opacity and whiteness
“Most paper has 2%–10% ceramic as a so called filler material; some papers have even more. The ceramic is actually a very important active ingredient providing paper with opacity and whiteness, while controlling the flow of ink in writing and printing. Without the ceramic, ink would be absorbed by and smear into the paper. The ceramic also can provide color. Ceramic has been used for many centuries as an important paper additive, with china clays, such as kaolin, having very long histories as the applied a material.”
—Victor Greenhut, from Ceramics for Paper in Wachtman, ed. Ceramic Innovations in the 20th Century. As quoted in Clay: The History and Evolution of Humankind’s Relationship with Earth’s Most Primal Element, by Suzanne Stauback, 2005.
Lustreware
“Islamic potters used cobalt on creamy white tin-glazed ware to great effect. Images of people and animals were considered idolatrous and were forbidden, but as is often the case, restrictions led to creative solutions. Working within the rules of their religious leaders, Islamic potters covered their wares with curvaceous calligraphy, delicate flowers, leafy vines, and intricate geometric patterns. . . .
Lustreware was an innovative answer to the stricture against metal tableware. Islamic potters discovered that if they painted designs on their already fired pots using powdered gold or silver or copper (metal oxides) mixed with a bit of water and perhaps clay, and then refired these pots at low temperatures in a reducing (smoky) kiln, the designs emerged from the kiln with a soft metallic sheen.
Lustreware is more understated than brightly gilt enamels or shiny metal pots, and has a rich and subtle complexity of tones that can only be achieved with skillful firing.”
—Suzanne Stauback, from Clay: The History and Evolution of Humankind’s Relationship with Earth’s Most Primal Element, 2005.
The invention of glassmaking
“The invention of glassmaking was . . . dependent upon ceramics and in fact, in scientific circles, glass is considered a ceramic. The first glasses . . . were glazes. The Egyptians discovered that by mixing ashes (potassium), ground-up sand (silica), and natron (salt from dried lake beds), they could give their pots a shiny coating. What they were doing was “fluxing” the silica. They learned by accident or through experiment that if they took a bowl of this glaze, especially one that had more flux and less silica, from the kiln while still molten, it could be poured into a clay mold and then cooled to form an object. Glass was equated with gems and was as highly prized.”
—Suzanne Stauback, from Clay: The History and Evolution of Humankind’s Relationship with Earth’s Most Primal Element, 2005.
Bernard Palissy (1510–1590)
“In the sixteenth century, French potter Bernard Palissy (1510–1590) stunned the public with his brightly glazed platters covered with high-relief snakes, frogs, lizards, fish, lobsters, shells, flowers, leaves, and vines. Nothing like these highly original trompe l’oeil dishes had been attempted or conceived of before. Palissy’s plates were encrusted with amphibians and reptiles so realistic they looked as if they were alive, and his artifice of mixing animals, shells, and flowers in juxtapositions that would never be encountered in nature dazzled the public.”
—Suzanne Stauback, from Clay: The History and Evolution of Humankind’s Relationship with Earth’s Most Primal Element, 2005.
The greatest ceramic artist of all
“The greatest ceramic artist of all, of course, is Mother Nature. With the tiniest speck of clay, a mere particle floating in the air, she seeds the magic crystals we know as snowflakes.”
—Suzanne Stauback, from Clay: The History and Evolution of Humankind’s Relationship with Earth’s Most Primal Element, 2005.
the camera’s elevated eye
“[Let us consider] the paradox of the “immobile tracking shot”, in which the camera does not move: the shift from reality to the real is accomplished by the intrusion into the frame of a heterogeneous object. For an example we can return to The Birds, in which such a shift is achieved during one long fixed shot. A fire caused by a cigarette butt dropped into some gasoline breaks out in the small town threatened by the birds. After a series of short and “dynamic” close-ups and medium shots that draw us immediately into the action, the camera pulls back and up and we are given an overall shot of the entire town taken from high above. In the first instant we read this overall shot as an “objective”, “epic” panorama shot, separating us from the immediate drama going on down below and enabling us to disengage ourselves from the action. This distancing at first produces a certain “pacifying” effect; it allows us to view the action from what might be called a “metalinguistic” distance. Then, suddently, a bird enters the frame from the right, as if coming from behinid the camera and thus from behind our own backs, and then three birds, and finally an entire flock. The same shot takes on a totally different aspect, it undergoes a radical subjectivisation: the camera’s elevated eye ceases to be that of a neutral, “objective” onlooker gazing down upon a panoramic landscape and suddenly becomes the subjective and threatening gaze of the birds as they zero in on their prey.”
—Slavoj Zizek, The Hitchcockian Blot, from the collection Alfred Hitchcock: Centenary Essays, edited by Richard Allen and S. Ishii Gonzales, 1999.