Most terms have been explained in the text or captions, but the following brief glossary may prove useful as a quick reference. Ceramic terms sometimes have several meanings, depending upon the period or context in which they occur. The definitions below apply to the Victorian wares discussed in this study.
BISQUE: At the biscuit (or bisque) stage, a ceramic body has been fired once but not glazed. Victorian bisque ornaments were very often of unglazed porcelain from French or German
potters.
BONE CHINA: An English-invented porcelain in which bone ash is an essential ingredient (it may be as much as 50 percent). It is the standard English porcelain body today.
CERAMIC WARES: A general term for the products of the potter.
CHINA: Strictly speaking, china implies porcelain, but the term has long been used loosely (as, for example, in "china cupboard", meaning a cupboard for the storage of ceramic wares in general). In Victorian Canada, a china merchant considered himself a specialist dealer in earthenware and porcelain, but almost invariably he dealt also in glass, often silver, and, especially in the early period, a variety of other wares, which might include toys at Christmas time. In their advertising, however, the Canadian sellers of ceramic wares usually meant porcelain when they listed "china".
CREAMWARE: (Also cream-coloured and C.C.): Earthenware of a cream colour. Victorian creamware was often a heavier, coarsened form of the eighteenth-century fine earthenware which Josiah Wedgwood I improved and which, after royal patronage, he named Queensware, a name to which other potters helped themselves freely.
CROCKERY: The sellers of Victorian wares in Canada often referred to their ceramic stock as "crockery". They neither meant to denigrate it (by implying only coarse or common wares), nor did they mean to imply any one category of ware. It was a term more apt to be used by the general merchant than by the specialist dealer, although specialists did sometimes describe themselves as crockery sellers.
EARTHENWARE: A ceramic ware which, when fired, is opaque, and if not glazed, porous. Table-wares were usually of a cream or white- bodied earthenware.
IRONSTONE CHINA: Not a china (i.e. porcelain) but a high-fired earthenware. The name "ironstone china" was patented in 1813 by a Staffordshire potter, Charles James Mason, but as with Wedgwood's name of Queensware, it was borrowed by others and became a generic term. Stone china, white granite, etc., are other names for what was essentially the same type of very dense earthenware. When thinly potted, ironstone china is sometimes faintly translucent.
PARIAN: A particular type of English porcelain originally intended to simulate marble. It went by various names, including "statuary porcelain", after it came on the market in the 1840s, but Herbert Minton's name of Parian (after marble from the Greek island of Paros) eventually prevailed.
PEARL WARE: Earthenware of a whiter appearance than cream-coloured ware. Earthenware with transfer-printed decoration was usually, although not always, pearl ware. In Victorian days there was also an ironstone-type ware called pearl stone ware.
PORCELAIN: A ceramic ware which when fired is normally non-porous (or nearly so, depending on the kind of porcelain) and translucent. There are exceptions to the translucency test for porcelain, but in general earthenware is opaque, porcelain translucent.
POTTERY: An inclusive term for earthenware of various kinds. It is an artificial distinction to use it only for dark-bodied earthenware, as is sometimes done.
STONEWARE: A hard, vitrified pottery. Two kinds of Victorian stoneware are illustrated here: the finer stoneware such as the "Drab Stone Ware Jugs" (illustration 23), and the common, salt-glazed stoneware made by Canadian potters in the form of churns, crocks, etc. (illustration 28). In salt-glazing, common salt was thrown into the oven when the maximum temperature had been reached. When chemical changes then occurred, fumes from the volatilized salt caused a fine coating (or salt glaze) to be deposited on the ware.
TERRACOTTA: Unglazed earthenware usually taken to have burned red in the kiln (a terracotta shade), but this shade could vary, and some Victorian terracotta ornaments are actually of a very light colour.
