"Full of surprises [and] evocative." The Spectator "Passionately written." Apollo "An extraordinary accomplishment." Edmund de Waal "Monumental." Times Literary Supplement "An epic reshaping of ceramic art." Crafts "An important book." The Arts Society Magazine In his major new history, Paul Greenhalgh tells the story of ceramics as a story of human civilisation, from the Ancient Greeks to the present day. As a core craft technology, pottery has underpinned domesticity, business, religion, recreation, architecture, and art for millennia. Indeed, the history of ceramics parallels the development of human society. This fascinating and very human history traces the story of ceramic art and industry from the Ancient Greeks to the Romans and the medieval world; Islamic ceramic cultures and their influence on the Italian Renaissance; Chinese and European porcelain production; modernity and Art Nouveau; the rise of the studio potter, Art Deco, International Style and Mid-Century Modern, and finally, the contemporary explosion of ceramic making and the postmodern potter. Interwoven in this journey through time and place is the story of the pots themselves, the culture of the ceramics, and their character and meaning. Ceramics have had a presence in virtually every country and historical period, and have worked as a commodity servicing every social class. They are omnipresent: a ubiquitous art. Ceramic culture is a clear, unique, definable thing, and has an internal logic that holds it together through millennia. Hence ceramics is the most peculiar and extraordinary of all the arts. At once cheap, expensive, elite, plebeian, high-tech, low-tech, exotic, eccentric, comic, tragic, spiritual, and secular, it has revealed itself to be as fluid as the mud it is made from. Ceramics are the very stuff of how civilized life was, and is, led. This then is the story of human society's most surprising core causes and effects.

A new examination of the history of ceramic art, spanning ancient to modern times, emphasizing its traditions, materials, and methods of making Concise but comprehensive, Ceramic Art brings together the voices of art historians, conservators, and artists to tell the history of making art from fired clay. The story spans history and continents, examining the global traditions of ceramists that range from pre-Columbian Peruvian artisans to contemporary African studio potters. The volume shows how human need gave rise to multiple traditions in earthenware, stoneware, porcelain, glaze, and surface decoration from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. Essays describe the core materials and practice of ceramics, followed by consideration of its production, consumption, and use. Throughout, the focus is on the power of materials and the role conservation plays in the afterlife of a ceramic object. An accessible introduction to an ancient practice, Ceramic Art offers new ways of thinking about the broader forces that have shaped the traditions of the medium.

Presents over 20 ceramic artists and the techniques they used to create innovative forming, unusual surfaces, spectacular glazing and more.

Papanikola-Bakirtzis shows how the items found at Serres allow for detailed reconstruction of the processes used by Late Byzantine potters. Charalambos Bakirtzis provides an overview of the cultural setting in which Serres pottery was made.