Pottery

Pottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. It can also refer to the material of which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain.

All this of Pot and Potter—Tell me then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?

Quotes

• The potter, digging the hoe in the ground, for days on end extracting the clay with his hands.
  • Debate between Silver and Copper (middle to late 3rd millennium BCE). [1]

• What land is this? Yon pretty town
  Is Delft, with all its wares displayed:
  The pride, the market-place, the crown
  And centre of the Potter's trade.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kéramos, line 66; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 187.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 619-20.

• I am content to be a bric-a-bracker and a Ceramiker.
  • Mark Twain, Tramp Abroad, Chapter XX.

• For a male person bric-a-brac hunting is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes.
  • Mark Twain, Tramp Abroad, Chapter XX.

• The very "marks" on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy.
  • Mark Twain, Tramp Abroad, Chapter XX.

• Thou spring'st a leak already in thy crown,
  A flaw is in thy ill-bak'd vessel found;
  'Tis hollow, and returns a jarring sound,
  Yet thy moist clay is pliant to command,
  Unwrought, and easy to the potter's hand:
  Now take the mould; now bend thy mind to feel
  The first sharp motions of the forming wheel.
  • John Dryden, Third Satire of Persius, line 35.

• There's a joy without canker or cark,
  There's a pleasure eternally new,
  'Tis to gloat on the glaze and the mark
  Of china that's ancient and blue;
  Unchipp'd, all the centuries through
  It has pass'd, since the chime of it rang,
  And they fashion'd it, figures and hue,
  In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
  Here's a pot with a cot in a park,
  In a park where the peach-blossoms blew,
  Where the lovers eloped in the dark,
  Lived, died, and were changed into two
  Bright birds that eternally flew
  Through the boughs of the May, as they sang;
  'Tis a tale was undoubtedly true
  In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
  • Andrew Lang, Ballade of Blue China.

• Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round
  Without a pause, without a sound:
  So spins the flying world away!
  This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,
  Follows the motion of my hand;
  For some must follow, and some command,
  Though all are made of clay!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kéramos (1878), line 1.

• Figures that almost move and speak.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kéramos (1878), line 236.

• And yonder by Nankin, behold!
  The Tower of Porcelain, strange and old,
  Uplifting to the astonished skies
  Its ninefold painted balconies,
  With balustrades of twining leaves,
  And roofs of tile, beneath whose eaves
  Hang porcelain bells that all the time
  Ring with a soft, melodious chime;
  While the whole fabric is ablaze
  With varied tints, all fused in one
  Great mass of color, like a maze
  Of flowers illumined by the sun.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kéramos (1878), line 336.

• Said one among them: "Surely not in vain
  My substance of the common Earth was ta'en
  And to this Figure moulded, to be broke,
  Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again."
  • Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120), Stanza 84. FitzGerald's translation.

• All this of Pot and Potter—Tell me then,
  Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?
  • Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120), Stanza 87. FitzGerald's translation.

• Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
  • Romans. IX. 21.

See also

• Clay