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.
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
Andrew Livingstone is Reader in Ceramics at the University of Sunderland, UK. Kevin Petrie is Head of Glass and Ceramics at the University of Sunderland, UK.
Reviews for The Ceramics Reader
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 Jimenez-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 *
