Frederick L. Olsen’s practical guide to the construction, maintenance, and repair of kilns is now bigger and more comprehensive than ever. Olsen’s bible for kiln builders now includes chapters on multidirectional and specialty kilns, fired in place kilns for large scale ceramic sculptures, and offers a few suggestions on what kilns may look like in the future. The Kiln Book covers the principles of efficient design, building methods, refractory materials, bricklaying procedures and instructions, fuels and firing systems, arches, flues, electric elements, and general safety. Olsen includes plans for firebox systems; coal, oil-drip, forced-oil burners; butane, propane, and natural gas burners; and installation of pressure regulators and safety shut-off controls. The complete guide on how to design and build any size, shape kiln for the potter. About the Author Frederick L. Olsen has been a ceramic artist for over sixty years and is very well known as a kiln builder. He often demonstrates kiln building at conferences and workshops around the world and is generally regarded as the authority on kilns. As a young ceramist, he had the good fortune to study under National Treasure ceramic artist Tomimoto Kenkichi and Kondo Yuzo in Japan for two and a half years. Since that time, he has traveled the world doing his ceramics and studying and building kilns of all shapes and sizes. He is well known for his Fastfire wood kiln designs. He has designed and patented the Olsen kiln kits, which have been sold worldwide. His first book, The Kiln Book, was published in 1973, and it has been continually revised and expanded ever since.

Emblems—pictorial designs with accompanying mottoes and epigrams— helped to shape virtually every form of verbal and visual communication in the West during the sixteenth and seventh centuries. A recent re-awakening of scholarly interest in the emblem has brought to light the difficulty of locating and consulting the unorganized mass of available material. Recognizing the need for a large-scale systematic index to the emblem, the editor organized a symposium at McGill University to discuss the possibilities of preparing such an index. The resulting papers by six symposium participants— Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Peter M. Daly, Peter Erb, G. Richard Dimler, Lorelei Robins, and Alan Young—contribute to our knowledge of the emblems of Peacham and Corrozet, the Dutch love emblems, the Jesuit emblem, and emblems used in books of mediation. The essays also discuss the problems and procedures involved in preparing an Index Emblematicus, a work which would serve scholars working in the fields of literature, art, culture, religion, history, and the languages. The volume is richly illustrated with over forty emblem reproductions.