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.

The finest history of pottery available, this book offers an inspirational journey through one of the oldest and most widespread of human activities.

More than a third of the houses in the world are made of clay. Clay vessels were instrumental in the invention of cooking, wine and beer making, and international trade. Our toilets are made of clay. The first spark plugs were thrown on the potter’s wheel. Clay has played a vital role in the health and beauty fields. Indeed, this humble material was key to many advances in civilization, including the development of agriculture and the invention of baking, architecture, religion, and even the space program. In Clay, Suzanne Staubach takes a lively look at the startling history of the mud beneath our feet. Told with verve and erudition, this story will ensure you won’t see the world around you in quite the same way after reading the book.

No longer considered merely decorative, ceramic art has broken free from the dusty display cases to which it was once relegated and is now taking centre stage in contemporary galleries. Although often integrating traditional modelling, firing and glazing techniques into their output, the 90 artists featured here invite us to look at ceramics in a different way. Whether creating monumental installations or intricate miniatures, imaginary beasts or life-size human figures, they subtly blur the borders between art and craft, sometimes conceiving witty or unnerving twists on traditional ceramic forms, sometimes using cutting-edge technology, conceptual thinking and new platforms to push the boundaries of clay and broaden its appeal. Packed with works that are questioning and provocative, disturbing and seductive, this is an exciting overview of a booming field.

Demonstrates the way in which the discovery, application, and adaptation of materials has shaped the course of human history and the routines of our daily existence.

For over 25,000 years, humans across the globe have shaped, decorated, and fired clay. Despite great differences in location and time, universal themes appear in the world’s ceramic traditions, including religious influences, human and animal representations, and mortuary pottery. In Global Clay: Themes in World Ceramic Traditions, noted pottery scholar John A. Burrison explores the recurring artistic themes that tie humanity together, explaining how and why those themes appear again and again in worldwide ceramic traditions. The book is richly illustrated with over 200 full-color, cross-cultural illustrations of ceramics from prehistory to the present. Providing an introduction to different styles of folk pottery, extensive suggestions for further reading, and reflections on the future of traditional pottery around the world, Global Clay is sure to become a classic for all who love art and pottery and all who are intrigued by the human commonalities revealed through art.

A global survey of 100 of today's most important clay and ceramic artists, chosen by leading art world professionals. Vitamin C celebrates the revival of clay as a material for contemporary visual artists, featuring a wide range of global talent as selected by the world's leading curators, critics, and art professionals. Clay and ceramics have in recent years been elevated from craft to high art material, with the resulting artworks being coveted by collectors and exhibited in museums around the world. Packed with illustrations, Vitamin C is a vibrant and incredibly timely survey - the first of its kind. Artists include: Caroline Achaintre, Ai Weiwei, Aaron Angell, Edmund de Waal, Theaster Gates, Marisa Merz, Ron Nagle, Gabriel Orozco, Grayson Perry, Sterling Ruby, Thomas Schütte, Richard Slee, Clare Twomey, Jesse Wine, and Betty Woodman. Nominators include: Pablo Leon de la Barra, Iwona Blazwick, Mary Ceruti, Dan Fox, Jens Hoffmann, Christine Macel, James Meyer, Jed Morse, Beatrix Ruf, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Nancy Spector, Sheena Wagstaff, and Jonathan Watkins.

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.

Surrealism Beyond Borders challenges conventional narratives of a revolutionary artistic, literary, and philosophical movement. Tracing Surrealism's influence and legacy from the 1920s to the late 1970s in places as geographically diverse as Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Syria, Thailand, and Turkey, this publication includes more than 300 works of art in a variety of media by well-known figures—including Dalí, Ernst, Kahlo, Magritte, and Miró—as well as numerous artists who are less widely known. Contributions from more than forty distinguished international scholars explore the network of Surrealist exchange and collaboration, artists' responses to the challenges of social and political unrest, and the experience of displacement and exile in the twentieth century. The multiple narratives addressed in this expansive book move beyond the borders of history, geography, and nationality to provocatively redraw the map of Surrealism.