A practical introduction to every aspect of handling and firing this unique clay. Discusses preparation, storage, and reclamation, and techniques for handbuilding and modeling, molding, and decoration. Other topics covered include kiln packing and firing, and the coloring, mixing, and application of glazes, lusters, and enamels. Illustrated with color and bandw photos. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Provides an invaluable and very accessible addition to existing biographic sources and references, not least because of the supporting biographies of major writers and the historical and cultural notes provided.

Featuring over 140 stunning photographs, this Japan travel pictorial captures all the beauty and high culture of Japan. Japan has fascinated foreign visitors and observers for centuries. Although Columbus did not find fables Zipang and its troves of gold he sought, countless sojourners in Japan — ranging from 16th century missionaries to 20th century backpackers with a yen for Zen — have had eye opening encounters with this land of contrasts. Physically one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and a civilization in its own right, Japan remains something of an enigma to outsiders. Futuristic visions seem to bloom effortlessly from time-honored traditions. This compelling photographic study by one of the world’s leading photographers will take you from country roads to the skyscrapers of its amoebae-like megacities, from meditation-inducing rock gardens to the other-worldly frenzy of communal festivals. Through initiation into their psychology, mores, and religious and artistic sentiments, you’ll learn something of what it means to be Japanese

DANIEL JOHNSTON, raised on a farm in Randolph County, returned from Thailand with a new way to make monumental pots. Back home in North Carolina, he built a log shop and a whale of a kiln for wood-firing. Then he set out to create beautiful pots, grand in scale, graceful in form, and burned bright in a blend of ash and salt. With mastery achieved and apprentices to teach, Daniel Johnston turned his brain to massive installations. First, he made a hundred large jars and lined them along the rough road that runs past his shop and kiln. Next, he arranged curving clusters of big pots inside pine frames, slatted like corn cribs, to separate them from the slick interiors of four fine galleries in succession. Then, in concluding the second phase of his professional career, Daniel Johnston built an open-air installation on the grounds around the North Carolina Museum of Art, where 178 handmade, wood-fired columns march across a slope in a straight line, 350 feet in length, that dips and lifts with the heave while the tops of the pots maintain a level horizon. In 2000, when he was still Mark Hewitt's apprentice, Daniel Johnston met Henry Glassie, who has done fieldwork on ceramic traditions in the United States, Brazil, Italy, Turkey, Bangladesh, China, and Japan. Over the years, during a steady stream of intimate interviews, Glassie gathered the understanding that enabled him to compose this portrait of Daniel Johnston, a young artist who makes great pots in the eastern Piedmont of North Carolina.

A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Kingdom of Beauty shows that the discovery of mingei (folk art) by Japanese intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s was central to the complex process by which Japan became both a modern nation and an imperial world power. Kim Brandt’s account of the mingei movement locates its origins in colonial Korea, where middle-class Japanese artists and collectors discovered that imperialism offered them special opportunities to amass art objects and gain social, cultural, and even political influence. Later, mingei enthusiasts worked with (and against) other groups—such as state officials, fascist ideologues, rival folk art organizations, local artisans, newspaper and magazine editors, and department store managers—to promote their own vision of beautiful prosperity for Japan, Asia, and indeed the world. In tracing the history of mingei activism, Brandt considers not only Yanagi Muneyoshi, Hamada Shōji, Kawai Kanjirō, and other well-known leaders of the folk art movement but also the often overlooked networks of provincial intellectuals, craftspeople, marketers, and shoppers who were just as important to its success. The result of their collective efforts, she makes clear, was the transformation of a once-obscure category of pre-industrial rural artifacts into an icon of modern national style.

The world's most comprehensive, well documented, and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographic index. 28 photographs and illustrations - mostly color. Free of charge in digital PDF format.