Charles Fergus Binns was born in England and trained at Royal Worcester. Soon after he moved to the US becaming founding director of the New York State School of Clay-Working and Ceramics. This volume reproduces Binn's vases and bowls in colour and documents his works in a catalogue raisonne.

It was in the rolling hills and small cities of western New York State that the studio craft movement took root and thrived. In the 1900's the region was home to Charles Fergus Binns' New York State School of Clay-Working at Alfred University, Elbert Hubbard's Roycroft community, Gustav Stickley's furniture and Steuben's Glass Works in Corning. In the mid-to late 20th century Alfred nourished such important ceramists as Daniel Rhodes, Robert Turner, and Anne Currier. In 1950 the School for American Craftsman (SAC) moved to Rochester, attracting artists including John Prip, Ronald Pearson who added to what is still today a vibrant community. AUTHOR: Barabara Lovenheim, journalist and author, has written on the arts and lifestyle for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The International Herald Tribune and many national magazines. Paul J. Smith, Director Emeritus of the American Craft Museum (now Museum of Arts and Design) has been involved with the craft and design field for more than 50 years. 107 colour & 21 b/w illustrations

"The Potter's Craft" from Charles Fergus Binns. Director of the New York State School of Clayworking and Ceramics, currently called the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (1857 - 1935).

This is a guide for anyone interested in the art of pottery. This book covers everything from the nature and properties of clay to glazes and firing techniques. It contains step-by-step instructions and clear illustrations on how to prepare clay, use molds, build by hand, throw on the wheel, turn, cast, and decorate pottery. Additionally, the book offers information on high-temperature wares, porcelain, and working with children.

From the world's foremost collector, here is the new, fully illustrated standard guide to America's first golden age of tile making. American Art Tile presents more than 2,000 tiles, arranged geographically and chronologically, made by more than 100 American potteries and manufacturers from the Civil War to the 194Os. Full-color photographs illustrate these collectible and rare tiles from all regions of the United States, as well as historic landmark tile installations, from the New York subway to Catalina Island. Tile collectors will appreciate the meticulously researched history of each pottery, biographies of tile makers, and rare examples (seldom seen even in museums) from little-known potteries in Norman Karlson's personal collection.

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.