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.

Atlas Of Ceramic Fabrics 1. Italy: North-East, Adriatic, Ionian. Bronze Age: Impasto presents and interprets the petrographic composition of Bronze Age Impasto pottery (23rd-10th centuries BCE) found in the eastern part of Italy. This is the first of a series of Atlases organised according to geographical areas, chronology and types of wares. In this book 935 samples from 63 sites are included, which comprise material obtained as a result of almost 30 years of interdisciplinary archaeological, technological and archaeometric research by the authors' team. 73 petrographic fabrics (the potters' 'recipes') are defined and presented, on their lithological character - a tool that can be used to compare the different components of the ceramic pastes and to check provenance of non-local pots. The volume is organised in chapters focused on methodology, fabric description and distribution, followed by the archaeological implications and the database, with contributions by Daniele Brunelli and Andrea Di Renzoni. Illustrations and descriptions of the fabrics and a complete list of the samples are included in order to provide a rigorous and transparent presentation of the data. The archaeological implications are discussed within the topics such as technology, variability, standardisation, chronology, function, social organisation, circulation, style, typology and cultural identity. It is hoped that this work will be considered as another stepping-stone in demostrating that, in archaeology, technological variability is as important as morphological and stylistic distinctions.

Ceramics and the Museum interrogates the relationship between art-oriented ceramic practice and museum practice in Britain since 1970. Laura Breen examines the identity of ceramics as an art form, drawing on examples of work by artist-makers such as Edmund de Waal and Grayson Perry; addresses the impact of policy making on ceramic practice; traces the shift from object to project in ceramic practice and in the evolution of ceramic sculpture; explores how museums facilitated multisensory engagement with ceramic material and process, and analyses the exhibition as a text in itself. Proposing the notion that 'gestures of showing,' such as exhibitions and installation art, can be read as statements, she examines what they tell us about the identity of ceramics at particular moments in time. Highlighting the ways in which these gestures have constructed ceramics as a category of artistic practice, Breen argues that they reveal gaps between narrative and practice, which in turn can be used to deconstruct the art.

'Vessel | Sculpture' refers to the direction studio pottery has taken since the mid-20th century, developing from primarily functional vessels to artistically designed vessels, ceramic sculpture, installation and conceptual art. The aim is to trace the history of how ceramics has evolved and developed into an autonomous art medium, which is continually self-renewing. Focused on the GRASSI Museum's collection of contemporary ceramic work since 1946 when Germany was divided into East and West after the World War II, this book provides a fascinating and instructive overview of developments and trends in the two Germanys. Moreover, a broad-ranging selection of works by ceramicists now active in both the new and the old Federal German states is supplemented by contemporary pieces from all over the world. The publication is devoted to one-off pieces and limited editions from the past six decades. Reproductions in large formats of approximately four hundred selected objects are accompanied by biographies of as many artists and their signatures.