Ceramic, Art and Civilisation

AcknowledgementsPrologue: A History in ShardsCHAPTER 1. WHAT CERAMIC IS1. Fundamentals2. Stuff of the Earth3. The Art of Heat4. The Potter5. Nomenclature and Culture6. The Ceramic Continuum7. Transformers: Classicism, Islam, China, and the Modern8. The Discipline9. Industry and the Levels of Production10. Ubiquity: The Plastic of the Ancient World11. Telling Stories12. Civilisation, Power, and Domestic Life13. Conclusion: Western CeramicCHAPTER 2: THE VALUE OF THE GREEK POTTER1. The World in Black and Red2. Positioning the Pots3. The Earlier Greek World4. Reducing Iron and Oxygen5. Who Were These People?6. Secular Life7. Anachronism, the Value, and the Price of Things8. The Value and the Price of Things9. Conclusion: The Spread of Red and BlackCHAPTER 3: ROME AND THE ARRIVAL OF THE MEDIEVAL WORLD1. The Feel of Roman Pots2. Red Gloss3. The Pots of Empire4. Greece, Rome, and the Classical Idea5. Standardisation6. Dark, Light, an End and a Beginning7. Europe: The Coarse and the Local8. Revivalism and the Vernacular9. Conclusion: The Classical HeritageCHAPTER 4: RENAISSANCES OF TIN1. The Chemistry of Islam2. Islam and Ceramic History3. The Pottery Revolution4. Islam in Europe5. Renaissance Pots6. Colour, Line and Life7. Secular Life8. Pottery and Painting9. Quantity, Quality, and Status10. The Arrival of the Meal11. Sculptural Form12. Italian Potters and Potteries13. Renaissances14. Conclusion: a European EthosCHAPTER 5: THE ENLIGHTENED REIGN OF WHITE1. Chinese Pots2. Technology, Style, Confidence3. Porcelain City4. China in Europe5. The Quest for a European Porcelain6. The Porcelain Explosion7. Blue, White, War, and Peace8. Delftware9. Frivolity and Melancholy: the Figurine Reinvented10. The Rise of Staffordshire11. Conclusion: Modern WhitenessCHAPTER 6: THE NATURAL AND THE INDIVIDUAL: LEAD, SLIP, STONE, SALT1. History, the Collective, and the Individual2. The Renaissance Man3. The Palissystes4. The Salt Renaissance5. Prose and Poetry6. The Nature of Slip7. Configuring

Paul Greenhalgh is internationally renowned as an historian of art and design and the decorative arts. For the last decade he has been Director of the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia, UK, and Professor of Art History and Museum Strategy there. Prior to this, he held a number of senior roles in museum and university life in a number of countries, including Head of Research at the V&A Museum, London, Director and President of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art and Design in Washington DC, USA, and President of NSCAD University, Canada. He has published widely on the visual arts, and curated and taught in leading organisations all over the world. He originally trained as a painter before becoming an art historian. Early in his teaching career, he encountered ceramic, which eventually led to Ceramic, Art and Civilisation (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2021).

Greenhalgh describes the fluctuating status of pots and potters throughout history in connection with the technical development of ceramic as an industry and the emergence of the artist potter. [He] takes us from ancient Greece to the wilder shores of Conceptual Art, Post-Modernism and Californian Funk. Full of surprises [and] provocative Jane Rye, The Spectator