"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 MagazineIn 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.

Lavishly illustrated throughout with over 400 full colour images

AcknowledgementsPrologue: A History in ShardsCHAPTER 1. WHAT CERAMIC IS1. Fundamentals2. Stuff of the Earth3. The Art of Heat4. The Potter5. Nomenclature and Culture6. The Ceramic Continuum7. Transformers: Classicism, Islam, China, and the Modern8. The Discipline9. Industry and the Levels of Production10. Ubiquity: The Plastic of the Ancient World11. Telling Stories12. Civilisation, Power, and Domestic Life13. Conclusion: Western CeramicCHAPTER 2: THE VALUE OF THE GREEK POTTER1. The World in Black and Red2. Positioning the Pots3. The Earlier Greek World4. Reducing Iron and Oxygen5. Who Were These People?6. Secular Life7. Anachronism, the Value, and the Price of Things8. The Value and the Price of Things9. Conclusion: The Spread of Red and BlackCHAPTER 3: ROME AND THE ARRIVAL OF THE MEDIEVAL WORLD1. The Feel of Roman Pots2. Red Gloss3. The Pots of Empire4. Greece, Rome, and the Classical Idea5. Standardisation6. Dark, Light, an End and a Beginning7. Europe: The Coarse and the Local8. Revivalism and the Vernacular9. Conclusion: The Classical HeritageCHAPTER 4: RENAISSANCES OF TIN1. The Chemistry of Islam2. Islam and Ceramic History3. The Pottery Revolution4. Islam in Europe5. Renaissance Pots6. Colour, Line and Life7. Secular Life8. Pottery and Painting9. Quantity, Quality, and Status10. The Arrival of the Meal11. Sculptural Form12. Italian Potters and Potteries13. Renaissances14. Conclusion: a European EthosCHAPTER 5: THE ENLIGHTENED REIGN OF WHITE1. Chinese Pots2. Technology, Style, Confidence3. Porcelain City4. China in Europe5. The Quest for a European Porcelain6. The Porcelain Explosion7. Blue, White, War, and Peace8. Delftware9. Frivolity and Melancholy: the Figurine Reinvented10. The Rise of Staffordshire11. Conclusion: Modern WhitenessCHAPTER 6: THE NATURAL AND THE INDIVIDUAL: LEAD, SLIP, STONE, SALT1. History, the Collective, and the Individual2. The Renaissance Man3. The Palissystes4. The Salt Renaissance5. Prose and Poetry6. The Nature of Slip7. Configuring Life8. The Arrival of America9. Conclusion: The Ingredients of ModernityCHAPTER 7: THE ACCELERATION OF STYLE AND THE ARRIVAL OF THE MODERN1. Decoration, Complication, and Anxiety2. The Last Transformer: Another Modernity3. Institutionalisation4. Exhibitions5. Ugliness and the Era6. The Invention of Style7. Design Reform and the Ingredients of Modern Design8. The Meaning of Majolica9. The Vortex of Large-scale Production10. The Republic of Tile11. Ceramic Hell12. Gender13. Exoticism14. The Designer15. The Art Nouveau style16. Conclusion: High Eclecticism to Art NouveauCHAPTER 8: THE STUDIO ARRIVES1. A Modern Place2. Art Pottery3. Defining Art4. The Invention of Craft5. The Completeness of Existence6. The Artist-potter7. Émigrés8. Art Deco9. The International Style10. Mid-century Modern11. Potters and Painters12. Conclusion: A World is FormedCHAPTER 9: THE CREATIVE EXPLOSION1. Thunderous Emotion2. Another Modernity3. The World of Funk4. Conceptualism and Minimalism5. A New Arena6. New American Symbolism7. The Ceramic Landscape8. Abstract Vessels9. Postmodernism10. The New Ornamentalism11. Conclusion: The Potter NowPostscript: Attica to CaliforniaNotesBibliographyIndexAbout the Author