The word ceramic comes from the Greek keramiké, which meant “art of working with clay”.
Romans used the words fictilis, fictilia, figulina, figulinus to denotate the same manual occupation.
Clay is mainly just natural soil, very wet, malleable, with fragments of breach and sandy parts. It could be yellowish or reddish, according to the composition of the ground from which the clay comes from.
In common speech CERAMIC defines the crockery, while TERRACOTTA defines statues, relieves, decorative architectonical frames made with fired clay and the word CLAY-BRICK includes the construction materials like bricks, tiles, flat tiles which are kind of tiles with trapezoidal shape.
TERRACOTTA is mainly made with porous soil, PORCELAIN (CERAMIC) is made with compact soil.
Particularly, TERRACOTTA is a dough made of CLAY, shaped, and baked in the oven; it is the oldest and most basic expression of the ceramic.
