With such a large variety of styles, patterns and series to choose from, Lefton china has fast become one of the most desirable, sought-after ceramic collectibles on the secondary market today. This new volume spans the history of the Lefton China company, founded by George Zoltan Lefton in the late 1930s in Chicago, Illinois. 743 photos document his creations, including figurines, planters, vases, and other decorative items. Complete descriptions, identifying markings, current pricing, cleaning suggestions, and a large list of Lefton patterns not found in any other published book on Lefton China make this an invaluable guide, whether you are new to collecting Lefton or have been on the hunt for many years.

This beautifully illustrated book will attract both beginners and advanced painters, and is written from the heart with unabashed enthusiasm. It shows step-by-step that anyone can paint if they really want to, and provides guidance every step of the way.The author covers all spheres of porcelain decoration, whether it's flowers or fruit, cats or landscapes, portraits or designs. She shows clearly how to work with many materials and techniques, including mineral oxides, gold and silver, raised paste, lustres, grounding and the kiln.Porcelain painting since 1970, her vast knowledge and practical experience is packed within the pages, with a subject for everyone to enjoy.

This is a comprehensive guide to the basic techniques and equipment: all you need to know, from tinning an edge, painting and etching to simple home cutting, delicate folk painting and frosted patterning. The beauty of decorative glass is celebrated in practical, inspirational designs such as herb jars, nightlights, poem vase, copper foil mirror and a stylish Alhambra picture frame. It features examples of the finest glasswork from contemporary craft artists and designers. It presents the definitive modern approach to a traditional craft, with every stage clearly illustrated with photographs in step-by-step instructions for 25 superb projects. It features over 300 photographs of the finished projects so you can what you are aiming at. The availability of easy-to-apply paints in an exciting range of colours means that glass decoration is within the reach of everyone, without the need for specialist equipment. By mastering a few simple skills, you can turn everyday objects into attractive pieces. Here you will find 25 practical projects to inspire you, presented in an easy-to-follow step-by-step format. A variety of basic techniques includes etching, painting, stained-glass construction, wirework and glass-cutting, which are then applied to decorate functional objects such as decorated herb jars and nightlights, and ornamental pieces such as a heraldic bottle and a candle bowl. Further inspiration is provided by the gallery section, in which leading craftspeople display their work, from stained-glass effect mirrors to gilded bowls. This comprehensive guide shows you how to create beautiful objects in a classic medium.

In this study, Emily Byrne Curtis explores as her subject lenses, spectacles, aventurine glass, and windows found in China from the sixteenth century. She traces their technological development back to the glassworks in Murano, Venice, and explores their significance in terms of Venice's commerce with China. Because glassware also figured among the gifts which three papal legates from the Vatican presented to the Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors, the author examines many documents from the archives in Rome and the Vatican; the study therefore touches, to an extent, on the history of the Catholic Church in China. Curtis also discusses in the volume some contemporary Chinese references and verses to European glassware, and in the case of enamel materials, she discloses the pronounced effect their use had upon the decor of Chinese porcelains.

Distinctive and extraordinary porcelains from the potteries of Limoges, France, are examined and illustrated in over 1,000 beautiful color photographs. These porcelain wares range from nineteenth century cake plates and teacups to striking vases and contemporary boxes. Included among the featured wares are items hand painted by famous decorating firms and others that were offered entirely without adornment. Also included are the manufacturers' marks and histories of many Limoges potteries, including Haviland & Co., ThA (c)odore Haviland, Pouyat, GuA (c)rin, Raynaud and Bernardaud, as well as an extensive bibliography and index. Current values are conveniently located in the captions. This book is a must for anyone with a love of porcelain and an appreciation for true artistry.

Now firmly established in the ceramics world, paperclay is a vital part of the modern clay artist and potter's repertoire. The workability of this material allows expressive freedom and imagination at every stage in the creative process, from wet to dry. Paperclay, made with new or recycled paper, is remarkable for its flexibility, unfired strength, and the ease with which it can be repaired, and allows the creation of beautiful finished forms.

Building on the immense success of her previous Ceramics Handbook Paper Clay, pioneering artist, researcher and teacher Rosette Gault (M.F.A.) explains how potters and clay sculptors can make, fire and use the material. In addition to the basics, she introduces more advanced techniques for building armatures, sculpting figures and making works for the wall.

Packed throughout with photographs of inspiring works by a new generation of paperclay artists, Paperclay: Art and Practice is an essential introduction to the medium.

Discover the many forms and adornments of Purinton Pottery, an attractive hand-painted slip ware best known for its simple yet beautiful designs. More than 1100 color photographs chronicle the pottery from its early, primitive Peasant Ware stages after the company was founded in Wellsville, Ohio in 1936, to the ever-popular Apple and Pennsylvania Dutch patterns of the 1940s and '50s, with all known patterns and molds illustrated in chronological order. The company continued to manufacture pottery until 1959, producing a wide range of items from dinnerware and souvenir items to personalized blessing plates decorated by Dorothy Purinton herself. This book also identifies the various shapes made by Purinton and displays their children's wares, figurals, Christmas pieces, and experimental items. The authors go further, identifying pieces signed by the company's two most prestigious decorators, Bill Blair and Dorothy Purinton. Rounding out this thorough presentation are an index and values guide.

The latest title in Stackpole's bestselling Basics series, this book presents a fun, growing trend in glass crafts. Teaches all the basics for getting started in glass fusing: what type of glass to use and how to cut it; how to work with a kiln from setup to project completion; how to make your own molds and glass accents. Instructions and full-size patterns for 18 projects, including bowls, vases, plates, wind chimes, candleholders and more. Illustrated with hundreds of step-by-step photos, a gallery of inspiring projects, and a list of glass fusing resources.

The revised edition of our successful Raku book. Completely re-designed, black and white images have been replaced with colour and many new makers have been added to the gallery of artists, which is an overview of the contemporary scene and makes up about a third of the book. The text is almost completely re-written and updated with recent developments. This book is a comprehensive overview of raku, covering the history, clay types and firing of raku, as well as the glazes, techniques and reduction processes. The new edition also looks at the development of raku over the last 20 years, and at changes in the way it is perceived.

Once given as a premium for purchasing a product or given as a gift for buying a movie ticket during the harsh years of the Depression, this colored glassware of green, yellow, pink, blue, and other hues is now avidly collected by countless Americans. Recently hailed as one of the top collectibles sought on the Internet, Depression Glass has attracted the interest of many young enthusiasts. From Adam to Windsor, readers of this book will soon become familiar with these pattern names as well as gain a richer appreciation of this tableware's history and its value today. Very inexpensive when first produced, Depression Glassware was America's early experimentation with the mold-etched method for producing pattern glass. Today collectors recognize the beauty and creativity of the glass artisans during this period. Whether a beginning or a veteran collector, some very exciting discoveries await the reader as the pages are turned. Hundreds of glass pieces photographed in full color are accompanied by a price guide to help the collector determine the current value for these colorful and elegant pieces. Anyone who has ever found a piece of Depression glass in a relative's house, seen pieces at an antique show, or been attracted by its design and color, will find this book fascinating.

This innovative book narrates the history of a single object--a tea-leaf storage jar created in southern China during the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries--and describes how its role changed after it was imported to Japan and passed from owner to owner there. In Japan, where the jar was in constant use for more than seven hundred years, it was transformed from a humble vessel into a celebrated object used in chanoyu (often translated in English as tea ceremony), renowned for its aesthetic and functional qualities, and awarded the name Chigusa.

Few extant tea utensils possess the quantity and quality of the accessories associated with Chigusa, material that enables modern scholars and tea aficionados to trace the jar U s evolving history of ownership and appreciation. Tea diaries indicate that the lavish accessories--the silk net bag, cover, and cords--that still accompany the jar were prepared in the early sixteenth century by its first recorded owner.

Louise Allison Cort is curator of ceramics, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. She received the 2012 Secretary U s Distinguished Research Lecture Award, Smithsonian Institution, and the 2012 Koyama Fujio Memorial Prize for her research on historical Japanese ceramics. Andrew M. Watsky is professor of Japanese art at Princeton University. His book, "Chikubushima: Deploying the Sacred Arts in Momoyama Japan," received the John Whitney Hall Book Prize (Association for Asian Studies) and the Shimada Prize (Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution)."

Nearly all glass makers (unless they are blowing glass) need moulds which can go in the kiln, as part of the process of creating their work. Currently glass students and makers get their expertise and recipes from lots of different sources, picking out the relevant bits and pieces which they need from other glass and ceramic books. This book aims to introduce all the mould-making techniques for casting glass, with detailed information on materials, recipes for mould mixes, methods and applications. It helps the student to learn which methods are appropriate for different types of work, and covers all the basics of how to make your mould. It also includes practical information on sourcing, storing, using and recycling materials, and how to develop your own recipes and methods for particular projects. It also covers where to start with writing programmes for kiln firings including annealing and cooling. It also contains images from well-known artists working in cast glass throughout.

In Courtly Mediators, Leah R. Clark investigates the exchange of a range of materials and objects, including metalware, ceramic drug jars, Chinese porcelain, and aromatics, across the early modern Italian, Mamluk, and Ottoman courts. She provides a new narrative that places Aragonese Naples at the center of an international courtly culture, where cosmopolitanism and the transcultural flourished, and in which artists, ambassadors, and luxury goods actively participated. By articulating how and why transcultural objects were exchanged, displayed, copied, and framed, she provides a new methodological framework that transforms our understanding of the Italian Renaissance court. Clark's volume provides a multi-sensorial, innovative reading of Italian Renaissance art. It demonstrates that the early modern culture of collecting was more than a humanistic enterprise associated with the European roots of the Renaissance. Rather, it was sustained by interactions with global material cultures from the Islamic world and beyond.

Sea Glass Crafts includes twenty step-by-step projects for you to create beautiful works with your collection of sea glass. Accompanying each project are beautiful full-color photographs which visually aid readers in the instructions as well as display the finished product. Sea glass is the beautiful result of broken glass being naturally polished and smoothed by the ocean's currents for extended periods of time. These beautiful jewels become weathered and frosted from abrasion and erosion in salt water, giving them a distinctly beautiful, jewel-like appearance that is perfect for all sorts of crafting! From jewelry to other lavish lifestyle crafts, this book will give skills needed to learn the art of creating beautiful homemade pieces: Basic Flowers Sea Glass Shadow Box Gel Candle with Sea Glass Terra Cotta Pot Candle Holder Memory Locket Bird Bath Bedside Table Sea Glass Wine Stoppers Sea Glass earrings Napkin Rings Sea Glass Wreath Picture Snowman Ornament And more! Sea glass can be purchased in bulk online, but it is way more fun to collect on your own. On your next trip to the beach, when you find yourself swimming in these treasures, be sure to utilize the lessons in this book to create something truly homemade, unique, and beautiful. It's a perfect activity for anyone interested in jewelry-making or crafting, or for someone looking to learn a new hobby.

This study compares text/image interaction as manifested in emblem books (and related forms) and the modern bande dessinee, or French-language comic strip. It moves beyond the issue of defining the emblematic genre to examine the ways in which emblems - and their modern counterparts - interact with the surrounding culture, and what they disclose about that culture. Drawing largely on primary material from the Bibliotheque nationale de France and from Glasgow University Library's Stirling Maxwell Collection of emblem literature, Laurence Grove builds on the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, Elizabeth Eisenstein and, more recently, Neil Rhodes and Jonathan Sawday. Divided into four sections-Theoretics, Production, Thematics and Reception-Text/Image Mosaics in French Culture broaches topics such as theoretical approaches (past and present) to text/image forms, the question of narrative within the scope of text/image creations, and the reuse of visual iconography for diametrically opposed political or religious purposes. The author argues that, despite the gap in time between the advent of emblems and that of comic strips, the two forms are analogous, in that both are the products of a 'parallel mentality'. The mindsets of the periods that popularised these forms have certain common features related to repeated social conditions rather than to the pure evolution over time. Grove's analysis and historical contextualisation of that mentality provide insight into our own popular culture forms, not only the comic strip but also other hybrid media such as advertising and the Internet. His juxtaposition of emblems and the bande dessinee increases our understanding of all such combinations of picture and text.

Southern Potteries in Erwin, Tennessee, from 1938 through 1957, was the largest producer of hand-decorated pottery in America, including Blue Ridge China. Here thousands of pieces are illustrated in over 1400 color photos with informative captions, historical facts, newly identified patterns, and old favorites.

America in the nineteenth century Victorian age was changing as fast as the engines of the Industrial Revolution could carry it. At every turn, Flow Blue was there, first sparking the interest of the affluent and later the middle class with its rich colors and complete table services. This book puts Flow Blue in its historical context and covers the British, American and European manufacturers who produced it, the exhibitions that promoted it, the people who owned it and what moved them to buy it. Over 500 color photographs present the variety of forms and patterns in these popular wares from the 1840s to turn of the twentieth century.

The human figure in sculpture is a powerful form, capable of great expression and depth. Sculpting the figure in any medium is a rewarding practice, but one that presents special challenges for the maker. Tanya Russell, founder and principal of the Art Academy in London, details the whole creative process for sculpting the figure, from the fundamental conceptual and practical considerations through to the finished and presented work. She covers essential tools and equipment, methods for building armatures, and the processes for creating not only realistic, but also abstract and expressive figures, in a variety of styles and materials. Techniques are supported by practical exercises with step-by-step instructions and images. The book is filled with the inspiring works of contemporary sculptors, all of whom are tutors, students, or alumni of the Art Academy. Modelling and Sculpting the Figure is an essential companion for beginners and established artists alike.

This book represents an extraordinary sample of Depression era glass, because Tiffin was an extraordinary glass company. Its output during the Depression was well documented and enough to keep any collector occupied for years. Most of the glass presented in this volume is from the 1920s and 1930s. With detailed captions for the more than 450 illustrations--color photographs, catalog pages, advertisements, and drawings--it is a guide to help the collector, researcher, and dealer identify, price, and enjoy this compelling glassware.

The art of the object reached unparalleled heights in the medieval Islamic world, yet the intellectual dimensions of ceramics, metalwares, and other plastic arts in this milieu have not always been acknowledged. Arts of Allusion reveals the object as a crucial site where pre-modern craftsmen of the eastern Mediterranean and Persianate realms engaged in fertile dialogue with poetry, literature, painting, and, perhaps most strikingly, architecture. Lanterns fashioned after miniature shrines, incense burners in the form of domed monuments, earthenware jars articulated with arches and windows, inkwells that allude to tents: through close studies of objects from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, this book reveals that allusions to architecture abound across media in the portable arts of the medieval Islamic world. Arts of Allusion draws upon a broad range of material evidence as well as medieval texts to locate its subjects in a cultural landscape where the material, visual and verbal realms were intertwined. Moving far beyond the initial identification of architectural types with their miniature counterparts in the plastic arts, Margaret Graves develops a series of new frameworks for exploring the intelligent art of the allusive object. These address materiality, representation, and perception, and examine contemporary literary and poetic paradigms of metaphor, description, and indirect reference as tools for approaching the plastic arts. Arguing for the role of the intellect in the applied arts and for the communicative potential of ornament, Arts of Allusion asserts the reinstatement of craftsmanship into Islamic intellectual history.

A beautifully illustrated showcase of the rich and varied ceramic tradition of Iran Featuring a broad selection of objects from one of the most distinguished collections of Iranian art, this volume brings together over 1,000 years of Persian Islamic pottery. With more than 500 illustrations, authoritative technical treatises, and insightful commentary, Ceramics of Iran assembles a collection of rarely seen treasures from the Persian world and presents a collective history of its renowned ceramic tradition. Included among its comprehensive catalogue entries are numerous translations of the object's inscriptions, providing readers with a richer and more detailed understanding of the cultural heritage from which these items are derived. In addition, the book contains new research and material from previously unknown sites. Featuring all new photography of nearly 250 objects, Ceramics of Iran brings the extraordinary contributions of Persian art into a wider historical context, along with a wealth of images to demonstrate the full scope of its intricate beauty. Distributed for the Sarikhani Collection

The identification of English white ironstone plates is made far easier through this new book. Organized according to the shape names, the 327 color photographs and 252 drawings of plates, rims, potters' marks and registry marks are easy to compare. Copper Lustre and Tea Leaf decorations are included. Because few written records from the manufacturers are available to help analyze these plates, made in large quantities for export primarily to the United States between about 1840 and 1890, this study will be an important reference for identification and comparisons. It is both comprehensive and easy to use, providing an important tool for collectors, dealers, curators, designers, auctioneers, and historians for analyzing Victorian cultural history.

This book beautifully illustrates the wide range of artistic innovation and techniques expressed in vitreous, or "hard," enamels on metal. More than 30 experienced enamelists share their specialized knowledge for using cloisonne, plique-A-jour, champleve, and basse-taille techniques on silver, gold, foils, and metal clay to make jewelry, vessels, portraits, and more. Works from an additional 55 artists are also displayed in over 350 color photographs. Their words and work will instruct and inspire beginners and encourage the next generation of metal workers to carry enameling to new heights.