Русский ремесленник

Articles made of baked clay are widespread and very ancient type of folk handicrafts. It uses readily available natural material. Miscellaneous kitchen utensils - pots, bowls, plates, flasks, pots, and toys are the most typical products of the national production.
The concept of «art ceramics» includes all varieties of products, running out of clay. Depending on the main source of raw materials and additional components are terracotta, majolica, faience, porcelain, with the differences in appearance and on ways of decoration. Terracotta has a light reddish-brown color of baked clay, which is not glaze. It is easy to perceive the moisture, so applied mainly for decorative items.

Majolica is the natural color of clay and porous pot. To use majolica products in the utilitarian view of the surface glaze and colored enamels, which leads to pot waterproof. Majolica decoration is enriched by applying engobe - grilling white clay as a very thin layer. In the background glaze and colored enamel acquire increased sonority. This is an inexpensive form of artistic ceramics.

Faience unlike majolica has a thin pot, mostly white, but its porosity largely eliminated transparent glaze. Porcelain is the most perfect form of artistic ceramics. Whiteness, mechanical strength, resistance to chemical and thermal effects have provided broad opportunities of application in the manufacture of products technical purposes, tableware, sculpture and other artistic works. Kaolin, clay, feldspar, quartz - are indispensable components of the raw mass - result in firing a thin, transparent crock. Jewelry elaboration of constructive and decorative details, combined with exquisite painted porcelain puts on a par with the most valuable works of arts and crafts.

Methods of making ceramics in the history of the development of these products have undergone some changes. Hand molding vessels preserved in some areas of our country so far. But the desire to improve the work and achieve the ideal shape of the vessel collected led to the use of pottery with the terms of the machine, which pulled out of a piece of raw clay subordinate to the principle of symmetry of the object. Subsequent changes in the potter's lathe on the transition from the rotation range of hand to treadle, and then to the electromechanical motion. The principle of his work remained to date.

At the current production potter's lathe significantly preempted by casting in plaster mold split. Liquid clay mass - slurry - is poured into the form, the moisture absorbed by plaster, and on the walls of the form as it is printed next vessel. The excess slurry is poured in advance, leaving only a small layer of mass. The resulting semi-finished product is more underworking: attaching handles and spout, if kettle; trimming seams from the casting; decoration scratching; mitigating surface - polishing, etc. All these operations are performed on the raw shards. At the end of their product is dried. Then art pottery is fired.

In the decoration of these products most commonly used painting. This type of jewelry has a variety of techniques. Decoration engobe - finely triturated white or mixed with a liquid dye clay - is associated with both coated surfaces in whole or in part, and with drawing the pattern on the unfired vessel pipette, horn, or pear. Engobe thus absorbed into the pot is not fully maintaining relief ornament ceramics. Some of the decorative materials are transparent (colorless and color) and non-transparent glaze. For the folk pottery is characterized by a peculiar use of transparent glazes in the form of a partial product that creates a game mat and shiny surface.

Free colored glaze opaque glazes - enamels - have long been used to create painterly effects. Basic color crock was covered with enamel, while the transparent colorless glaze emphasized the natural color of clay. Glazed ware painted with baked, usually in two to three hours. First, utilny roasting attached product strength, provides hardness crock. The second firing carried out as final, which enshrines the painting and glaze (with underglaze painting). If you do overglaze painting, then fired three times, do (utilny, irrigation and securing overglaze colors). Underglaze painting requires a higher firing temperature, so the palette is more restrained. In overglaze painting color spectrum is wider as the temperature of firing ceramics does not exceed 700 ° C.

Some people apart in this art, there are centers where creates clay toy. Her hand-molded and painted freely, writing every time new options. In many centers painting is distempers and related technology that requires no baking (drying and firing semi-finished products are not excluded). Only in certain fields toy run in parallel with the dishes on the same technology with glazing and firing data types of ceramics can be found in many areas of Russia. In the centers of folk art, with deep historical traditions, toy stores motifs and images that are linked to cult rituals, personify the forces of nature. Therefore they are repeated images of a female figure (the image of Mother Nature), horse, deer, birds. As the symbols are important to human phenomena, sculptures have generalized semi fantastic character.

Being outwardly archaic and sometimes very primitive in form, clay toys has evolved, reflecting the new phenomena of real life. Thus, in the XIX century. in a number of industries manufacturing toys appeared images of people - representatives of different social strata of society: peasants, townspeople, soldiers, ladies. In the works of modern masters, along with the image of a single symbolic figures are increasing on a multi-figured compositions depicting genre scenes. Due to historical features of the production centers in each nation developed its own way. On this basis was worked out and consolidated by the technology of manufacturing products, which became part of an artistic tradition, which characterizes the originality of art ceramics in every region of our country.