A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects made from clay into pottery, tiles and bricks. Various industries use rotary kilns for pyroprocessing and to transform many other materials.
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a potter is also called a pottery. The definition of pottery, used by the ASTM International, is "all fired ceramic wares that contain clay when formed, except technical, structural, and refractory products". End applications include tableware, decorative ware, sanitaryware, and in technology and industry such as electrical insulators and laboratory ware. In art history and archaeology, especially of ancient and prehistoric periods, pottery often means vessels only, and sculpted figurines of the same material are called terracottas.
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fires.
Petuntse, also spelled petunse and bai dunzi, baidunzi, is a historic term for a wide range of micaceous or feldspathic rocks. However, all will have been subject to geological alteration of igneous rocks that result in materials which, after processing, are suitable as an ingredient in some ceramic formulations. The name means "little white bricks", referring to the form in which it was transported to the potteries.
Earth materials include minerals, rocks, soil and water. These are the naturally occurring materials found on Earth that constitute the raw materials upon which our global society exists. Earth materials are vital resources that provide the basic components for life, agriculture and industry.
A gravel pit is an open-pit mine for the extraction of gravel. Gravel pits often lie in river valleys where the water table is high, so they may naturally fill with water to form ponds or lakes. Old, abandoned gravel pits are normally used either as nature reserves, or as amenity areas for water sports, landfills and walking. In Germany former gravel or sand pits that have filled up with water are known as Baggersee and popular for recreational use. In addition, many gravel pits in the United Kingdom have been stocked with freshwater fish such as the common carp to create coarse fishing locations. Gravel and sand are mined for concrete, construction aggregate and other industrial mineral uses.
Ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced by this pigment, especially a light brownish-yellow. A variant of ochre containing a large amount of hematite, or dehydrated iron oxide, has a reddish tint known as "red ochre".
An oven is a tool which is used to expose materials to a hot environment. Ovens contain a hollow chamber and provide a means of heating the chamber in a controlled way. In use since antiquity, they have been used to accomplish a wide variety of tasks requiring controlled heating. Because they are used for a variety of purposes, there are many different types of ovens. These types differ depending on their intended purpose and based upon how they generate heat.
Quartzite is a hard, non-foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone. Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts. Pure quartzite is usually white to grey, though quartzites often occur in various shades of pink and red due to varying amounts of hematite. Other colors, such as yellow, green, blue and orange, are due to other minerals.
Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve is 265-acre (1.07 km2) state park located near the southwestern shore of Staten Island, New York. It is the only state park located on Staten Island.
St Erth is a civil parish and village in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.
Catlinite, also called pipestone, is a type of argillite, usually brownish-red in color, which occurs in a matrix of Sioux Quartzite. Because it is fine-grained and easily worked, it is prized by Native Americans, primarily those of the Plains nations, for use in making ceremonial pipes, known as chanunpas or čhaŋnúŋpas in the Lakota language. Pipestone quarries are located and preserved in Pipestone National Monument outside Pipestone, Minnesota, in Pipestone County, Minnesota, and at the Pipestone River in Ontario, Canada.
Pit firing is the oldest known method for the firing of pottery. Examples have been dated as early as 29,000–25,000 BCE, while the earliest known kiln dates to around 6000 BCE, and was found at the Yarim Tepe site in modern Iraq. Kilns allow higher temperatures to be reached, use fuel more efficiently, and have long replaced pit firing as the most widespread method of firing pottery, although the technique still finds limited use amongst certain studio potters and in Africa.
China stone is a medium grained, feldspar-rich partially kaolinised granite characterised by the absence of iron-bearing minerals.
A brickyard or brickfield is a place or yard where bricks are made, fired, and stored, or sometimes sold or otherwise distributed from. Brick makers work in a brick yard. A brick yard may be constructed near natural sources of clay or on or near a construction site if necessity or design requires the bricks to be made locally.
This is a list of pottery and ceramic terms.
Mining in the United Kingdom produces a wide variety of fossil fuels, metals, and industrial minerals due to its complex geology. In 2013, there were over 2,000 active mines, quarries, and offshore drilling sites on the continental land mass of the United Kingdom producing £34bn of minerals and employing 36,000 people.
Tregonning Hill is the westerly of two granite hills overlooking Mount's Bay in west Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, the other being Godolphin Hill. They are approximately 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) west of the town of Helston. The Plymouth chemist William Cookworthy mixed china stone with kaolin, mined from the hill to make Plymouth porcelain in 1768; which was the first time hard-paste porcelain was made in Britain. Part of the hill is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and at the date of notification (1994) was the only known site of western rustwort in Great Britain.
Carnegie was a town in Corral Hollow, in San Joaquin County, California from 1902 to about 1915.
The Lithgow Valley Colliery and Pottery Site is a heritage-listed former pottery and colliery and now pottery and visitor attraction at Bent Street, Lithgow, City of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1876 to 1945. It is also known as Lithgow Pottery and Brickworks. The property is privately owned. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
