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Spectators at the sides of narrative vase paintings have long been at the margins of scholarship, but a study of their appearance shows that they provide a model for the ancient viewing experience. They also reflect social and gender roles in archaic Athens. This study explores the phenomenon of spectators through a database built from a census of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, which reveals that the figures flourished in Athenian vase painting during the last two-thirds of the sixth century BCE...

For 100 years, Steuben glass has represented the epitome of American crystal. This volume, revised and updated to celebrate Steuben's centenary, traces the company's history. Mary Jean Madigan provides an illustrated identification guide to virtually all Steuben pieces made since 1933, from one-of-a-kind museum objects to functional items such as glasses, candlesticks, bowls and vases.

Launched in 2002, Swarovski Crystal Palace is a shimmering series of sculptural pieces that had its debut at the Milan Furniture Fair. This ongoing forum has commissioned such noteworthy talents as Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid and Ross Lovegrove to develop original artworks in crystal. Through a brief history of Swarovski crystal we learn of its refined tradition as well as its bold vision for the future. Along the way, we delve deeper into the Crystal Palace designers, with interviews and articles on t...

Although the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is well known for its extensive holdings of Chinese ceramics, many of the outstanding pieces in the collection have received little or no attention in print. This book remedies that omission. Designed for the general reader, it offers a selection of 78 objects, beautifully photographed in full color, with individual entries focusing on the aesthetic experiece they evoke and the cultural context that produced them. Featuring an essay on the history of the...

This practical handbook shows how to combine other materials with ceramics. Once a ceramic piece is finished it can be embellished or added to with a wooden or metal handle, glass stopper, or plastic or resin knob. Extra pieces can be glued on such as feathers, recycled materials (old tins etc.) or other bits of ceramic. Ceramics and Mixed Media examines the best methods of combining and fitting these materials together - including some inside the kiln. It covers the practicalities and specific...

Rookwood Pottery of Cincinnati-the largest, longest-lasting, and arguably most important American Art Pottery-reflected the country's cultural and commercial milieux in the production, marketing, and consumption of its own products. Rookwood and the Industry of Art is a critical appreciation of Rookwood's rise to its commercial pinnacle, assessing the labor practices and production of ceramic ware as a way to explore anxiety about women's roles outside the home as well as about industrialization...

"Eden Revisited is the first full-scale monograph presenting a survey of one of America's most ingenious ceramic artists, Kurt Weiser. Shaped from his influential childhood experiences during the baby boom years, the artist demonstrated an early disposition for the visual arts, encouraged by his parents and teachers. While attending the Kansas City Art Institute, he became a protege of Ken Ferguson, a highly acclaimed ceramist and educator who quickly recognized Weiser's abilities and determinat...

In Palace Ware Across the Neo-Assyrian Imperial Landscape, Alice Hunt investigates the social and symbolic meaning of Palace Ware by its cultural audience in the Neo-Assyrian central and annexed provinces, and the unincorporated territories, including buffer zones and vassal states. Traditionally, Palace Ware has been equated with imperial identity. By understanding these vessels as a vehicle through which interregional and intercultural relationships were negotiated and maintained she reveals t...

How does a craft reinvent itself as `traditional' following cultural, social and political upheaval? In the township of Dingshu, Jiangsu province of China, artisans produce zisha or Yixing teapots that have been highly valued for centuries. Yet in twentieth-century socialist imagination, handicrafts were an anomaly in a modern society. The Maoist government had clear ambitions to transform the country by industrialization, replacing craft with mechanized methods of production. Four decades later...

Now in its eleventh year of publication, Ceramics in America is considered the journal of record for historical ceramic scholarship in the American context. Included in 2011 edition: *The Chinese Scholar Pattern: Style, Merchant Identity, and the English Imagination-Sarah Fayen Scarlett *Digging Up Salem's Golden Age: Ceramic Use among the Merchant Class-George Schwartz *Ceramic Treasures among Seventeenth-Century Trash: A 1660s Cellar Deposit-Al Luckenbach and John E. Kille *The Stoneware Yea...

The magical qualities of stained glass have an enduring appeal, but church windows tend to be ignored as a form of creative and artistic expression. How to Look at Stained Glass is a fresh, unstuffy guide, which explores the medium by themes, patterns, designs, and effects. Using an A-Z format to reveal a multitude of fascinating details - all the way from apples to zig-zags – it makes looking at gloriously colourful, artistically important windows entertaining and rewarding. This layman’s guid...

Although Scottish pottery may be traced back over many centuries, it was not until the mid eighteenth century that it became an important element in the national economy. Since the mid twentieth century there has been considerable study of the Scottish pottery industry, revealing the diversification of production and showing that exports and innovation were more significant than previously thought. Scottish pottery is widely recognised as having its own distinctive characters and in this book ma...

Blue and White: Early Japanese Export Ware, as an exhibition and publication, is of special interest as it permits comparisons between blue and white wares of similar design from the Orient and Europe, and calls attention to the vital function of the European maritime nations, particularly Portugal and Holland, in the transmission of aesthetic concepts between East and West. Clear examples of cross-cultural aesthetic exchanges are always fascinating, especially when they can be corroborated by h...