Ceramics

Alternative Kilns & Firing Techniques: Raku * Saggar * Pit * Barrel (A Lark Ceramics Book)

Lehner's Encyclopedia of U.S. Marks on Pottery, Porcelain and Clay

Over 1,900 companies with over 8,000 marks, logos, and symbols divided equally among the old folk potters, studio potters, dinnerware manufacturers, distributors, and decoratorsfill this massive hardbound encyclopedia. No values. REVIEW: This thick hardcover book is packed with text and illustrations, the sheer measure of which admittedly took the author nearly a quarter century to research and compile. The book is an indispensable aid for properly identifying pottery, porcelain, and clay pieces. The various manufacturer listings contain paragraphs outlining the history of each company as well as interesting "insider" information. Both the novice and veteran collector can ID their merchandise quickly and easily.

Clay: A Studio Handbook

Drawing on more than 30 years of experience in ceramics, author Vince Pitelka has created the most practical, all-inclusive studio handbook for students, studio artists, educators and all those interested in the art of clay. The ten chapters in Clay: A Studio Handbook address the full range of ceramic processes, and bring a lifetime of ceramic knowledge directly into the hands of potters. Concerned about safe and efficient studio operation, Pitelka pays diligent attention to safety practices.
Nothing on earth is more essential, more organic, more basic than clay. Children play in the dirt. They make mudpies. Kids like that (if they're lucky) grow up to be potters like us. We have a freedom that's often hard to put into words a freedom to express joy, sorrow, hope, whimsy, and more in a medium that flows beneath our fingers like a river of creativity. When it dries, we coat it in the color of our own imagination and relinquish it to another of nature's most basic elements: fire. What comes out of the cooled kiln is a snapshot in time, a moment of history forever frozen in its place a beautiful piece in the present that could easily become an artifact of the past in a future we may never see.
As potters, as artists, we don't always see ourselves as playing a crucial role in history. But, then, neither did the first people who put hand to clay and made the first artistic expression of the human spirit in a form you could hold in your hand. Many of us work on instinct, on intuition beyond our time. But even with inspiration, the laws of physics still hold sway over the clay, and the more we know about its properties and potential, the farther we can take our work. There is such a vast amount of knowledge you need to excel as a ceramics artist, and no one head can hold all that information.
Professional potters, students, teachers even serious weekend potters will find this book is their single best resource for gaining, retaining, and expanding a solid understanding of clay. And after that, this book helps you move your work forward, with detailed descriptions of techniques you may have tried and abandoned, or techniques you've been yearning to try out but didn't have clear guidelines for.

Contemporary Lampworking: A Practical Guide to Shaping Glass in the Flame (Volume 1 and 2)

This 2-volume set is an outstanding teaching guide for lampworking glass. The sprial binding allows the books to lie flat while working. Included in the volumes are a glossary of terms and techniques and a reference for locating glass working tools. Hundreds of photos and step-by-step processes.

Ash Glazes

Ash glaze, as the name suggests, is a glaze derived from ashes. The earliest such glazes can be traced back to the Shang period in China (c. 1500 B.C.), and it is thought they were produced accidentally, the result of white-hot wood ash being carried through the kiln with the draft of the fire and settling onto the pots, where the searing white heat melted it to a glass. Three thousand years later, wood ash remains an important and immensely popular feature of pottery glaze making.

For the modern potter, the satisfaction of working with ash glazes comes from following an ancient tradition as well as from using materials that occur naturally. The results of different wood ashes often vary dramatically, making it possible to achieve a wide range of unique finishes. Even wood from the same species of tree garnered just miles apart can produce subtly different results.

In this second edition of Ash Glazes, Phil Rogers covers the history of ash glazes and proceeds to discuss the practicalities of collecting and testing wood ashes and transforming them into glazes. In the final portion of the book, he looks at the work of some leading international potters whose work is typified by the array of finishes that they achieve through their use of wood ash glazes. Images of their work offer an impressive display of the colors and techniques possible through this glazing technique.

Ash Glazes has been designed as an introduction and practical handbook to the subject. It will provide inspiration for working potters and delight for all those interested in contemporary ceramics.

Pâte de Verre and Kiln Casting of Glass

The Mosaic Artist's Handbook (Artist's Handbook Series)

Newly published titles in the growing “Artist’s Handbook” series are written for dedicated amateurs and can also be used and valued by professional artists. Each Artist’s Handbook has a sturdy hardcover binding so that it can be taken out to the field for guidance or used in the studio. Hidden spiral bindings keep pages lying flat so that artists can refer to them while working with their materials. Each title supplements textual instruction with 400-to-600 color illustrations showing artwork in various stages of completion. Readers will also find information on artists’ tools, techniques, color-mixing, creating special effects, and trouble-shooting to correct errors. The ancient art and craft of mosaics has become a popular modern medium for creating chic, stylish, and contemporary art objects and appointments for the home. This heavily illustrated and practical instruction guide shows how to create a wide array of beautiful things out of small pieces of colored glass, marble, ceramic, or stone. Readers will find detailed instructions for making a decorative floor panel, a Byzantine-style box, a geometric table top, and many other beautiful mosaic items. Hundreds of color diagrams and illustrations.

Introduction to Glass Science and Technology (Rcs Paperbacks Series)

An Introduction to Glass Science and Technology presents the fundamental topics in glass science and technology including glass formation, crystallisation and phase separation. A detailed discussion of glass structure models with emphasis on the oxygen balance model is also presented. Additional chapters discuss the most important properties of glasses, including physical, optical, electrical, chemical and mechanical properties, and new to this edition, water in glasses and melts. Glass technology is addressed in chapters dealing with the details of glass raw materials, melting and fining, and commercial glass production methods. This expanded second edition also includes new chapters on the compositions and properties of commercial glasses and thermal analysis of glasses and melts. Exercises are included at the end of the chapters.

This introductory text is ideal for undergraduates in materials science, ceramics or inorganic chemistry. It will also be useful to the engineer or scientist seeking basic knowledge of the formation, properties and production of glass.

Out of the Earth, into the Fire: A Course in Ceramic Materials for the Studio Potter

This second edition book written by Mimi Obstler studies glazes by examining the connection between the raw materials of the earth and the surface of a ceramic form. This second edition includes updated text, revised and expanded appendixes, plus 50 color photos to make this an even more valuable resource for potters who want to develop a true mastery of their materials.

Introduction to Ceramics, 2nd Edition