Pottery

Pottery is a type of ceramic, specifically containers made out of clay. (So an art piece made out of clay would not be pottery—it’d just be ceramics.) There are three major categories of pottery: earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain.

Earthenware is made of clay that’s fired at relatively low temperatures (1,000°C to 1,150°C). The resulting product is porous and coarse, which then gets glazed and fired a second time.

Stoneware is made of clay that’s fired at a high temperature (1,200°C) until it’s the consistency of glass, a process called vitrification. Because stoneware is non-porous, any glaze applied to it is purely decorative.

Porcelain is a very hard, translucent white ceramic. To make it, small amounts of glass, granite, and feldspar minerals are ground up with fine, white clay and then mixed with water until the mixture is malleable. The resulting products get fired between 1,200°C and 1,450°C, decorated with glaze, and then fired again. This is also known as fine china. Bone china, which is stronger than porcelain, is made by mixing feldspar minerals, fine silica sand, and ash from cattle bones into that fine, white clay, and then is shaped and fired in the same manner.