Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials,
including clay. It may take forms including artistic pottery, including
tableware, tiles, figurines and other sculpture. While some ceramics are
considered fine art, as pottery or sculpture, most are considered to be
decorative, industrial or applied art objects. Ceramics may also be
considered artefacts in archaeology. In a pottery or ceramic factory, a
group of people design, manufacture and decorate the art ware.
The word "ceramics" comes from the Greek keramikos
(κεραμικος), meaning "pottery", which in turn comes from keramos
(κεραμος) meaning "potter's clay". Most traditional ceramic products
were made from clay (or clay mixed with other materials), shaped and
subjected to heat, and tableware and decorative ceramics are generally
still made this way.
In modern ceramic engineering usage, ceramics is the art and science of
making objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials by the action of
heat. It excludes glass and mosaic made from glass tesserae. There is a
long history of ceramic art in almost all developed cultures.
Cultures especially noted for ceramics include the Chinese, Cretan,
Greek, Persian, Mayan, Japanese, and Korean cultures, as well as the
modern Western cultures. Elements of ceramic art, upon which different
degrees of emphasis have been placed at different times, are the shape
of the object, its decoration by painting, carving and other methods,
and the glazing found on most ceramics. Different types of clay, when
used with different minerals and firing conditions, are used to produce
earthenware, stoneware, porcelain and fine china
.
Read more about ceramic art history on wikipedia