The Complete Book Of Ceramic Art

The Potter's Book of Glaze Recipes is a must for potters and ceramicists of all abilities interested in creating their own glazes.

In his major new history, Paul Greenhalgh tells the story of ceramics as a story of human civilisation, from the Ancient Greeks to the present day. As a core craft technology, pottery has underpinned domesticity, business, religion, recreation, architecture, and art for millennia. Indeed, the history of ceramics parallels the development of human society. This fascinating and very human history traces the story of ceramic art and industry from the Ancient Greeks to the Romans and the medieval world; Islamic ceramic cultures and their influence on the Italian Renaissance; Chinese and European porcelain production; modernity and Art Nouveau; the rise of the studio potter, Art Deco, International Style and Mid-Century Modern, and finally, the contemporary explosion of ceramic making and the postmodern potter. Interwoven in this journey through time and place is the story of the pots themselves, the culture of the ceramics, and their character and meaning. Ceramics have had a presence in virtually every country and historical period, and have worked as a commodity servicing every social class. They are omnipresent: a ubiquitous art. Ceramic culture is a clear, unique, definable thing, and has an internal logic that holds it together through millennia. Hence ceramics is the most peculiar and extraordinary of all the arts. At once cheap, expensive, elite, plebeian, high-tech, low-tech, exotic, eccentric, comic, tragic, spiritual, and secular, it has revealed itself to be as fluid as the mud it is made from. Ceramics are the very stuff of how civilized life was, and is, led. This then is the story of human society's most surprising core causes and effects.

Pottery making and wheel throwing is a timeless craft, perfect for beginner crafters and artisans who don't mind getting their hands dirty. The Potter's Complete Studio Handbook is the perfect guide for all levels to enjoy and master the art of pottery. The book is a compilation of the best features from The Potter's Studio Handbook and The Potter's Studio Clay and Glaze Handbook, bringing the best of hand-building and wheel-throwing techniques together with comprehensive instruction for clays and glazes. Inside, you'll find: —expert tips and tricks for selecting and preparing your clay, constructing slab projects, throwing and centering clay on the wheel, firing your project to perfection —16 beautiful and functional projects with step-by-step photos using wheel-throwing, hand-building, and slipcasting techniques that can be done at home —more than 40 formulas for unique clays and glazes with instructions on how to use them plus troubleshooting tips from the experts —behind-the-scenes access to production and mining facilities . . . and much more!

A fascinating exploration of the rich artistic heritage and beauty of Casas Grandes ceramics

It’s an absolutely unequalled photographic gallery: no other book has ever presented such a varied, captivating collection of contemporary ceramics based on the human form. The works range from representational to abstract, from artful realism to provocative surrealism, and many of them come from leaders in the field such as Judy Fox, Kurt Weiser, and Andy Nasisse. Kay Yourist has produced female forms that are smooth, minimalist vessels with only the slightest hint of breasts and belly. The simple, rounded features of Diane Lublinski’s black-and-white figures possess a fun, clown-like whimsy. Michael A. Prather’s mournful ceramic portraits have frowning faces and pointed dunce-like heads in a muted color palette. Many of the ceramics come with detail images and illuminating artist’s commentary.

James Tower (1919-88) is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive figures in post-war British ceramics. Since his death over 20 years ago, his work has been often cited for its dramatic visual qualities, its subtle exploration of the boundaries of art and craft, and its lyrical integration of references to nature and the cosmos into an essentially abstract language of form and surface decoration. This is the first single publication to be devoted to his work and will reveal to a new audience the extraordinary range and quality of his achievement. Tower's career was unusual in inhabiting the worlds of fine art and ceramics which, in the 1950s and 1960s, still had only a low level of inter-penetration. Teaching at Corsham brought him into contact with some of the pioneering painters of post-war abstraction, including William Scott, Peter Lanyon and Howard Hodgkin, and as a potter Tower showed his work alongside Bernard Leach and Lucie Rie, contributing to a re-definition of modern craft. During the 1960s and 1970s he worked in white terra cotta and bronze, representing a diversity of sculptural practice during a period in which sculptors such as Anthony Caro and Phillip King were experimenting with new materials. From the late 1970s until his death, Tower concentrated again on glazed ceramic forms and was a highly original contributor to the 'New Ceramics'. This book provides a comprehensive visual document of Tower's work, incorporating a complete illustrated catalogue. It includes a detailed and authoritative biography, setting Tower in the social and artistic context in which he lived and worked.

Renowned ceramic artist Karen Karnes has created some of the most iconic pottery of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The body of work she has produced in her more than sixty years in the studio is remarkable for its depth, personal voice, and consistent innovation. Many of her pieces defy category, invoking body and landscape, pottery and sculpture, male and female, hand and eye. Equally compelling are Karnes's experiences in some of the most significant cultural settings of her generation: from the worker-owned cooperative housing of her childhood, to Brooklyn College under modernist Serge Chermayeff, to North Carolina's avant-garde Black Mountain College, to the Gate Hill Cooperative in Stony Point, New York, which Karnes helped establish as an experiment in integrating art, life, family, and community. This book, designed to accompany an exhibit of Karnes's works organized by Peter Held, curator of ceramics for the Arizona State University Art Museum's Ceramic Research Center, offers a comprehensive look at the life and work of Karnes. Edited by highly regarded studio potter Mark Shapiro, it combines essays by leading critics and scholars with color reproductions of more than sixty of her works, providing new perspectives for understanding the achievements of this extraordinary artist.