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The word ceramic can be traced back to the Greek term keramos, meaning “a potter” or “pottery”. Keramos in turn is related to an older Sanskrit root meaning “to burn.” Thus the early Greeks used the term to mean “burned stuff” or “burned earth” when referring to products obtained through the action of fire upon earthy materials.
Already world famous for his paintings, and with his notorious Blue, Rose and Cubism periods behind him, Picasso started to learn the art of clay sculpting in 1948.
He worked at the Madoura pottery works in the small Cote d’Azur town of Vallauris. Picasso lived there for seven years with Francoise Gilot, the artist 41 years his junior who also the mother of two of his children, Claude and Paloma.
Many early ceramics were hand-built using a simple coiling technique in which clay was rolled into long threads that were then pinched and beaten together to form the body of a vessel. In the coiling method of construction, all of the energy required to form the body of a piece is supplied directly by the hands of the potter. This changed with the introduction of the fast-wheel, early forms of which utilised energy stored in the rotating mass of the heavy stone wheel itself.
