goes for the heart-shaped head dogu, as similar figures have been excavated as well.

42. Jomon Pottery Mimizuku Dogu, Saitama Prefecture, Important Cultural Property

43. Characteristics of Jomon Pottery • Some of the most remarkable achievements of the Jomon period are the clay figures representing human beings or animals. Some of these are a high as one foot, while others are as short as two inches. • Most of the clay pieces have small perforations indicating that they might have been suspended, with others obviously intended to be stood up. • Their bodies are often covered with linear designs, commonly spirals; their facial expressions are strange, with staring eyes that suggest the magic associated with eyes in many primitive civilizations. • The depiction of human form is highly abstract, and yet, in spite of its distortions, it is clearly recognizable. Most of the figures are female deities with prominent breasts and swelling hips, and in this way they are similar to prehistoric European fertility idols such as the Venus of Willendorf.

44. Jomon Pottery • Is this evidence of a common religion, or does this underlie a culture that might have had far greater advancements and artistic/aesthetic intentions than previously thought?

45. Jomon Pottery Sitting Dogu, Fukushima Prefecture

46. Jomon Pottery The Jomon Potteryspeaks of deep and beautiful tales indeed.

47. Jomon Pottery • Originating before 300 B.C. • Jomon pottery was made using coils or slabs, and fired in outdoor bonfires/ditches • The name Jomon (繩紋 Jōmon), means "cord-impressed pattern“. • It is characterized by chord-marked pottery; hunting and gathering lifestyle.

48. Focus Questions: How does history and different cultures influence ceramic forms today?

49. Vocabulary & Technical Info

50. Earthenware Clay - A low-fire clay. Porous and not waterproof. To be functional, It must be glazed.Terra Cotta - A brownish-orange earthenware clay body commonly used for ceramic sculpture.Stoneware Clay - A high-fire clay. Stoneware is waterproof even without glaze; the resulting ware is sturdier than earthenware.Porcelain - True porcelain was being made in China and Korea around 960 AD.  Porcelain is a combination of kaolin (a pure, white, primary clay), silica and feldspar.  A unique aspect of porcelain is that it can be worked as clay, but when fired properly reaches a state similar to glass.  Primary qualities of porcelain are translucency and whiteness.  In the 17th Century, English potters invented Bone China to compete with the porcelain being imported into Europe. TYPES OF CLAY: