The Ceramics Reader

The Ceramics Reader is an impressive collection of essays and text extracts which covers all the key areas of ceramics – both past and present. It focuses on thoughts and discussions within ceramics from the last 20-30 years in particular, but also gives the reader a broad overview of the last 100 years. One aim of the book is to introduce contemporary debates, raise awareness and stimulate thought rather than to present a closed case for examination. Consequently the essays or extracts present different approaches to give a rounded viewpoint. Beginning with essential questions such as 'Why are ceramics important?' it also considers the field of ceramics from a range of perspectives – as a cultural activity, ceramics as metaphor, where it sits within arts and crafts, within gender discussions, ceramics as sculpture, the use of ceramics as a vehicle for propaganda, ceramics within industry, within museums, and most recently as part of the 'expanded field' as a Fine Art medium and vehicle for ideas.

The texts come from a wide variety of sources – books, magazines, journals, papers presented at conferences and online journals, as well as some newly commissioned material never before published, to present an international and comprehensive look at ceramics. The book is divided into three main sections and each has a short introduction by the editors to place the chosen texts in context and explain the selections, as well as pointing to any strong threads or issues within the section and offering a point of view.

This book is ideal for ceramic students, but will also appeal to anyone wishing to gain a broad overview and understanding of the world of ceramics.

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.

Foreward, Garth Clark

General Introduction, Livingstone and Petrie

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

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

Part 2 – Ceramics in Context
Intro – Livingstone and Petrie
1. Historical Precedents
- Herbert Read - The function of decoration: Wedgwood
- Emmanuel Cooper - The Arts and Crafts Movement. GB, USA, Germany and Austria, Scandinavia, The Netherlands, Hungary and Italy.
- Brent Johnson - A Matter of Tradition: A Debate Between Maguerite Wildenhain and Bernard Leach.
- Lesley Jackson - Contemporary design of the 1950's Rie and Coper in context.

2. Studio Ceramics
- Tanya Harrod - Studio Pottery
- Bernard Leach - Towards a standard
- Julian Stair - Re-inventing the wheel – the origins of studio pottery
- Patricia Failing - The Archie Bray Foundation: A Legacy Reframed
- Edmund De Waal - Towards a Double Standard?
- Jeffrey Jones - Studio Ceramics: The end of the story?

3. Sculptural Ceramics
- Jeffrey Jones – A Rough Equivalent: Sculpture and Pottery in the post war period
- Scott, A, Shields - California (Funk)
- Mitchell Merback - Cooled Matter: Ceramic Sculpture in the expanded field
- Antony Gormley in conversation with James Putnam
- Rose Slivka - The New Ceramic Presence

4. Ceramics and Installation
- Martina Margetts - Metamorphosis: the culture of ceramics
- Glenn R Brown - Multiplicity, Ambivilence and ceramic installation art
- Emma Shaw - Ceramics and Installation
- Ruth Chambers - Ceramic Installation Towards a self-definition

5. Theoretical Perspectives
- Bruce Metcalf - The Pissoir Problem
- Glenn Adamson - The Modern Pot
- Paul Greenhalgh - Social Complexity and the historiography of ceramic
- Edmund De Waal - Speak for yourself
- Paul Mathieu - Object Theory
- Garth Clark – Between a toilet and a hard place

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

Part 3 – Key Themes
Intro – Livingstone and Petrie
1. Gender and Ceramics
- Moira Vincentelli - Gender, Identity and studio ceramics
- Matt Smith - Queering the Museum
- Louisa Buck & Marjan Boot - The Personal Political Pots of Grayson Perry

2. Identity and Ceramics
- Ruth Park - Body language: ceramics to challenge the white world
- Elisabeth Perrill – Rubber and Clay: South African material 'aftermodern'
- Wendy Gers – Plunder me Baby – Kukuli Velarde & the first nations of Peru and Taiwan

3. Image
- Veronika Horlik - Ceramics and painting – an expanded field of enquiry
- Amy Gogarty - Paul Scott's Confected landscapes and Contemporary Vignettes

4. The body
- Bonnie Kemske – Embracing Sculptural Ceramics: a lived experience of touch in art
- Inga Walton - Vicious Figurines: Penny Byrne's Ceramic Advocacy
- Peter Selz - The Figurative Impulse in Contemporary Ceramics

5. Ceramics in education
- Andrea Gill - The influence of educational institutions on contemporary ceramics
- Ayse Güler & Yücel Basegit - Conceptual identification of the relationship between form, shape and figure: Ceramic art education
- Holly Hanessian - The Digital Future: Reimagining Ceramic Education in the 21st Century

6. Ceramics, industry and new technologies
- Marek Cecula – Transitions: A brief history of Modern Ceramics
- Graham McLaren - National Identity and the problem of style in the post-war British ceramics Industry
- Jorunn Veiteberg - Continuity or Collapse: Ceramics in a post-industrial era
- Neil Ewins – The UK marketing strategy in response to globalization c1990-2010
- Roderick Bamford - 3D printing in clay building objects in coiled layers
- Ingrid Murphy - Metamaking and me

7. Museum, site and display
- Laura Gray - Museums and the interstices of domestic life; Re-articulating domestic space in contemporary ceramics practice
- Ezra Shales - The museum as medium specific muse
- Brad Evan Taylor - Environment, art, ceramics, and site specificity
- Mike Tooby -When forms become attitude – A consideration of the adoption by an artist of ceramic display as narrative device and symbolic landscape
- James Beighton and Emily Hesse – Why Clay?
- Christopher McHugh – Ceramics as an archaeology of the contemporary past
- Laura Breen – Re-defining ceramics through exhibitionary practice

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