pottery

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Ware, such as vases, pots, bowls, or plates, shaped from moist clay and hardened by heat.
• noun The craft or occupation of a potter.
• noun The place where a potter works.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The ware or vessels made by potters; baked earthenware, glazed or unglazed.
• noun A place where earthen vessels are made.
• noun The business of a potter; the manufacture of earthenware.
• noun cylinders, prisms, and so-called barrels, all intended to receive inscriptions which are impressed upon them;
• noun flat tablets or tiles inscribed in the same way, and stored together in immense collections, forming libraries or collections of records, according to their subjects;
• noun vessels for various uses—not generally rich in decoration, and for the most part of plain unglazed clay.
• noun Imitations of the true Palissy ware, made by modern manufacturers, and often extremely successful, so as to be deceptive.
• noun a coarse brown paste with a white enamel, upon which flowers, scrolls, etc., are painted in vivid colors, and covered with a silicious glaze, and
• noun a ware of similar composition with figures in relief and similarly decorated. Each of these two sorts has sometimes a copper luster, and it is not uncommon for pieces otherwise alike to differ in having more or less luster, so that it seems that the luster is not in all cases an important object with the decorator. Rhodian, Damascus, and Anatolian wares are often classed as Persian.
• noun a white-glazed earthenware, of which the factory was established by Volpato the engraver, about 1790, and was continued by his sons and others. Figures and groups were made of this ware. The color of the pieces varies from pure white through different shades of buff to a sort of stone-color.
• noun that painted in full color with bouquets and single flowers, and more rarely with figure-subjects in medallions, the ground of this variety being generally of a purer white; and
• noun that in which the two preceding styles are mingled, the dark-blue scrolls alternating with bouquets and festoons in color, and the ground of the enamel bluish. There are also exceptional varieties, as that closely imitating Chinese painting on porcelain, and that in which carefully made white enameled pieces are decorated only by a coat of arms, or a device or emblem in imitation of an effective Italian style.
• noun at the National Porcelain Factory, which at different epochs has produced a limited number of pieces of enameled faience, or
• noun at private factories, of which there have been a number at different times since about 1775. Compare Sèvres porcelain, under porcelain.
• noun Costa Ricon pottery, a rude earthenware made by the natives of Costa Rica and found in the ancient ruins of that country. Cinerary urns are abundant in this ware.
• noun Atlantic Indian pottery, a coarse, sandy pottery made by the Indian tribes of the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. It is partly baked and usually occurs in the forms of pots or jars with rude ornamentation produced by scratching simple patterns on the plastic surface or molding the clay in the interior of coarse textile fabrics or basket work.
• noun Mexican pottery, ware found among the ancient remains of Mexico. The most distinctive variety is a black or red pottery modeled in grotesque shapes, in which serpents, heads of gods, and symbolical figures form conspicuous features of the relief decorations; also, the pottery of the modern Mexicans and native tribes.
• noun Moki pottery. See Pueblo pottery, below.
• noun Mound pottery, a primitive pottery found in the ancient mounds of the Mississippi valley. Also called mound-builders pottery. It is generally of coarse texture, though sometimes of fine, smooth clay, and is occasionally covered with a dark-red pigment. The usual forms are bowls and pots, frequently made in the rude semblance of the human figure, animals, and vegetable forms.
• noun Nicaragua pottery, ware made by the natives of Nicaragua in Central America. It is distinguished by its modeled forms in imitation of animals, idols, and conventional sculptures. Much of it is of a mortuary or sepulchral nature.
• noun Peruvian pottery, pottery found in the ancient cemeteries of Peru. The ware is either red or black, and occurs in a great variety of shapes simulating almost every object in nature and illustrating every phase of domestic life. The portrait-vases or water-vessels are carefully modeled in the forms of human heads, lifelike or grotesque. Many of these are furnished with an arched tube extending above, from which rises a central spout.
• noun Pueblo pottery, a peculiar variety of earthenware made by the Pueblo Indians, or house-building tribes, of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. This pottery is of several varieties, the best having a grayish-white body with geometrical decorations in black and various colors, covered with a gloss, produced by polishing or rubbing the surface with smooth stones. In the ancient cliff ruins of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona this ware has been found in surprising abundance. The modern Moki Indians of Arizona and the Pueblo and Zuñi Indians of New Mexico still practise the ancient art of their ancestors.
• noun (10) Zuñi pottery. See Pueblo pottery, above.
• noun The first white settlers in America made pottery, but not until the end of the seventeenth century was any attempt made to produce a better grade of ware than the commonest sorts of household utensils. The following are the more important varieties produced after that time: Beech pottery, pottery made by Ralph Bagnall Beech, of Philadelphia, between 1845 and 1857; particularly a white ware with inlaid designs of mother-of-pearl, and painted portraits of prominent men on a black or blue enameled or japanned ground.
• noun Bennington pottery, earthenware made at Bennington, Vermont, between 1846 and 1858, at the United States Pottery, which was operated by Lyman and Fenton. Brown-glazed, Rockingham, and scrodled wares, of good body and excellent glaze, were produced there in a great variety of forms, as picture-frames, toby jugs, hunting-pitchers, book-shaped flasks, mantel ornaments, and figures of animals, such as well-modeled deer, cows, dogs, and lions. See flint-enameled ware, below.
• noun Biloxi pottery, a common pottery body made in a great variety of eccentric shapes and frequently covered with rich, mottled glazes. The principal features of this ware are extreme thinness and lightness of weight and originality of treatment by crimping, crumpling, and twisting the clay in every conceivable manner. It is made at Biloxi, Mississippi.
• noun Burlington white ware, ware first produced at Burlington, New Jersey, about 1684, by agents of Dr. Daniel Coxe, of London, one of the proprietors and afterward governor of West New Jersey. This was the first white ware made in the American colonies.
• noun Cushman stoneware, a salt-glazed stoneware with cobalt-blue decorations and, occasionally, incised designs, made by Paul Cushman at Albany, New York, about 1809,—a date found on numerous pieces bearing his name.
• noun Flint-enameled ware, a fine grade of Rockingham or tortoise-shell ware, made at Bennington, Vermont. The glaze is heavy and brilliant, with mottlings of brown, blue, and olive, sometimes in monochrome and occasionally in combination. Patented by Lyman and Fenton in 1849.
• noun Grueby faïence, a hard pottery body covered with opaque enamels in dull or mat finish, produced by the Grueby Faience Co. of Boston, Massachusetts. The prevailing color is cucumber-green, although other colors, such as claret, light blue, and yellow, have been used. The shapes are adopted mainly from ancient Egyptian forms, the ornamentation being principally conventionalized leaf forms in low relief.
• noun Hammered pottery, a variety of decorative earthenware made at Chelsea, Massachusetts. The surface of the ware is hammered before burning, and is thus covered with a network of fiat facets in regular patterns, resembling the surface of hammered metal. Over this indented groundwork carved sprays of flowers are applied in relief designs.
• noun Jersey City pottery, earthenware produced at the Jersey City Pottery, New Jersey, between 1825 and 1892, consisting of hunting-pitchers, toby jugs in brown glaze, coarse blue and white ware, after the style of Wedgwood's jasper ware, and household and druggists' wares of every description. The principal modeler of these works was Daniel Greatbach, who originated many of the now famous shapes.
• noun (10) Pennsylvania-German pottery, coarse red earthenware made by the German settlers in eastern Pennsylvania during the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. The art was brought from Germany, where slip-decoration flourished for several centuries. See tulip ware, below.
• noun (11) Rookwood pottery, a manufactory of pottery established at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1880, by Mrs. Maria Longworth Nichols; also, the ware produced at Rookwood Pottery, which is of a hard earthenware or stoneware body with underglaze decorations painted in colored clays on the green ware. One of the distinguishing features of Rookwood is the tinting and blending of the ground colors beneath the heavy, transparent, colored glazes. Among the most important styles of ware produced at this establishment are cameo or shell-tinted, dull-finished, carved, modeled, and matglazed wares; but the factory is more especially noted for its ‘standard’ ware, with tinted grounds and heavy glazes, and the highly artistic quality of its ornamentation.
• noun (12) Southwark white ware, a fine grade of pottery made at Southwark, a suburb of Philadelphia, from 1769 to 1774. This ware was of white body with blue underglaze decorations, after the style of the Bow and Worcester wares of that period.
• noun (13) Teco ware, a modern pottery made by the American Terra Cotta and Ceramic Co. of Chicago, Illinois, with modeled or sculptured decorations and mat glazes, usually of a mottled grayish-green color.
• noun (14) Tulip ware, a name given to the sgraffito and slip-decorated red earthenware made by the Pennsylvania-German potters in eastern Pennsylvania during the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, in the decoration of which the tulip predominated.
• noun A modern faïence with tinted ground, somewhat resembling the earlier products of the Rookwood Pottery, made at the Avon Pottery, Cincinnati, Ohio, about 1885.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The vessels or ware made by potters; earthenware, glazed and baked.
• noun The place where earthen vessels are made.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun Fired ceramic wares that contain clay when formed
• noun countable A potter's shop or workshop, where pottery is made
• noun The potter's craft or art: making vessels from clay
• adjective Having to do with pottery.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun ceramic ware made from clay and baked in a kiln
• noun the craft of making earthenware
• noun a workshop where clayware is made