Pottery

Pottery is somewhat a kind of clay stuff, which has been defined as heated earthenware that is composed of terracotta at created, apart from scientific, structural & intractable goods by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). The word pottery also refers to the process of treating ceramic material like clay with other minerals and metal oxides to create concrete objects such as containers, vessels, pitchers etc that are useful in daily life for different purposes. 

There is no particular size of pottery it can range from smaller object to bigger object.This can be done in any type of industry i.e. small scale industry and large scale industry. The process of pottery depends on many factors like raw materials which is the basic requirement for the pottery, transportation of the raw materials and at last but not the least skilled labor which is the most important requirement of all. The pottery industries are very old. Pottery industries came into existence from 1785. At that time there was a flood of pottery industries. In England, the name of a city was known with The Potteries, instead of its original name due to the presence of large number of pottery industry. In 1785, whooping 20,000 thousand workers were employed by mere 200 pottery manufacturers. 

Pottery products are created by treating the clay with several minerals & metal oxides to give it the strength. After that they given the desired shape and then dried to get a hard object. The treating of clay with minerals and metal oxides takes place at very high temperatures in a kiln. After that the resulting pottery article is treated with glaze again at high temperature to give it a smooth finishing. In the end we get a finished pottery product. The glazing improves the rigidity i.e. improves the strength of the article. 

Due to the increasing demand of the pottery articles the conventional potters have been replaced by the pottery industries producing articles in bulk with modern techniques enabling mass production.    

There are different techniques to produce pottery articles. Each technique uses different type of clay. But it is the choice of manufacturer to use which clay depending on the type of the article to be produced. The basic method of producing a pottery product is same. The clay is mixed with several minerals and other metal oxides to give it high strength under high temperature and high pressure. The temperature in a kiln ranges from 800°C to 1200°C. This high temperature in the kiln does not convert the article into a glass, but to some extent it is translucent. These types of articles are known as terra cotta or earthenware. The articles which pass through nitrification process under high temperature and high pressure and result in smooth, refined, article and have translucent properties are known as Porcelain. The clay articles which are glazed with white tin are known as faience. Ceramic articles which are treated at high temperatures and are partially converted into glass are known as stoneware.