Global Clay

John A. Burrison

Description

For over 25,000 years, humans across the globe have shaped, decorated, and fired clay. Despite great differences in location and time, universal themes appear in the world's ceramic traditions, including religious influences, human and animal representations, and mortuary pottery. In Global Clay: Themes in World Ceramic Traditions, noted pottery scholar John A. Burrison explores the recurring artistic themes that tie humanity together, explaining how and why those themes appear again and again in worldwide ceramic traditions. The book is richly illustrated with over 200 full-color, cross-cultural illustrations of ceramics from prehistory to the present. Providing an introduction to different styles of folk pottery, extensive suggestions for further reading, and reflections on the future of traditional pottery around the world, Global Clay is sure to become a classic for all who love art and pottery and all who are intrigued by the human commonalities revealed through art.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. International Folk Pottery: A Brief Primer
2. Monuments to Clay: Public Markers of Craft Identity
3. The Human Image: Face Jugs and Other People-Pots
4. The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Cross-Cultural Imitations
5. A Clay Menagerie: The Animal World in Ceramics
6. Idols with Feet of Clay: Ceramics and World Religions
7. Returning to Clay: Death and the Afterlife
8. The Last Folk Potters?: Prognosis for the Future
Suggested Reading
Index

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Antiques
• Ceramics
• Folclore
• Reference
• Antique
• Pottery
• Ceramic
• Art
• Clay
• Tradition
• Folklore

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 04 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253035349
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 32 Mo

Extrait

GLOBAL CLAY
GLOBAL
THEMES IN WORLD CERAMIC TRADITIONS
CLAY
J OHN A. B URRISON
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by John A. Burrison
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in China
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03188-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-03189-1 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
Back jacket photos, top row from left to right:
Blue-glazed faience hippopotamus figure from the tomb of steward Senbi II at Meir, Upper Egypt, ca. 1900 BCE . Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, www.metmuseum.org .
Soft-paste porcelain pilgrim flask, Medici Porcelain Factory, Florence, Tuscany, Italy, 1575-1587. Collection of J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, www.getty.edu .
Faience plate in the Ottoman style of Iznik, Turkey, by Joseph-Th odore Deck, Paris, France, ca. 1870. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, www.metmuseum.org .
Bottom row from left to right:
Terracotta pair thought to be Greek fertility goddesses Demeter and her daughter Persephone, Myrina, Asia Minor, ca. 100 BCE . Collection of British Museum. London, www.britishmuseum.org . Photograph: Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
Five-claw dragon chasing flaming pearl (now broken), glazed tiles on Nine Dragon screen wall facing Gate of Imperial Supremacy, Forbidden City, Beijing, China, erected in the early 1770s during reign of the Qianlong Emperor. Photograph: Richard Fisher, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Porcelain rabbit okimono , Mikawachi, Hirado, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, 2nd half of 19th century. Collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, www.lacma.org .
Front jacket flap photo:
Fritware plate, Iznik, Turkey, 1535-1545. Collection of Mus e du Louvre, Paris, France. Photograph: Sailko, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
To the memory of Samuel P. Bayard and MacEdward Leach, my mentors, who introduced me to academic folklore study and gave me an international perspective on the subject .
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 | International Folk Pottery A Brief Primer
2 | Monuments to Clay Public Markers of Craft Identity
3 | The Sincerest Form of Flattery Cross-Cultural Imitations
4 | The Human Image Face Jugs and Other People Pots
5 | A Clay Menagerie The Animal World in Ceramics
6 | Idols with Feet of Clay Ceramics and World Religions
7 | Returning to Clay Death and the Afterlife
8 | Living Traditions Today Continuity, Change, Revival
Suggested Reading
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T HIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE GENEROSITY of institutions and individuals making their images available for use as illustrations here. I gratefully acknowledge and thank the following:
Museums
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (via Wikimedia Commons); the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (via Wikimedia Commons); York Art Gallery, York, England (via Wikimedia Commons); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Jewish Museum, New York City; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the David Collection, Copenhagen; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent; UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta; Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware; Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts/Old Salem Museums and Gardens, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, Columbia; and the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama. The first seven of these museums now make high-resolution images from their collections available gratis as participation in OASC (Open Access for Scholarly Content), Creative Commons, and the like, while the Victoria and Albert Museum permits free use of its images for academic publications; the others kindly granted permissions and supplied images at my request.
Other Institutions
Wikimedia Commons (a tremendously useful online visual database affiliated with Wikipedia); Flickr.com (for Creative Commons images); the Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee; the Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; and Wellcome Trust, London (via Wikimedia Commons).
Dealers
Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery; Jeremy Wooten, Wooten Wooten; Rock Island Auction Company; Maurice Sauvin, Sauvin European Folk Arts; Allan Katz Americana; Brandt Zipp, Crocker Farm Auction; and Skinner, Inc.
Individual Photographers/Owners of Photographs
Giovanni Andreani, Robert B gou n, Dennis Darling, Jillian DiMedio, Catherine S. Elliott, Wallace F. de Faria, Karen Green, Janet Koplos, Jenny Lewis, Noela Mills, Nick Pangere, Vijaya Perumalla, Julie Rana, Carolyn Robinson, Phil Rogers, Pan Shan, Tony and Marie Shank, J. Garrison and Diana Stradling, and Erik Wada.

Nothing pleases me more than to acknowledge the support and camaraderie of fellow researchers over the years, some of whom are no longer with us. Among these are scholar-potters and museum curators and directors. In Europe: Peter Brears, John Hudson, Richard Coleman-Smith, Julia Poole, Rosemary Weinstein, and Arnold Mountford (England); Megan McManus (Northern Ireland); Clodagh Doyle (Republic of Ireland); Graeme Cruickshank, John Laurenson, and Christine Rew (Scotland); J. Geraint Jenkins and James Bentley (Wales); Marcel Poulet and Jean Cuisenier (France); Harald Rosmanitz and Walter Manns (Germany); and Paul Petrescu and Magdalena Andreescu (Romania). In the United States: Georgeanna Greer, Linda Carnes-McNaughton, Charles G. (Terry) Zug III, Joey Brackner, Henry Glassie, Ralph Rinzler, Cinda Baldwin, Jill Beute Koverman, Susan Myers, Laura Addison, Gary and Diana Stradling, Karen Duffey, Chris Brooks, Samuel D. Smith, Robert Hunter, Suzanne Findlen Hood, Carl Steen, Nancy Sweezy, Mark Hewitt, Stephen Ferrell, Johanna Brown, Gail Andrews, Jane Przybysz, Philip Wingard, and Carole Wahler.
I also owe a debt of thanks to Georgia State University colleagues Randy Malamud, Alex Fedorov, Baotong Gu, Reiner Smolinski, and Malinda Snow of the Department of English for various kinds of help; and to Carol Winkler, then Associate Dean for the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences, for granting me released time to work on this project.
Finally, I wish to express my appreciation to the director of Indiana University Press, Gary Dunham, for his support of this project, to my designer, Jennifer Witzke, and to my editor, Janice Frisch, and her assistant, Kate Schramm, both Ph.D. graduates of Indiana University s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, for their diligence and patience in working with this author who still has one foot planted in the mid-twentieth century.
GLOBAL CLAY
INTRODUCTION
Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race,
Of every tongue, of every place,
Caucasian, Coptic, or Malay,
All that inhabit this great earth,
Whatever be their rank or worth,
Are kindred and allied by birth,
And made of the same clay.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, K ramos (1877) 1
G lobal Clay IS A BOOK ABOUT POTTERY FROM AROUND THE WORLD , from the earliest wares to those of today. But this is not a survey in the usual sense, as it does not approach the subject in a linear, chronological way as a historian would, or in a spatial or ethnographic way as a geographer or anthropologist would. Although it certainly benefits from those methodologies, this book first of all is driven by ideas: themes shared by clay-working societies wherever they are found. 2
The approach used here is informed by my training as a folklorist, with its focus on the continuity of traditions over time and space and how they respond to change. Folk traditions connect the individual to society, providing an anchor to previous generations and, at the same time, a resource for creative behavior in the present. Like those traditions, the study of folklore is evolving, but one methodology that has remained constant is the comparative approach, a goal of which is to address the Big Question: How did certain cultural products come to be so widespread (especially in the days before print and electronic media)? 3 The universality of certain pottery ideas is what Global Clay will specifically address.
Walk into traditional pottery workshops anywhere in the world and you are immediately struck by their similar layouts. The similarities are due not to the adoption of a common design plan, but to the demands of working with clay in a traditional way. For example, there s a good reason why potter s wheels are usually placed near a window: for light and air. Folklorists explain such similarities as the result of polygenesis , or the independent inventions of an idea found in unconnected places, as opposed to diffusion , or the spread of a tradition from a single source. 4 You ll be reminded of those two options, as well as their possible combination, as we explore some widespread, and intriguing, ceramic themes.
So, as a folklorist whose interests began with traditional music and oral literature, how did folk pottery become my research specialty? Two brief answers: my friendship with fellow University of Pennsylvania graduate student Henry Glassie-who would become a world-class material culture scholar and influence my traject