From the introduction of woodblock printing in China to the development of copper-plate engraving in Europe, the print medium has been used around the world to circulate knowledge. Ceramic artists across time and cultures have adapted these graphic sources as painted or transfer-printed images applied onto glazed or unglazed surfaces to express political and social issues including propaganda, self-promotion, piety, gender, national and regional identities. Long before photography, printers also included pots in engravings or other two-dimensional techniques which have broadened scholarship and encouraged debate. Pots, Prints and Politics examines how European and Asian ceramics traditionally associated with the domestic sphere have been used by potters to challenge convention and tackle serious issues from the 14th to the 20th century. Using the British Museum's world-renowned ceramics and prints collections as a base, the authors have challenged and interrogated a variety of ceramic objects - from teapots to chamber pots - to discover new meanings that are as relevant today as they were when they were first conceived.

In "Peasants, Warriors, and Wives," Keith Moxey examines woodcut images from the German Reformation that have often been ignored as a crude and inferior form of artistic production. In this richly illustrated study, Moxey argues that while they may not satisfy received notions of "art," they nevertheless constitute an important dimension of the visual culture of the period. Far from being manifestations of universal public opinion, as a cursory acquaintance with their subject matter might suggest, such prints were the means by which the reformed attitudes of the middle and upper classes were disseminated to a broad popular audience.

American artist Sam Francis (1923-1994) brought vivid colour and emotional intensity to Abstract Expressionism. He was described as the "most sensuous and sensitive painter of his generation" by former Guggenheim Museum director James Johnson Sweeney, and curator Howard Fox called him "one of the acknowledged masters of late-modern art." Francis's works, whether intimate or monumental in scale, make indelible impressions; the intention of the artist was to make them felt as much as seen. At the age of twenty, Francis was hospitalised for spinal tuberculosis and spent three years virtually immobilised in a body cast. For physical therapy he was given a set of watercolours, and, as he described it, he painted his way back to life. The exuberant colour and expression in his paintings celebrated his survival; his five-decade career was an energetic visual and theoretical exploration that took him around the world. Francis' idiosyncratic painting practices have long been the subject of speculation and debate among conservators and art historians. Presented here for the first time in this volume are the results of an in-depth scientific study of more than forty paintings from the late 1940s to early 1990s, which reveal new discoveries about his creative process, inventive techniques, and specially formulated paints and binders. The data provides a key to the complicated evolution of the artist's work and informs original art historical interpretations.