This book examines Greek vase-paintings that depict humorous, burlesque, and irreverent images of Greek mythology and the gods. Many of the images present the gods and heroes as ridiculous and ugly. While the narrative content of some images may appear to be trivial, others address issues that are deeply serious. When placed against the background of the religious beliefs and social frameworks from which they spring, these images allow us to explore questions relating to their meaning in particular communities. Throughout, we see indications that Greek vase-painters developed their own comedic narratives and visual jokes. The images enhance our understanding of Greek society in just the same way as their more sober siblings in serious art. David Walsh is a Visiting Research Scholar in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at The University of Manchester."

Fire & the Feminine: Myths & Legends A bold and humorous creative voice emerges in a variety of media, yet award-winning San Francisco-Bay Area artist Carol Witten's most dynamic expressons are reflected in her ceramic sculptures. Witten explores the mysterious dynamics of her gender through 100 works she's "squeezed to life" from bits of clay. Her artwork will make you laugh and so will the accompany text. Inspiration for her stoneware sculptures comes from Pharaohs, queens, and muses found in myths, legends, and the daily news. The passionate and tormented Medusa, The First Fire: The Face of Medusa, will make your heart pound. Later, we meet an exhausted Mnemosyne, Mother of the Nine Muses, as she reclines at the Temple at Ayra Triada after giving birth to nine daughters. Each sister is endowed with a treasure whose fire will live forever. Witten's earthy bodies are both llighthearted and outlandish, yet her sources are profound, often borne from personal struggle. We follow the artist as she discovers the sources for these works, whether in books, museums, or travel. The book offers an example of an artist who "kept her day job" while always returning to her passion. Witten concludes with veritable information on the technical aspects of her art she gleaned from a lifetime of experience: more reason to add this book to your collection.

This volume contains papers presented at the international conference Networks in the Hellenistic world according to the pottery in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond which took place at the universities of Cologne and Bonn 23rd 26th February 2011. The organizers, all specialists in Hellenistic pottery of different regions in the Eastern Mediterranean, invited participants working from the Adriatic Sea to Asia Minor and up to Central Asia to consider their material according to the common platform of networks and exchange systems. Among the questions addressed by the contributors are: What is the character of the trade relations between political centres? What is the nature of economic development in minor cities and rural areas? Are some regions cut off from trade routes and thus characterised by a more restricted spectrum of local pottery? Which places traded their pottery globally? Whose pottery was copied, and by whom? Can the repertoire of forms reflect the adoption of specific customs?"

A catalogue and analysis of over 1000 Roman-period oil lamps from the Holy Land within the collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The Roman period in Palestine begins with the conquest of the East by Pompey in 63 BCE - essentially the period representing the continuation of the partial political and cultural annexation of the country to Western civilisation following the earlier arrival of Greek and Hellenistic culture.

Volume 3 in this series on Pre-Columbian figurines concentrates on pottery figurines from the south coast, the highlands and the 'Selva' (tropical rain forests) of Peru. It details a collection of 784 figurines: 536 from the South Coast, 230 from the Sierra and 18 from the Selva. The main aim of this work has been to record the figurines and to classify them into iconographically and stylistically meaningful groups, thus providing a user-friendly Corpus. For each geographic area the figurine groups are presented in chronological order. Each figurine is listed on a Table, containing all the relevant data (collection, site provenance, sex, measurements, surface colour, manufacturing technique, special features and reference to publications) and is illustrated on a Plate. The analytical part lists the group characteristics and discusses special features, links with other groups, context, geographic distribution and chronology of each group or sub-group. Volume 1 (The Pottery Figurines of the North Coast of Peru has already appeared as BAR S1941 (2009).

Carolyn Frary, a leading designer of tropical island ceramics, attended the Rhode Island School of Design. Having enjoyed working with clay her entire life, Carolyn decided she wanted to focus exclusively on ceramics as her line of work, and that she wanted to work from home. She began the process of opening a home studio during 2011, naming it Island Screech. This short book explains what she learned along the way to setting up that studio, including how to begin with a basic room layout, how to select the right types of equipment, and how to employ the best practices of quality, safety, and compliance. Carolyn also discusses profound knowledge of the creativity process, plus how to sell your artwork. Now that Carolyn is earning a living doing what she enjoys most -- making ceramics, and she want's to share her experience with others. Even though it's less than one-hundred pages, it will help those individuals who want to stay at home to earn money the old fashioned way -- by being creative while hand-making timeless art treasures or useful objects of desire.

The banded agate bowl known as the Tazza Farnese is one of the most famous and admired objects from classical antiquity. That it has survived at all is a miracle. In this, the first book-length account of the "life" of this renowned masterpiece, art historian Marina Belozerskaya takes readers on a fascinating trip through history that spans two millennia and journeys from the court of Cleopatra to the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, from Samarqand of Tamerlane to Renaissance Florence under Lorenzo de' Medici, from Baroque Rome to Enlightenment Naples. Along the way, the reader encounters the illustrious as well as the shady figures who have come into contact with this prized artifact, from emperors and conquerors, popes and princes, and artists like Botticelli and Raphael, to forgers, thieves, and a disgruntled museum guard who nearly destroyed the Tazza for all posterity. Through the prism of this most precious bowl, Medusa's Gaze brings history vividly and intimately to life.

-- A unique mix of design and commentary by Walter Moorcroft.
-- Gives a rare glimpse into the life and works of the Moorcroft family and company.

Memories of Life and Living is a personal reflection by the renowned potter, Walter Moorcroft. on a life spanning eight decades. Walter inherited the factory from his famous father. William, when he was only 28.

This is a richly illustrated process volume. including many color plates of the author's designs to which are added his personal views and comments. The memoir contains descriptions of significant event and amusing anecdotes taken from Walter's diaries. This fascinating and often wryly humorous book is accompanied by a wealth of illustrations, providing a documentary of the family.

An illustrated record of Wilkie's tableware designs 1958 - 1978.

As an avid collector for over twenty years, I have gathered these birds from all over the United States. This book contains all the information from study of the birds in my collection as well as pictures and information from friends. With a few exceptions, the birds have the Red Dime Mark "Made in Czechoslovakia." You will find as many molds for which I have pictures, showing the color and size varieties. Even though I have spent years in my search, I know there are others yet to be found as I was able to find a new bird even as I was finishing this book. I hope that collectors will send me information on other varieties.

Beau-He-Me-N-Rib explores the unique original paintings, clay creations and poetry of Mary-Susan Kirkpatrick. Viewers will appreciate the personality of this soulful artist, revealing her natural expression and great sense of shape and color combinations. Mary-Susan's work gracefully flows across each canvas. Readers will enjoy the poetry she writes for her paintings. The artist's lifelong distinctive style continues into three dimensions with a selection of her favorite clay sculptures in matte shades of antiquity. A Virginia native, Mary-Susan Kirkpatrick was born and raised in Richmond, where she graduated from Marymount High School. She earned a BA in studio art with a painting concentration from Providence College in 1993. Mary-Susan lives in Lexington, Virginia.

Skin Crafts discusses multiple artists from global contexts who employ craft materials in works that address historical and contemporary violence. These artists are deliberately embracing the fragility of textiles and ceramics to evoke the vulnerability of human skin and - in so doing - are demanding visceral responses from viewers. Drawing on a range of theories including affect theory, material feminism, skin studies, phenomenology and global art history, the book illuminates the various ways in which artists are harnessing the affective power of craft materials to address and cope with violence. Artists from Mexico, Africa, China, the Netherlands and Indigenous artists based in the unceded territory known as Canada are examined in relation to one another to illuminate the connections and differences across their bodies of work. Skin Crafts interrogates ongoing material violence towards women and marginalized others, and demonstrates the power of contemporary art to force viewers and scholars into facing their ethical responsibilities as human beings.

One of the odder (and uglier or cuter dependent on your point of view) styles of Roman pottery is clearly the face pot - literally pots with facial features attatched in relief. This study creates a type series for such pots in the western provinces of the empire, and in doing so attempts to answer questions such as - What were their origins, Who or what did they represent and how were they used. The study also examines the distribution and dissemination across Europe and investigates their links with the army.

In October 2004 over 70 delegates met in the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford for the second International Conference on Prehistoric Ceramics. The conference was the second major biannual conference to be organised by the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group. It is hoped that in the papers presented in this volume, readers will find much to stimulate the mind and their own directions of study even if the subject matter is not directly relevant to their own specific fields. This is the unifying beauty of ceramic research.

1876. With numerous woodcuts. From Chapter I: It is right, first, to explain that in this dissertation we shall make constant use of two or three words borrowed from foreign languages; one is botega or bottega, implying something between a workshop and an artist's studio, which it would be difficult to express by a single English word: another is fabrique, meaning the private establishment of a master potter of that day, the idea of which cannot be so well conveyed by factory, pottery, or studio (itself an imported word), all of which are therein combined and modified.

This classification of ceramics discovered in Roman Scythia is a revised and updated English translation of amonograph first published in Romanian in 1996. Its aim is to identify where possible local production centres as well as the main commercial trade routes with the Aegean, Mediterranean and Near East. This would help create a picture of the development of Scythia's economy during its centuries of Roman rule. Well-illustrated throughout with good quality photographs as well as figures, the book discusses each form and type in turn before considering the function of the vessels, the workshops, the sources of imported vessels. Two final interpretive essays examine Scythia's economic relations with the ceramic centres of the late Roman Empire and the nature and the pattern of pottery production and trade.

This catalogue and guide to Neolithic pottery in southern Greece is geared towards those working with such material. Based on assemblages from sixteen sites, including Corinth, Nemea, Lerna and the Franchthi Cave, the catalogue and large number of illustrations trace the development of the pottery sequence through the early, middle, late and final Neolithic. Based on Bill Phelps' thesis of 1975, this present volume has taken into account much more recent scholarship and finds, although it was not possible to revise the text fully.

The people behind the pots' are never far away from these thirteen papers which cover many aspects of the use and manufacture of prehistoric pottery. The papers, which are all in English, form the proceedings of a conference jointly organised by the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group and the Ceramics Petrology Group, held in Bradford in 2002. Subjects include: the introduction of pottery in the Somerset Levels during the early Neolithic; the use of ceramics in the Upper Palaeolithic; the potential role of ceramics for recognising evidence for the exploitation of fish; the use of pottery in Dutch Hunebedden; the technological evidence for continuity and change in the late Neolithic in southern France; Proto-Common Ware from Pompeii; Iron Age pottery from Little Paxton near Bedford; the provenance of prehistoric pottery in the East Midlands; new pots or new people? La Tene pottery from Celtic Germany; late prehistoric material from Iberia; organic residues in storage vessels from the Toumba Thessalonikis; new dates for Scottish Bronze Age cinerary urns.