The Ceramic Narrative is an exploration of past and present ceramic iconography concerned with the depiction of narratives, or with images meant to be thought-provoking, beyond the merely decorative. The book is beautifully illustrated with an extensive variety of work from history and the present day, showing how many contemporary artists continue this tradition with modern interpretations. Examining ancient Greece, the ceramic imagery of the Maya culture, the ceramics of China, Persia, and Japan, European tin-glaze traditions, and the narrative imagery appearing on later European porcelains, Matthias Ostermann attempts wherever possible not only to present ceramic narratives in their cultural and historical contexts but also to refer to some of the older myths and sources that may have served as inspiration. Applied arts writer David Whiting contributes an essay on the development of ceramic narratives in the twentieth century, while illustrations present the work of more than 75 contemporary international ceramic artists who explore narrative in distinctive and different ways. These include the exploration of mythologies and existing stories; personal visions, private stories and memory; the human figure, relationships and identity; political and social commentary; and finally, the ceramic object itself, seen as message and metaphor. This book will serve as a beginning for further study of this fascinating and little-explored subject and as a celebration of the work of all ceramic artists whose passion is the ceramic narrative.

Ceramic arts.

The human figure has been represented in clay throughout history and continues to evolve today. Artists are working with the figure in new ways, playing with materials and forms, and making use of new technologies to produce challenging and unconventional work, from the intact whole figure to the fragmented, hybrid and abstract.Ceramics and the Human Figure profiles an international range of ceramic artists, all practicing within the fields of installation and sculpture. Divided by broad themes, each chapter explores a variety of different expressive works. The book explores the role of figurative ceramics through history and in contemporary contexts. It also reveals the methods of six key artists, using how-to images to illustrate their techniques.For artists, collectors, and anyone interested in these themes, Ceramics and the Human Figure is an exciting survey of the state of the figure in clay today.

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.

Most people would be surprised at how ceramics are used, from creating cellular phones, radio, television, and lasers to its role in medicine for cancer treatments and restoring hearing. The Magic of Ceramics introduces the nontechnical reader to the many exciting applications of ceramics, describing how ceramic material functions, while teaching key scientific concepts like atomic structure, color, and the electromagnetic spectrum. With many illustrations from corporations on the ways in which ceramics make advanced products possible, the Second Edition also addresses the newest areas in ceramics, such as nanotechnology.

Contemporary approaches to colour and technique

Masters: Earthenware reveals the tremendous imagination, innovation, and technical facility that today’s artists bring to the oldest ceramic medium. Curated by Matthias Ostermann, a celebrated ceramist in his own right, this stunning volume gives each featured artist a mini-retrospective of approximately eight pages that showcase 12–14 of his or her best works. Illuminating comments from the creators accompany the images, outlining their development and artistic philosophy.