The Ceramics Reader

by Kevin Petrie (Editor), Andrew Livingstone (Editor)

Overview

The Ceramics Reader is an impressive editorial collection of essays and text extracts, covering every discipline within ceramics, past and present. Tackling such fundamental questions as “why are ceramics important?”, the book also considers the field from a range of perspectives – as a cultural activity or metaphor, as a vehicle for propaganda, within industry and museums, and most recently as part of the 'expanded field' as a fine art medium and hub for ideas. Newly commissioned material features prominently alongside existing scholarship, to ensure an international and truly comprehensive look at ceramics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350198944
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/17/2020
Pages:	616
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.70(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Kevin Petrie is a well known writer and ceramic artist and is Head of the School of Art and Design and Professor of Glass and Ceramics at the University of Sunderland which has one of the best glass courses in the UK. He is best known for 'blending' printmaking and glass/ceramics for creative use.

Andrew Livingstone is Reader in Ceramics at the University of Sunderland, UK.

Table of Contents

General Introduction - Livingstone and Petrie

Pen and Kiln: a brief overview of modern ceramics and critical writing - Garth Clark

Section One: Ceramics: Materiality and Metaphor
Section Introduction - Livingstone and Petrie

1.1 Why are ceramics important?
Introductory summary - Livingstone and Petrie
1. Clay as elemental wholeness - Kenneth R. Beittel
2. The existential base - Philip Rawson
3. Appreciating ceramics or so much more than just an egg cup or a milk jug - Ian Wilson
4. Containers of Life: Pottery and Social Relations in the Grassfields (Cameroon) - Silvia Forni
5. Ceramics and art criticism - Janet Koplos
6. Death and Clay: Cultural and personal Interpretations in ceramics - Christopher Garcia and Tomaru Haruna

1.2 Ceramics and metaphor
Introductory summary Livingstone and Petrie
7. Heart like a wheel: What is Hollywood telling us about working with clay? - Sarah Archer
8. Analogy and metaphor in ceramic art - Philip Rawson
9. Metaphors, Myths and Making Pots - Laurel Birch Aguilar
10.Sculptural Vessels across the great divide: Tony Cragg's Laibe and the metaphors of clay Imogen Racz

Section Two: Ceramics in Context
Section Introduction Livingstone and Petrie

2.1 Historical Precedents
Introductory summary Livingstone and Petrie
11.The function of decoration: Wedgwood Herbert Read -
12.The Arts and Crafts Movement. GB, USA, Germany and Austria, Scandinavia, The Netherlands, Hungary and Italy Emmanuel Cooper
13.A Matter of Tradition: A Debate Between Maguerite Wildenhain and Bernard Leach Brent Johnson
14.Contemporary design of the 1950's Rie and Coper in context Lesley Jackson

2.2 Studio Ceramics
Introductory summary Livingstone and Petrie
15.Studio Pottery - Tanya Harrod
16.Towards a standard - Bernard Leach
17.Towards a Double Standard? - Edmund De Waal
18.Re-inventing the wheel – the origins of studio pottery - Julian Stair
19.The Archie Bray Foundation: A Legacy Reframed - Patricia Failing
20.Studio Ceramics: The end of the story? - Jeffrey Jones

2.3 Sculptural Ceramics
Introductory summary Livingstone and Petrie
21.A Rough Equivalent: Sculpture and Pottery in the post war period - Jeffrey Jones
22.California (Funk) - Scott, A, Shields
23.Cooled Matter: Ceramic Sculpture in the expanded field - Mitchell Merback
24.The New Ceramic Presence - Rose Slivka
25.Metamorphosis: the culture of ceramics - Martina Margetts
26.Antony Gormley in conversation with James Putnam – James Putnam

2.4. Ceramics and Installation
Introductory summary - Livingstone and Petrie
27.Ceramics and Installation - Emma Shaw
28.Ceramic Installation Towards a self-definition - Ruth Chambers
29.Multiplicity, Ambivalence and ceramic installation art - Glenn R Brown

2.5 Theoretical Perspectives
31.Reconsidering 'The Pissoir Problem' - Bruce Metcalf
32. The Modern Pot - Glenn Adamson
33. Social Complexity and the historiography of ceramic - Paul Greenhalgh
34. Speak for yourself - Edmund De Waal
35. Object Theory - Paul Mathieu
36. Between a toilet and a hard place - Garth Clark

2.6 Conceptual and post studio practice
Introductory summary - Livingstone and Petrie
37. Manufacturing Validity; the ceramic work in the age of conceptual production - Lizzie Zucker Saltz
38. On Dirt - Ingrid Schaffner
39. Contemporary Clay - Clare Twomey
40. Elastic/Expanding; Contemporary Conceptual Ceramics - Jo Dahn
41. Extending Vocabularies: Distorting the ceramic familiar – clay and the performative 'other' - Andrew Livingstone
42. And into the Fire post studio ceramics in Britain - Glenn Adamson

Section Three: Key Themes
Section Introduction - Livingstone and Petrie

3.1 Gender, Sexuality and Ceramics
Introductory summary - Livingstone and Petrie
43. Gender, Identity and studio ceramics - Moira Vincentelli
44. Queering the Museum - Matt Smith
45. The Personal Political Pots of Grayson Perry - Louisa Buck & Marjan Boot

3.2 Identity and Ceramics
Introductory summary - Livingstone and Petrie
46. Body language: ceramics to challenge the white world - Ruth Park
47. Rubber and Clay: South African material 'aftermodern' - Elisabeth Perrill
48. Plunder Me Baby – Kukuli Velarde and the ceramics of Taiwan's first nations: Virtual Ventriloquism as articulated in the 2014 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale - Wendy Gers

3.3 Image
Introductory summary - Livingstone and Petrie
50. Ceramics and painting – an expanded field of enquiry - Veronika Horlik
51. Paul Scott's Confected landscapes and Contemporary Vignettes - Amy Gogarty

3.4 The body
Introductory summary - Livingstone and Petrie
52. Embracing Sculptural Ceramics: a lived experience of touch in art - Bonnie Kemske
53. Vicious Figurines: Penny Byrne's Ceramic Advocacy - Inga Walton
54. The Figurative Impulse in Contemporary Ceramics - Peter Selz

3.5 Ceramics in education
Introductory summary - Livingstone and Petrie
55. The influence of educational institutions on contemporary ceramics - Andrea Gill
56. The Digital Future: Reimagining Ceramic Education in the 21st Century - Holly Hanessian

3.6 Ceramics, industry and new technologies
Introductory summary - Livingstone and Petrie
57.Transitions: A brief history of Modern Ceramics - Marek Cecula
58. National Identity and the problem of style in the post-war British ceramics Industry - Graham McLaren
59. Continuity or Collapse: Ceramics in a post-industrial era - Jorunn Veiteberg
60. The UK marketing strategy in response to globalization c1990-2010 - Neil Ewins
61. Meta-making and me - Ingrid Murphy

3.7 Museum, site and display
Introductory summary - Livingstone and Petrie
62. Museums and the interstices of domestic life; Re-articulating domestic space in contemporary ceramics practice - Laura Gray
63. The museum as medium specific muse - Ezra Shales
64. Environment, art, ceramics, and site specificity - Brad Evan Taylor
65. When forms become attitude – A consideration of the adoption by an artist of ceramic display as narrative device and symbolic landscape - Mike Tooby
66. Why Clay? - James Beighton and Emily Hesse
67. Civic ceramics: shifting the centre of meaning - Natasha Mayo and Melania Warwick
68. Ceramics as an archaeology of the contemporary past - Christopher McHugh
69. Re-defining ceramics through exhibitionary practice - Laura Breen

Index

Editorial Reviews

The Ceramics Reader is a triumph. I do not doubt that it will be recognised as the most influential ceramics title of our decade.” —Crafts

“This book is absolutely recommended, and fortunately it is fitted with an index so it can also be used as a reference work.” —Keramiske noter (Bloomsbury translation)

“I have been reading sections of this superb and fascinating book in no particular order, such is the arrangement of this presentation of articles, essays and conference papers.” —Anglian Potters Newsletter

“The Ceramics Reader is part seed bank, bedrock, reagent, and compass. Livingstone and Petrie have assembled an invaluable reference that so elegantly represents and agitates both historic and contemporary discourse in the field of Ceramic Art” —Brian Gillis, Associate Professor of Art at the University of Oregon, USA

“Bringing together a rich collection of critical texts, from ceramic luminaries such as Philip Rawson and Garth Clark to the provocative writing of a younger generation of practitioners, The Ceramic Reader is the book we have been waiting for.” —Stephen Dixon, Crafts Research Group Leader at Manchester School of Art, UK

“The persistent echo of the art / craft debate and a long dismissal of ceramics as fine art has caused an identity crisis. This is a remarkably full and timely account to start a dialogue of inclusion and diversity in the art world.” —Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Artist in Residence at the Ceramics Program Office at Harvard University, USA

“An inspirational book that brings together informative and thought provoking texts that explore ceramics from different perspectives and viewpoints. Invaluable for research, it will make a significant contribution to the discourse, encouraging dialogue and debate between students and academics alike.” —Felicity Aylieff, Head of the Ceramics and Glass programme at the Royal College of Art, UK

“There is something in this book to inform anyone interested in ceramics, be they student, collector, academic or practitioner who work with or are interested in fired clay.” —Shards: South Wales Potters Newsletter

From the Publisher