I’m sure there are others I’m missing, and I suspect ceramic is just the “overall” material. Like “pottery” is the overall object/art/act of making.
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>I suspect ceramic is just the “overall” material.
Good enough for a general understanding, but “ceramic” also covers some weird modern materials that aren’t obviously similar to pottery.
Okay, so *clay* is a material made up of very tiny particles of a certain class of mineral. Smaller than sand, smaller than silt, and it has a stacked-layers structure. Because of their structure and size, especially in the presence of water, these particles interact to behave, well, like clay: kind of sticky, kind of slippery (depends on the amount of water), squishy, etc.
What we often do with clay is form it into a shape (say, a *cup*), dry it out, and then *fire* it by putting it in a very hot oven called a kiln. But exactly (well, approximately) how hot the kiln gets makes a big difference. The general rule is, the hotter you fire your pottery, the more water-resistant it is.
In English, we generally talk about *earthenware,* fired at low temperatures (below 1200°C), stoneware (1100°C to 1300°C) and porcelain (above 1200°C, up to 1400°C). There’s some overlap there because you can use different clay mixes and they transform at different temperatures.
Earthenware is characterized by being water-absorbent: if you dunk it in a bucket, it’ll soak up water. Stoneware doesn’t; its clay particles melted together enough to keep the water out.
What about porcelain? Well, that’s when you get a very pure clay made of one very specific mineral called *kaolin,* and you fire it to a very high temperature. Because [chemistry], this makes a really good material that’s translucent, strong and tough, which doesn’t so much mean that you can’t break it, but that you can make it thinner than other kinds of pottery, and still keep the normal amount of durability.
Okay, a rundown of some specific terms you asked about (or didn’t):
Bone china: a special kind of clay that was meant to mimic porcelain (which came from China, hence the name, and the Europeans hadn’t figured out how to make), that uses bone ash in the clay mix.
Terracotta: Basically just coarse earthenware, especially when it’s not used for table dishes.
Faience: a popular kind of glazed earthenware that was used for moderately-fancy dishes in the 1700-1800s. (It’s faience when it’s French or south European, and Delftware when it’s Dutch or English.)
Vitrification: when the clay particles all-the-way (ehhhh) melt together, making the resulting pottery water-resistant.
Glazing: a glassy coating that’s melted onto the surface of pottery, usually in a second round of firing in a kiln.
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