A potbank is a colloquial name for a pottery factory in North Staffordshire used to make bone china, earthenware and sanitaryware.
The term potbank has been used for generations; traditionally it is believed to originate in a business strategy employed by Josiah Wedgwood, the famous early industrialist. Unable to meet the demand for his creamwares, he sub-contracted other potters to make shapes to his specification, and to hold these in stocks until he required them. Their warehouses were called banks, [1] and the word "potbank" is thought to derive from the practice.
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The raw materials of pottery include clay, quartz and feldspar. These are mixed sieved and filtered to make slip, which is pressed to make a workable body. Bowls are jolleyed on a wheel, plates are jiggered on a wheel and fancies moulded in plaster moulds. This greenware is dried, and placed into saggars which are stacked into a bottle oven for the first or biscuit) firing at 1,000C. The resulting "biscuit ware" can be decorated with an underglaze transfer and coated with a glaze. These are then placed in a saggar with kiln furniture thimbles to separate them and fired for a second time, the glost firing can be up to 1,400C, in another bottle oven. Depending on ware, the item could be decorated and gilded by hand and be fired for a third time in a muffle kiln at 1,250. [2] [3]
The six towns of the Potteries were the centre of the ceramic industry in the United Kingdom. The Trent and Mersey Canal which opened in 1777 provided cheap transport for the china clay from Cornwall, the bones and the coal from local collieries, and a smooth passage to Liverpool to export the finished goods.
There are 46 standing bottle ovens in Stoke-on-Trent, all are now listed buildings. Bottle ovens can be seen at the Gladstone Pottery Museum, Burleigh Pottery and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum.
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.
Longquan celadon (龍泉青瓷) is a type of green-glazed Chinese ceramic, known in the West as celadon or greenware, produced from about 950 to 1550. The kilns were mostly in Lishui prefecture in southwestern Zhejiang Province in the south of China, and the north of Fujian Province. Overall a total of some 500 kilns have been discovered, making the Longquan celadon production area one of the largest historical ceramic producing areas in China. "Longquan-type" is increasingly preferred as a term, in recognition of this diversity, or simply "southern celadon", as there was also a large number of kilns in north China producing Yaozhou ware or other Northern Celadon wares. These are similar in many respects, but with significant differences to Longquan-type celadon, and their production rose and declined somewhat earlier.
Earthenware is glazed or unglazed nonvitreous pottery that has normally been fired below 1,200 °C (2,190 °F). Basic earthenware, often called terracotta, absorbs liquids such as water. However, earthenware can be made impervious to liquids by coating it with a ceramic glaze, and such a process is used for the great majority of modern domestic earthenware. The main other important types of pottery are porcelain, bone china, and stoneware, all fired at high enough temperatures to vitrify. End applications include tableware and decorative ware such as figurines.
Stoneware is a broad term for pottery fired at a relatively high temperature. A modern definition is a vitreous or semi-vitreous ceramic made primarily from stoneware clay or non-refractory fire clay. End applications include tableware, decorative ware such as vases.
Spode is an English brand of pottery and homewares produced by the company of the same name, which is based in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Spode was founded by Josiah Spode (1733–1797) in 1770, and was responsible for perfecting two extremely important techniques that were crucial to the worldwide success of the English pottery industry in the century to follow.
The Staffordshire Potteries is the industrial area encompassing the six towns Burslem, Fenton, Hanley, Longton, Stoke and Tunstall, which is now the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. North Staffordshire became a centre of ceramic production in the early 17th century, due to the local availability of clay, salt, lead and coal.
A saggar is a type of kiln furniture. It is a ceramic boxlike container used in the firing of pottery to enclose or protect ware being fired inside a kiln. The name may be a contraction of the word safeguard.
Creamware is a cream-coloured refined earthenware with a lead glaze over a pale body, known in France as faïence fine, in the Netherlands as Engels porselein, and in Italy as terraglia inglese. It was created about 1750 by the potters of Staffordshire, England, who refined the materials and techniques of salt-glazed earthenware towards a finer, thinner, whiter body with a brilliant glassy lead glaze, which proved so ideal for domestic ware that it supplanted white salt-glaze wares by about 1780. It was popular until the 1840s.
Slip casting, or slipcasting, is a ceramic forming technique, and is widely used for shapes that can not easily be formed by other techniques. The technique involves a clay body slip, usually prepared in a blunger, being poured into plaster moulds and allowed to form a layer, the cast, on the internal walls of the mould.
Ding ware, Ting ware or Dingyao are Chinese ceramics, mostly porcelain, that were produced in the prefecture of Dingzhou in Hebei in northern China. The main kilns were at Jiancicun or Jianci in Quyang County. They were produced between the Tang and Yuan dynasties of imperial China, though their finest period was in the 11th century, under the Northern Song. The kilns "were in almost constant operation from the early eighth until the mid-fourteenth century."
Chinese ceramics show a continuous development since pre-dynastic times and are one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics globally. The first pottery was made during the Palaeolithic era. Chinese ceramics range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles, to hand-built pottery vessels fired in bonfires or kilns, to the sophisticated Chinese porcelain wares made for the imperial court and for export. Porcelain was a Chinese invention and is so identified with China that it is still called "china" in everyday English usage.
Mintons was a major company in Staffordshire pottery, "Europe's leading ceramic factory during the Victorian era", an independent business from 1793 to 1968. It was a leader in ceramic design, working in a number of different ceramic bodies, decorative techniques, and "a glorious pot-pourri of styles - Rococo shapes with Oriental motifs, Classical shapes with Medieval designs and Art Nouveau borders were among the many wonderful concoctions". As well as pottery vessels and sculptures, the firm was a leading manufacturer of tiles and other architectural ceramics, producing work for both the Houses of Parliament and United States Capitol.
The Gladstone Pottery Museum is a working museum of a medium-sized coal-fired pottery, typical of those once common in the North Staffordshire area of England from the time of the industrial revolution in the 18th century to the mid 20th century. It is a grade II* listed building.
This is a list of pottery and ceramic terms.
A bottle oven or bottle kiln is a type of kiln. The word 'bottle' refers to the shape of the structure and not to the kiln's products, which are usually pottery, not glass.
China painting, or porcelain painting, is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain, developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porcelain, developed in 18th-century Europe. The broader term ceramic painting includes painted decoration on lead-glazed earthenware such as creamware or tin-glazed pottery such as maiolica or faience.
Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, including clay. It may take varied forms, including artistic pottery, including tableware, tiles, figurines and other sculpture. As one of the plastic arts, ceramic art is a visual art. While some ceramics are considered fine art, such as pottery or sculpture, most are considered to be decorative, industrial or applied art objects. Ceramic art can be created by one person or by a group, in a pottery or a ceramic factory with a group designing and manufacturing the artware.
Dick Lehman is an American ceramics artist based in Indiana. Dozens of articles and photos featuring his techniques and insights have appeared in periodicals and books on ceramic art since 1985, including 34 articles in U.S.-published Ceramics Monthly, the largest circulating magazine in the field, plus articles in 11 other international periodicals.
Kiln furniture are devices and implements inside furnaces used during the heating of manufactured individual pieces, such as pottery or other ceramic or metal components. Kiln furniture is made of refractory materials, i.e., materials that withstand high temperatures without deformation. Kiln furniture can account for up to 80% of the mass of a kiln charge.