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Best known as one of the most widely used industrial ceramic techniques, slipcasting has become increasingly attractive to individual artists and craftspersons. Slip, a water and clay solution, is poured into porous molds. As the mold absorbs water from the slip, a layer of clay forms a cast. The excess slip is removed from the mold and the cast is stiffened, removed, dried, and fired in a kiln. Since the molds can be based on anything from delicate sculpture to found objects, slipcasting frees artists from the constraints of other ceramic techniques while allowing them to create multiples...

Kiln-forming as a technique to shape glass was in use for centuries before the Romans developed glassblowing, which has since become the more widely used method. Today, modern glass artists are rediscovering the versatility of kiln forming and are using the technique to produce works of great beauty and strength. In this book, Keith Cummings reviews the history of kiln forming and discusses pertinent materials and methods, such as slumping and fusing. The work of an international group of artists is used to illustrate the text.

A remarkable diversity of techniques are used to treat the ceramic surface. Matthias Ostermann presents an exploration of the ceramic surface--focusing on the vessel and platter--that includes the nonfunctional, the metaphoric, the narrative, and even the sculptural. Through an examination of the works of 200 ceramicists from around the world, he provides a broad overview of contemporary techniques and approaches.

Ostermann covers a wide variety of techniques for making, decorating, and firing, as well as the full spectrum of clays and firing temperatures. Each image is accompanied...

Emmanuel Cooper's classic guide to making glazes is now available in a thoroughly revised new edition. Cooper provides potters with an introductory section on glaze materials, coloring, mixing, and the application of glazes, as well as information on health and safety issues. This essential guide also features over 400 recipes ranging from opaque, matte, and transparent glazes to crystalline and black iron glazes, organized according to their varying temperature ranges.

The Jersey Shore is many things to many people. It is 127 miles of sand and surf, a sanctuary of untamed marshlands and endless dunes, a home to kitschy boardwalks, quirky shops, pulsing casinos, and countless examples of offbeat culture. But, above all, it is a powerful repository of nostalgia. The local historical societies are filled with photographs and memoirs describing what has been lost, landmarks razed, houses demolished, and beaches terminally eroded. Sometimes it seems that the inexorable drive of development is well on its way to eradicating all traces of the fabulous,...

In an evocative blending of words and images, painter-photographer Carol Burch-Brown and poet David Rigsbee offer a depiction of trailers and their inhabitants. The understated imagery of Burch-Brown's 48 photos implies rather than proclaims the living conditions of these mobile-home dwellers, while Rigsbee's meditative, autobiographical essay parallels and illuminates the subjects and chronicles family histories with trailers.

With a Foreword by William Harris

When Europeans encountered them, the Catawba Indians were living along the river and throughout the valley that carries their name near the present North Carolina-South Carolina border. Archaeologists later collected and identified categories of pottery types belonging to the historic Catawba and extrapolated an association with their protohistoric and prehistoric predecessors.

In this volume, Thomas Blumer traces the construction techniques of those documented ceramics to the lineage of their probable present-day master potters or, in other...

A synthesis of research on earthenware technologies of the Late Archaic Period in the southeastern U.S.

Information on social groups and boundaries, and on interaction between groups, burgeons when pottery appears on the social landscape of the Southeast in the Late Archaic period (ca. 5000-3000 years ago). This volume provides a broad, comparative review of current data from "first potteries" of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains and in the lower Mississippi River Valley, and it presents research that expands our understanding of how pottery functioned in its earliest...