Every day we live surrounded by ceramics. We walk on it, it covers our walls, we eat inside the ceramic, we wash with it, it is omnipresent in everyday life.
In this article we analyze together how the durability and efficiency of ceramic have made it one of the key materials of our human society.
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Terracotta and tableware
To say how the first ceramic product was created and by whom is clearly impossible. Today, however, we have ancient testimonies that show us its use already over 15,000 years ago.
The first artifacts are simple and rudimentary clay vessels that have reached today almost intact. This alone will be enough to make it clear how resistant this material is even only in its primitive forms.
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The advent of decorations
To change the course of events and the history of ceramics is for once the aesthetics of an instrument. During the realization of the ceramic products, thanks also to the use of the lathe, it was possible to achieve greater precision.
This accuracy has allowed the diffusion of decorations engraved directly on the ceramic of the tableware capable of lasting forever. This thing was noticed not only by us, modern intellectuals, but also by those who used the material at the time. So ceramics have begun to transform and take on a second function: that of a book.
Ceramic pages were produced, which today we can identify as small tiles, where laws and stories were engraved, so as to be handed down and remembered.
This is how the first ceramic tiles were born, even if their function is completely different.
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Decorations and coatings
We have seen how ceramics, from a simple tool for collecting food and liquids, has now also become an ancestor of our books thanks to the beginning of decorations.
Soon these decorations develop and branch, the ceramic tiles become real elements to be mass-produced thanks to stamps and presses.
However, to mark the advent and consecration of tiles as coverings is the arrival of enamelling. This process covers the ceramic with a colored glaze, making it shiny and precious.
In the Middle East, a cornerstone of the development of the culture of ceramics, the prestigious buildings are covered with decorative tiles designed to reproduce the majesty of the rulers.
The arrival of tiles in Europe
In this guide to the history of ceramics, we finally come to Europe. In this context, ceramics were well known for centuries but mainly used in the form of slabs for floors, mainly used in the Roman area.
The arrival of decorated and precious tiles is due to the Arabs, who, settling in Spain, bring with them this product that will design some of the most beautiful Spanish and European buildings.
Just think of the Alhambra de Granada, an architectural masterpiece where ceramic explodes in its beauty.
Ceramics and Italy
As we have said, ceramics are already appreciated and used in Italy in Roman and medieval times as flooring, but we have to wait for the Renaissance for the advent of decorated ceramics.
Majolica, a name originating from the production city Majorca, soon spread also in our peninsula, especially in the south. Featuring a fully customizable white glaze, these new ceramics conquer Neapolitan artists.
In fact, near the town of Vietri, numerous shops are born, the remains of which are still handed down today in products of fine taste and requests all over the world.
The boom of ceramics in Italy
The history of ceramics in Italy continues with alternating successes, until the definitive boom after World War II.
A destroyed country must be rebuilt and ceramic is a perfect material for this work.
The first large companies are born and in Sassuolo the ceramic center is formed which still dictates the trends in this area today. To mark the definitive rise of Italian ceramics is the Marazzi company, capable of being the world’s leading tile producer for years.
Ceramics today
In this history of ceramics we finally come to the present day. Today ceramic is still used in many fields, even some unthinkable such as information technology and motoring.
What concerns us, floors and walls, has now reached ever higher levels of technology.
From the raw pottery of fifteen thousand years ago, today we have very thin slabs as large as entire rooms, capable of imitating stones, wood or other.
Who knows what ceramics await in the next millennia.