This book is the first to describe in detail a community of potters working for the Jagannatha Temple in Puri. As a pilgrimage centre of national importance, the temple requires earthenware in great quantities for the creation and distribution of the sacred food, an integral feature of daily ritual and pilgrimage. This study observes the potters' technical prowess, sustained by devotion, and the accompanying DVD shows the artisans at work, demonstrating their skills and products. ,

An account of the architecture, sculpture, paintings and associated festivals of the great Vaisṇava shrine of Jagannatha at Puri in Orissa, on the east coast of India, together with a new analysis of the origin of the icons of the Triad.

This book is the first to describe in detail a community of potters working for the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, and to explore how the role of temple servant affects the potters' understanding of their work and of themselves. As a pilgrimage centre of national importance, supported by the patronage of successive regional dynasties and by fervent popular belief, the Jagannatha Temple requires earthenware in great quantities for the creation and distribution of the sacred food that is an integral feature of daily ritual and pilgrimage. Three hundred potters participate as temple servants in maintaining the temple's ritual cycle by performing their divinely assigned task. This study, conducted in 1979-1981, observes the potters' technical prowess, sustained by devotion, but also examines the tensions within their relationships to more powerful temple servants and authorities. The role of the potter as temple servant is at once glorious, as demonstrated by texts and personal interpretations of the potters' divinely-appointed service, and pathetic, as shown in the brutality of caste-based hierarchy and cash-based exchange penetrating the modern temple's daily operations.

This book is the first to describe in detail a community of potters working for the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, and to explore how the role of temple servant affects the potters' understanding of their work and of themselves. As a pilgrimage centre of national importance, supported by the patronage of successive regional dynasties and by fervent popular belief, the Jagannatha Temple requires earthenware in great quantities for the creation and distribution of the sacred food that is an integral feature of daily ritual and pilgrimage. Three hundred potters participate as temple servants in maintaining the temple's ritual cycle by performing their divinely assigned task. This study, conducted in 1979-1981, observes the potters' technical prowess, sustained by devotion, but also examines the tensions within their relationships to more powerful temple servants and authorities. The role of the potter as temple servant is at once glorious, as demonstrated by texts and personal interpretations of the potters' divinely-appointed service, and pathetic, as shown in the brutality of caste-based hierarchy and cash-based exchange penetrating the modern temple's daily operations.

Down Through The Ages, Clay Has Been The Perfect Medium For Indian Creativity. Its Myriad Shapes And Styles Range From The Miniscule To The Gigantic, From Realistic To Abstract, From Purely Practical To Utterly Fantastic. India S One Million Potters Mor

This book is the first to describe in detail a community of potters working for the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, and to explore how the role of temple servant affects the potters' understanding of their work and of themselves. As a pilgrimage centre of national importance, supported by the patronage of successive regional dynasties and by fervent popular belief, the Jagannatha Temple requires earthenware in great quantities for the creation and distribution of the sacred food that is an integral feature of daily ritual and pilgrimage. Three hundred potters participate as temple servants in maintaining the temple's ritual cycle by performing their divinely assigned task. This study, conducted in 1979-1981, observes the potters' technical prowess, sustained by devotion, but also examines the tensions within their relationships to more powerful temple servants and authorities. The role of the potter as temple servant is at once glorious, as demonstrated by texts and personal interpretations of the potters' divinely-appointed service, and pathetic, as shown in the brutality of caste-based hierarchy and cash-based exchange penetrating the modern temple's daily operations.

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.