"In American Ceramics: 1876 to the present, the noted ceramics authority Garth Clark gives us the most richly illustrated, up-to-the minute, and comprehensive publication on the history and triumph of our most tactile art. With a text that elegantly marries cultural history to critical analysis, Clark reveals, decade by decade, how American ceramics emerged from an incipient art-pottery movement in the late nineteenth century to its position of international preeminence in the last thirty-five years. Clark's cogent narrative and aesthetic insights are illuminated by more than one hundred color and 140 black-and-white reproductions, which enable us to see afresh the full range of imagery and forms--pottery, sculpture, events, and environments--that American artists have created with clay during the past one hundred eleven years. We are informed of the divers achievements of more than two hundred artists, from the pioneering potters Mary Louise McLaughlin, Maria Longworth Nichols, and, later, Adelaide Alsop Robineau, and the maverick George Ohr to such contemporary figures as Peter Voulkos, Robert Arneson, Kenneth Price, Jim Melchert, Betty Woodman, Viola Frey, Beatrice Wood, and Adrian Saxe. This encyclopedic work concludes with an extensive chronology of ceramic milestone, a list of significant exhibitions, and more than 170 biographical essays illustrated with photographs of the artists. The bibliography is the most comprehensive ever compiled on American ceramics and includes 1,200 entries indexed by both subject and artist." -- Publisher's description

Concentrates on the century's leading ceramists who represented the vanguard of the ceramic-art aesthetic

From the Inside Cover: The history of American ceramics from the celebration of the Centennial (1876) to the present day is rich, varied, and relatively undocumented. It is a period studded with men and women of genius, uncompromising ethical standards, and engaging eccentricity. The purpose of the exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, and this book based on it is to present the history of American ceramics, its aesthetic and its influence, and so provide a perspective. Comprised of over 400 pieces, the majority of which are illustrated in this book, the exhibition and book span one hundred years of creative endeavor. In the decade-by-decade presentation, a variety of styles, philosophies, and techniques of ceramic artists is shown in this first study focusing on the role of ceramics in the modern, decorative, and fine arts of the United States. The journey of self-discovery and purpose that is surveyed here is an extraordinary one. It takes the ceramic medium in the United States from an imitative, exploratory stance in the late nineteenth century to a vanguardist role in the 1950s and beyond. The achievement is twofold. On the one hand, the American ceramists had established a beachhead for a traditional craft medium in the fine arts, redefining the vessel aesthetic and presenting ceramic sculpture as an intimate and meaningful alternative to the cerebral quality of postwar metal sculpture. More broadly, however, it reflects the triumph of a nation that has been able to achieve a cultural voice and identity through the arts in the brief space of one hundred years.

From the 1880s to the 1950s, pioneering American artists drew upon the rich traditions and recent innovations of European and Asian ceramics to develop new designs, decorations, and techniques. The extraordinary range and inventiveness of these American interpretations of international trends—from the Arts and Crafts and Art Deco movements to the modernism of Matisse and the Wiener Werkstätte to abstracted, minimalist styles—are exemplified in this book by more than 180 works from the outstanding collection of Martin Eidelberg. Splendid new photography and engaging essays by two of the foremost experts on American art pottery trace the period’s decorative developments, from sculptural and painted ornament to adornment with deeply colored glazes and textures. Featured makers include the renowned Rookwood, Grueby, and Van Briggle Potteries, as well as leading artists such as Maija Grotell, George E. Ohr, Frederick Hurten Rhead, Louis C. Tiffany, Rockwell Kent, Adelaide Alsop Robineau, and Leza McVey. A vivid and accessible overview of American ceramics and ceramists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Gifts from the Fire reveals how artists working in the United States drew upon diverse, global influences to produce works of astonishing variety and ingenuity.

Beginning with the red earthenware made by the potters of Jamestown in 1607 and continuing through objects made by ceramic artists today, this carefully researched and copiously illustrated volume canvases the major developments and practitioners of the art.

A landmark survey of the formative years of American studio ceramics and the constellation of people, institutions, and events that propelled it from craft to fine art