This book celebrates 20 years of the establishment of the National Museum of Australian Pottery and contains full colour photographs, histories and stories of 27 rare and important pieces in the collection acquired over the past 36 years.

Files contain material such as art exhibition catalogues, invitations, press clippings, media releases and/or other ephemeral items relating to Australian artists and galleries, where there are more than three artists exhibiting at the one exhibition. Other material may be collected under individual artists in the Australian Artists sequence.

This book features a large true colour photograph of each of the 53 water filters in the Museum's collection which were produced by 16 different potters covering the period from 1866 to 1930. Many potteries around Australia made water filters during this period that they sold to the public themselves, or for other firms such as ironmongers and filter sellers who sold them through their own stores or agents. Each filter is accompanied by detailed information about the filter and the ironmonger or filter seller for whom it was made, along with advertisements from the period, which makes interesting reading.

What motivates and inspires the finest porcelain artists working today? Forty internationally celebrated masters reveal their secrets, explaining just how they work with this incredibly demanding ceramic material, prized for its pristine beauty. Pure white and wonderfully delicate, porcelain is what clay potters usually graduate to only after years of honing their skills. This diverse collection showcases the results of that dedication, and the versatility is simply breathtaking: Claire Curneen presents highly emotive, tactile figurative forms. Edmund de Waal’s elegant celadon site-specific vessel installations are renowned for their meditative presence. Harlan House’s finely carved vessels take inspiration from nature's organic forms, while Bodil Manz's eggshell porcelain cylinders are so translucent that you can sometimes discern light and shadow passing through the walls of his pots.

This fully referenced book contains the latest research information along with 65 colour photographs of surviving pottery pieces and 17 pipes produced by the convict potters and smoking pipe makers from 1800 to 1850. Their amazing and sometimes tragic stories makes fascinating reading.