A Ceramic History by Edmund de Waal

1. Clay and Process
2. Pioneering Definitions 1900-1940 The Studio Pot
3. European Influences: Lucie Rie and Hans Coper
4. Art Schools: A New Ceramics?
5. Teachers: Who Taught You Then?
6. Altogether Elsewhere: Cultural Diversity and the Studio Pot
7. Painterly Surfaces?
8. Does it Pour? Function in Studio Pottery
9. Necessary Pots? Unnecessary Pots?

1. Clay and Process

Do you remember 'The Potter's Wheel'? It was the interlude between television programmes or the stopgap when something went wrong. It was the seductive image of a formless lump of clay, a great wet inert mass being coaxed into control, and with confident speed a shape emerging from chaos. Hands and clay working together: it remains the basic grounding, our image of the potter at work. The resonances are manifold: Adam was created from the clay, clay artefacts are amongst the earliest known works to be made by humans. Fired clay, malleable earth made hard through its' interaction with fire, is all around us; geologically, historically, architecturally, part of our culture, part of our metaphorical language, one of the ways that we define ourselves.

The principle images of potters or of pottery that make up this landscape are often revealing. The image of the potter's hands throwing a pot on the wheel tells us that the process of making is of great value: that it's a kind of magic. Think of where we see demonstrations of potters at work-it's often at fairs or festivals: making is spectacle, drama, a sort of performance art that does not happen inside art galleries. It's immediate and involving: children in particular seem entranced by its' transformations. Think of where we come across potters: where is their natural habitat? The commonplace images are that potters make only in the country side, that potters are, in some sense, closer to their raw materials, or to their inspiration, outside cities. But where has this idea come from? These principle images also tell us what kinds of pots we think are interesting, what kinds of pottery we think are decorative or useful. Do we think there is a difference between pots made by hand or by machine, painstakingly or in great quantity?

Contemporary pots, ceramics that were made in this century, have lots of different lives, live in many different places. And where we find them can often radically alter our ways of understanding and approaching them. Are they shown with lots of room around them? Behind glass? Priced? They live in museums and in grand collections alongside the historical ceramics that inspired them. In this context we can look at them and see where particular ideas and influences came from, feel the currents of tradition and innovation ebbing and flowing into modern ceramic work. They live in craft galleries, exhibited and displayed alongside examples of modern craftwork made in metal, glass, wood or cloth. In this context we can see how makers of a similar generation approach making objects with different materials. There are often intriguing connections in approaches and attitudes to form or decoration. Contemporary ceramics live in fine art galleries, too, the neighbours of painting or sculpture: when we see them in this context we are told particular things about how we are to look at them, about their seriousness and value. We can find them in potter's studios or showrooms, of course, clean or dusty, stacked up or carefully tended. And then we find them in people's homes: on mantelpieces, in display cases, with flowers in, specially put aside, or part of everyday life on the draining board or dishwasher, outside in the garden or on the floor for the dog.

Ceramics cross people's lives in manifold ways, looked at, collected and used. And just as the people who make these pots don't obey any easy prescriptive image so the ways in which they talk about themselves is varied and rich. There are potters, and ceramicists, ceramists, artist-craftsmen, artists in clay, artists and makers. The myriad ways that people who use clay define themselves, the places and ways in which they show their work, and the history of pottery to which they ascribe themselves tell us that pots can be wonderful and beautiful, but also not perhaps as easy as they seemed at first sight.