The pottery of Acoma Pueblo stands at the height of ceramics among the Pueblo Indian pottery traditions. This exhaustively researched book traces the history of Acoma pottery over the past seven hundred years, concentrating on the periods from 1300 to 1930. with a summary of the modern period. The authors studied over several thousand examples, presenting more than 800 examples here, along with dozens of photographs of potters. The book identifies more than nine hundred Acoma potters, several of whom are credited for the first time, who worked between about 1880 to the present. Acoma pottery has evolved significantly in form and decoration over the past seven hundred years, each change reflecting the interplay of many factors, including advances in technology, individual innovations, changing markets, and the evolving uses of pottery vessels. The book is a comprehensive illustrated survey of Acoma pottery at a depth and level of detail that has never before been achieved, and will be the standard for all studies in the future.

The present publication is an essential part of the narrative of Wayne Higby's retrospective exhibition - focusing on the concept of the artist scholar - at ASU Art Museum, in Spring 2013. It documents his ceramic work with over 150 images of 50 seminal works and gives context to the story behind the artwork. Wayne Higby's international reputation both as an artist, a scholar and teacher will be explored in the contributions to this book that includes a detailed chronology of Higby's life and career as well as highlights and excerpts from his well known writings on ceramic art. Essays on the American Landscape and American landscape art as the inspiration behind Higby's work as well as his important, influential explorations into contemporary vessel aesthetics are included along with an essay that chronicles his central role in the development of contemporary Chinese ceramic art. Additionally, Higby's recent, dramatic, late career move to large architectural installations is explored in detail. Born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Wayne Higby received a B.F.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder, in 1966, and an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1968. Since 1973, he has been on the faculty of the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred, NY. Wayne Higby is recognised as one of the most important and influential ceramic artists of the late 20th, early 21st, century. In particular, his work is celebrated for its innovative use of the language of landscape.

A full-colour illustrated biography of the life of Susie Cooper and her ceramic company's output. During her sixty-five-year career, Susie Cooper introduced more than 4,500 ceramic patterns and shapes, making her one of the most prolific, versatile and influential designers the industry has ever seen. Between the 1920s and 1980s she moved from the bold hand-painting of the 'Jazz Age' through delicate wash banding and aerograph techniques to sophisticated lithographic transfer printing on both earthenware and bone china. Cooper not only led the charge of gifted female designers in the male-dominated Potteries but also pioneered the role of women in factory management. Alan Marshall here charts her progress from the creation of patterns for Gray's Pottery in the 1920s, to running her own Susie Cooper Productions from the 1930s to the 1950s, and designing for Wedgwood from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Sir William Van Horne (1843-1915), connaisseur bourre de talent dont la renommee est surtout attribuable a sa contribution a la construction du Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique, a assemble l'une des collections les plus completes de ceramiques japonaises en Amerique du Nord. Obsession est un recit lumineux expliquant l'origine et l'evolution de sa passion envers l'etude et l'acquisition de pres de 1 200 objets. Ron Graham dresse le profil du personnage plus grand que nature que fut Van Horne en plus de rassembler des essais sur la place qu'il a occupee au sommet des collectionneurs d'art dans le Mille carre dore, ou Golden Square Mile, de Montreal et la perennite de sa collection apres sa mort. En exergue des textes, le lecteur pourra decouvrir des documents et des photographies historiques, un catalogue detaille de plus de trois cents objets exposes au Musee royal de l'Ontario et au Musee des beaux-arts de Montreal, de meme qu'une selection de splendides reproductions des carnets de notes personnels de Van Horne et des aquarelles raffinees provenant des archives du Musee des beaux-arts de l'Ontario. Publie parallelement a la tenue d'une importante exposition au musee Gardiner de Toronto et au Musee des beaux-arts de Montreal, Obsession presente une remarquable collection replacee dans le contexte de l'existence et de la carriere d'un geant du secteur canadien des affaires au dix-neuvieme siecle.

In the last two decades of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century, glass manufacturing was a unique enterprise in Canada. Beginning with the founding of the Nova Scotia Glass Company in 1881, the glass factories of Nova Scotia made clear tableware at a time when it was not made anywhere else in Canada.

By the 1800s, people had been making glass for more than 4,000 years. Before that, however, the mass production of glass was not technically possible. Pressing machines to produce glass shapes were invented in the 1830s in New England. As mechanization improved, decorated glassware could be produced relatively quickly and affordably. By the late 1880s, moulded and pressed glass was produced in Pennsylvania and Ohio, in New England, and, perhaps not surprisingly, in Nova Scotia.

In this beautifully illustrated book, featuring photographs of the highly collectable patterned tableware produced during this 40-year period, Deborah Trask tells the story of Nova Scotia glass during this golden age of pressed-glass production.

Employing her skills as a curator and a detective of sorts, she tells the story of the major glass factories -- the Nova Scotia Glass Company, the Humphrey Glass Company, and the Lamont Glass Company -- and provides crucial information on patterns and moulds, allowing readers and collectors to identify what remains of this glittering enterprise.

In 1948, Gilbert Portanier, a painter, discovered clay as a material to work with at Vallauris, the ceramics centre in the south of France. There he developed his unique style in the medium. What is so significant about his early work is his mastery of drawing on pottery. In the early years, Portanier "drew" with the brush on his pieces mainly Arcadian genre scenes inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity. On the look-out for new colour combinations, colour textures and colour compositions, however, Portanier gradually distanced himself from drawing and switched to free painting on ceramics. "Every one of his pieces belongs in a museum," thus Picasso commenting on Gilbert Portanier's "painterly ceramics". And indeed Portanier, like no other, conjures colourful, surrealist abstract-figurative paintings on the ceramics he has designed. In his pieces, the "Mediterranean delight" in representing and communicating comes into its own. The inexhaustible riches of Portanier's teeming imagination are unique in the international ceramics scene, a status that has been justly rewarded with numerous international prizes and awards and is now being showcased in this comprehensive monograph.

In 1984 the Getty Museum acquired a collection of Italian Renaissance majolica, or tin-glazed earthenware. This volume catalogues this collection of 45 objects spanning 400 years, including a pair of 18th-century candlesticks representing mythological scenes and a tabletop with hunting scenes.

The great 6th-century BCE Attic potter-painter Exekias is acclaimed as the most accomplished exponent of late 'black-figure' art. His vases, vessels, bowls and amphorae are reproduced on postcards and in other media all over the world. Despite his importance in the history of art and archaeology, little has been written about Exekias in his own right. Elizabeth Moignard, a leading historian of classical art, here corrects that neglect by addressing her subject as more than just a painter. She positions Exekias as a remarkable but nevertheless grounded and receptive man of his age, working in an Athens that was sensitive to Homeric literature and drawing on that great corpus of poetry to explore its own emerging concepts of honour, heroism, leadership and military tradition. Discussing a range of ceramic pieces, Moignard illustrates their impact and meaning, deconstructing iconic images like the suicide of Ajax; the voyage of Dionysus surrounded by dolphins; and the killing by Achilles of the Amazon queen Penthesilea. This book is the most complete introduction to its subject to be published in English.

Located above the Euphrates in modern Syria, Dura-Europus was founded as a Hellenistic military settlement. It was conquered repeatedly by Parthians, Romans, and Persians; but evidence from inscriptions, graffiti, and papyri suggests that, throughout all this upheaval, the Greco-Macedonian aristocracy maintained its sway over the city's society. Susan B. Downey demonstrates how the terracotta figurines and plaques from Dura-Europus, relatively humble products, can shed light on religious beliefs and social practices in cities of mixed Greek and Semitic population. These artifacts reveal the stories of the city's people. Dura is exceptionally well preserved, due to the dry climate and to the fact that it was not re-inhabited after it fell to the Sasanian Persians in approximately C.E. 256. Approximately 300 figurines and plaques were discovered in the excavations of Dura, yet few have been published. Properly determining the uses of artifacts like these is difficult. The terracottas might have functioned in a religious context, as talismans, or as toys--to name only a few possibilities. This exhaustive collection meticulously catalogues the Dura finds, offering the first complete listing of the terracottas and plaques. Combined with Downey's insightful analyses, the catalogue represents a monumental contribution to our knowledge of the lives and activities of the inhabitants of this important antique center of multiculturalism. This book will prove an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the social history and religious life of Dura-Europus. Archaeologists, art historians, and general classicists alike will find it valuable. Susan B. Downey is Professor of Art History, University of California, Los Angeles.