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?

9. Necessary Pots? Unnecessary Pots?

There is a plethora of different things being made out of clay at the moment. There always have been. That is, of course, the essential quality of the material: its ability to be transformed into a myriad of wildly contrasting objects. It is a material that has been used to imitate metal, leather, glass and cloth. It is a material that has crossed all social strata and been used as a focus in arcane rituals and tea-ceremonies. Clay has been the centre of the debate about what relationship a maker should have to raw materials - whether there is such a thing as 'Truth to Materials.' The studio pottery movement is only a small part of great movements and changes in art and culture, but the pots that have been made as part of it or in reaction to it can ask us key questions. Not just if we like the look of something, not just if it brings us pleasure, though both these things are under rated, but what our relationship with things is actually about.

Are they necessary or unnecessary?