MART-701 Lessons

It was another week, another day at Hogwarts, where some of the more artistically inclined students met together in the fifth floor Magical Art classroom. Although it was a little bit before class, some of the early bird students filed into the classroom, only to be greeted with the sight of their professor working at a potter’s wheel at the front. Professor Rosenquist was dressed in casual clothes instead of her normal robes, and her hair was tied back into a high ponytail. Clay covered not only her hands, but there were also splotches of it on her apron and on the floor around the wheel. Paying no mind to the students slowly arriving, she continued to shape what appeared to be a bowl. As the last few students trickled in, an audible “ding!” of an alarm rang throughout the classroom and the professor slowed the potter’s wheel to a stop. She looked at her wand that was neatly placed on her desk, and then back at her clay covered hands. With a laugh, Professor Rosenquist enunciated a “Scourgify!” and with a shake, her hands were clean of the clay. She quickly made her way over to the desk to pick up her wand and swiftly pointed it at the kiln in the back of the room. “Watch your heads! Wingardium Leviosa!” The professor announced with a swish and flick as a tray of handmade plates and bowls was pulled out of the kiln and over the heads of students ducking out of the way. When the bowls made it safely to the front, Professor Rosenquist flicked her wand at the kiln again to turn it off and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans before turning to address the students.

Welcome again to yet another lesson of Magical Art! As you can see, I had some free time before we met, so I decided to work on my own art projects. These bowls and plates tie in quite nicely with today’s topic as we will be covering ceramics, more specifically pottery. Since you also have your midterm today after the lecture, let’s not waste any time!

What exactly is ceramic art? Well, ceramic refers to the creation of products that are made from nonmetallic minerals (typically clay), that are shaped and then fired at high temperatures. These ceramic objects can range anywhere from practical items and tools, like tiles and tableware, to art such as sculpture and pottery. As you can guess, ceramics ties into our next lesson, which is on sculpture. However, you will find more of an emphasis on ceramics here because while some sculptures are ceramic, there are all sorts of materials besides ceramics also used to make sculpture (i.e. marble, metal), meanwhile all pottery is under the big ceramic umbrella. In fact, the word “ceramics” is derived from the Greek word “keramikos” which means “pottery.” Pottery itself refers to the art of, well, creating pots, vessels, and plates out of ceramic materials. Its roots date back to ancient times, due to its unique nature of not just being art, but also being quite practical. While yes, you could argue that other forms of art could be practical, functional pottery became somewhat of a necessity of society. Civilizations needed areas to store food and water. What better place to store these things than a pot or a vase with a lid? Pottery enabled humans to have something to set their food on other than on the ground or need to carry with their hands. Due to the high chance of it surviving centuries, pottery finds are common artifacts in excavations and provide many clues as to how those people lived. From looking at the materials various pieces were composed of, the types of patterns, the colors of those patterns, and the usage of each piece, we can determine things like that society’s values and habits, to their technology and trade, to even similarities with other nearby societies. There have been fascinating advances in the technology used for Muggle archaeology. Alas, that subject does detract from our overall topic of magical art so we won’t delve too much more into it. If you find archaeology and sociology appealing in regards to analyzing pottery, however, I would definitely recommend reading up on carbon dating and fabric analysis in your spare time.

There are three main types of pottery: earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. Earthenware refers to pottery that has been fired from temperatures as low as 600° C to a maximum of 1,200° C. It typically has a red, orange, brown, white, or black appearance after being fired and it is very porous, which does make it permeable to water unless a ceramic glaze is applied. A common example of this off the top of my head is the flower pots that house the plants in the Greenhouse or you may have seen a few be-runed amphora and other things in the Room of Runes! This type of pottery is the earliest known form (dating back to 29,000 B.C.E.), as the high temperatures needed to fire other types of pottery were essentially impossible to attain until the modern era. This was because potters didn’t have ways to efficiently or precisely measure the temperature of kilns due to the lack of technology and knowledge at the time. However, this does exclude Chinese ceramicists, who were way before their time, but we will get to that later. Earthenware, in some senses, forms the building blocks of the art of pottery. It encompasses all ancient Greek and Roman pottery, most Egyptian, Persian, and Mediterranean pottery, and some East Asian pottery. Although earthenware clay is the easiest to shape due to its plasticity, it does not mean that we are limited to simple terracotta flower pots and bowls! Through the use of various methods of decoration and glazing, we can obtain quite complex pottery designs. We will touch on that in just a second!

Stoneware, on the other hand, is a broad term to define nonporous pottery that is fired at temperatures between 1,100° C to 1,300° C. It’s usually opaque with colors varying from white, gray, black, red, brown, or even multiple colors depending on the material, glaze, and whether the pottery was fired once or twice. Its reputation for being very sturdy and dense, while withstanding high temperatures, made it the primary choice for practical cookware and storage. If you have taken Year Five of Alchemy, you may remember me requiring a ceramic cauldron for your spagyric elixirs. You might not have realized it at the time, but you were using stoneware! Another common example off the top of my head are early Pensieves, as some of these were crafted out of stoneware ceramics before metal became the main material for the modern version. Historically speaking, stoneware was initially developed in China as early as 1400 B.C.E. during the Shang Dynasty and was simply considered as “high-fired” wares along with porcelain, while “low-fired” wares were solely earthenware. In comparison, stoneware was not introduced in Europe until the late Middle Ages, mainly due to the lack of required clays needed for this type of pottery as well as European kilns being much less efficient than Asian kilns. Germany in particular was known for their medieval stoneware jars, jugs, and beer mugs. Towards the 18th and 19th centuries, England became known for its innovative stoneware pottery.

One English Muggle stood out amongst others and majorly helped spearhead England towards this reputation as well as being a major contribution to the renowned English Staffordshire pottery. Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) was an English potter and entrepreneur that produced invention after invention, which were quite popular and quickly adapted by other potters. He found ways to create earthenware and stoneware that were so artful and delicate that his pottery, known as Wedgwood, was accepted as equivalent in quality to porcelain. He was able to create fine earthenware that was cream in color and decorated it with either a lead glaze, transfer printing, or enameling and called it creamware. To the naked eye, it could be mistaken for porcelain! Wedgwood was also able to perfect a rich green glaze that sparked a movement of green-glaze ware amongst European potters. As far as stoneware went, black basalt pottery was a type of stoneware where basalt and clay were mixed and fired until the result was a rich, stark black. More notably, Jasperware was his most well known invention, and typically what someone thinks of when they think of “Wedgwood.” Jasperware was unglazed stoneware pottery in various colors, with decoration using elements of biscuit pottery, to give a matte finish. Most commonly the main part of the jasperware was a pale blue, while the decorative sculpted bits were a rich white, as seen in the picture on the top left. Of course, not all jasperware was that pale blue, but the pale blue variety is what typically comes to mind. Wedgwood helped shape what became Staffordshire pottery, of course amongst other prominent English potters, and his pottery became known as a luxury good, even to us in the wizarding world. Modern magical potters are still inspired by Staffordshire pottery to this day and you will typically see pieces that may look like Wedgwood in your own home! Next time that we are on holiday, I encourage you to keep an eye out for ceramics in your family home. Who knows, you might be able to spot some pottery styles that you may recognize!

Last, but not least, is porcelain, also referred to as fine china. Porcelain refers to ceramic pottery that is fired from 1,200° C to 1,400° C and the end result is a white or gray ceramic that is sometimes translucent and bright. This fine pottery is especially known for its toughness, low permeability, and high elasticity among potters as well as being associated with luxury in society. It was first made during the Tang Dynasty (618 C.E. - 907 C.E.) in China, which was such an accomplishment due to the technology at the current time. By comparison, Europe was not able to achieve this breakthrough of creating porcelain until the early 1700s. Interesting enough, aside from your mother’s fine china collection, porcelain is more common than one would think in the everyday life of a growing witch or wizard such as yourself! For those of you who take Divination, I’m sure by now that you have experienced a few of Professor Fayge’s regular tasseomancy sessions. It should come no surprise to you that the teacups and saucers are indeed porcelain. Even if you aren’t a fan of the divining arts, I’m sure you have come by a Nose-Biting Teacup at least on one shopping excursion through Diagon Alley. Nose-Biting Teacups are actually considered a subtype of porcelain called soft-paste porcelain. To understand what exactly that is, we need to discuss how the clay in porcelain is made.

The clay used in porcelain is mainly constructed though kaolin, with the option of adding materials such as petuntse, alabaster, and feldspar to name a few. These other minerals are added to create different variations in the clay’s plasticity and to lower the firing temperature. The variances in the mixtures led to various major differences in the end results, which eventually led to there being three main categories of porcelain: hard-paste, soft-paste, and bone china. Hard-paste porcelain is the most common type of Chinese porcelain, as well as the earliest kind of the three subcategories. It’s made from kaolin and petuntse and requires the highest firing temperature (1,400° C). Soft-paste porcelain was created from European attempts to recreate hard-paste porcelain without the need for the special minerals required in hard-paste (its main materials include ball clay, bone ash, and glass) or the high temperatures needed for firing (1,100° C - 1250° C). Most enchanted porcelain, specifically those charmed to move such as the Nose-Biting Teacup, are soft-paste due to the base material not being as strong or rigid as hard-paste which helps the magic permeate it so the ceramic can move. The invention of bone china was spearheaded in England in 1748 by Muggle potters Thomas Frye and Josiah Spode, and was pretty much an English exclusive product up until the 1960s. It’s the strongest of the porcelain subtypes with it being made up of two parts bone ash, one part kaolin, and one part china stone or feldspars.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to pottery. There are subtypes for earthenware and stoneware as well, but I fear if we delve into absolutely every single type of pottery, we would be here all day without even touching clay! That being said, it is certainly interesting to discuss an art form that not only has history with ancient cultures, but also is strongly rooted in our local English culture.

Now that we have gone over different types of pottery as well as some history, let’s talk about the process of making pottery. There are three general steps when you are making pottery: shaping, firing, and decorating. Depending on if you have acquired premixed clay or are making your own, you could also add preparing the clay body as an additional initial step. For the sake of time, we will touch upon the main three.

Shaping is the first part of the process in which the clay is first kneaded and then brought to its intended shape. There are several different ways to shape your clay, especially with the advances of modern technology, but we’ll talk about the two major ways: hand building and throwing. Hand building is the oldest shaping method, which, as implied, is shaping the clay using only your hands as the shaping tool. There are many different techniques that can be employed such as creating coils, combining clay slabs, and rolling up balls of clay and pinching them into shape to name a few. When these shapes need to be combined, a slip (a solution of liquified clay) is used to merge them to create the final piece.

Throwing is when clay is shaped through using a tool known as a potter’s wheel. A potter’s wheel is a machine that consists of a turntable known as a “wheel-head” attached to a mechanism that rotates it. This can be through a stick, motor, and foot power. If you do happen upon a magical potter’s wheel, such as the one I was using a little bit ago, magic is used to rotate the wheel-head, and on more expensive models, a variation of a Shielding Charm is used so that the clay is contained inside an invisible dome over the wheel-head. Clay is placed into the center of the wheel-head and as it is being rotated, it’s shaped through either hands or tools in an upwards and outward motion to create the hollow shape. This is a task that is definitely harder than it looks as there are several steps involved such as centering the clay, opening a hollow in the top, flooring the bottom inside the pot, pulling the clay up to shape the walls to an even thickness, and trimming the excess clay to finalize the shape or create the foot of the pot. If you do not create the perfect pot on the first try, do not fret! Throwing is a technique that requires a lot of practice and patience before you produce masterpieces. It’s certainly messy as well, so don’t forget to cast the Scouring Charm after you are finished. Otherwise, there will be clay everywhere!

Next, let’s talk about firing. Firing is when the temperature creates a chemical change that hardens and sets the clay, which is irreversible. Once fired, your piece is considered pottery, regardless of it being decorated yet or not. The most common method of firing is through using a kiln, like the one in the back of the classroom. A kiln is essentially a type of oven for pottery that is used to produce high enough temperatures so that clay can harden, and as you can probably tell from earlier in our lecture, a regular kitchen oven would not suffice. Of course there are many different types of kilns, heated through gas, wood, and electricity, but the type you all are going to most commonly run into are magical kilns. Magical kilns are powered by numerous enchantments to create fast and even heating so that magical artists are able to fire many different pieces at a time. You may also notice that there is no tray to set the pottery on and only a drip tray at the bottom. That’s because magical kilns are able to keep pieces aloft. This convenient feature was created due to the fact that, in mundane kilns, glazes sometimes cause the pottery to stick to the tray they are sitting on. The atmosphere is easier to control and temperatures tend to be more accurate in a magical kiln than a traditional mundane kiln, though I have heard that modern electrical kilns have bridged this gap somewhat. Plus, magical kilns are much more painless to clean than a mundane kiln. I will say though, magical kilns are quite expensive, however they are worth the Galleons if you are a serious potter! If you do run into a situation where you will need to use a non-magical kiln, absolutely seek instruction before using it as there are numerous different types of mundane kilns that widely vary in how they are built and are operated.

Last but not least is decorating. This, in my opinion, is the fun part as you are putting the finishing touches on your pottery, and the vision you have of your art is fully coming to fruition. Some forms of decoration are applied before firing such as carving (making shallow cuts into the pottery) or burnishing (rubbing the pottery with a tool made of steel, stone, or wood to create a shiny, polished finish). Other forms are usually applied after firing such as painting (as some paints change color or magical effects can alter after firing) or lithography (some prints contain pigments that cannot stand the high temperatures firing requires). Glazing, which is the most common form of decoration, can be applied either before or after firing, and applied in addition to other decoration forms. The glaze itself is a glassy coating that strengthens the piece itself and creates an impermeable layer, even giving earthenware the ability to hold liquids. In a way, glazing serves as both decoration and protection for the pottery. Glaze can come in several different colors and various degrees of glossy or matte finishes. It can be applied through brushing, dipping, dusting, or otherwise coating the piece with the composition. You will sometimes find pieces created by Muggle potters where the bottom is left uncoated. This is due to the reason I discussed a little bit ago: mundane kilns don’t have the ability to levitate pottery. Aren’t you all glad that we have magic at our disposal? 

Anyway, that’s all I have for today! As you can see, we don’t have potter’s wheel stations all over the classroom. That’s because you have your midterm today and I have something planned for next week instead. Speaking of, please clear your desks as midterms are being distributed. Once you are finished, pile them up on my desk before you leave the room. Good luck!

Lesson written by Professor Serafina Rosenquist
Additional portions written by Professor Rose Honeysett