Louise Allison Cort

Purna Chandra Mishra

Book & DVD. The first to describe in detail a community of potters working for the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, eastern India, this book explores the role of the temple servant and how it affects potters' understanding of their work and of themselves. As a pilgrimage centre of national importance, supported by the patronage of successive regional dynasties and by fervent popular belief, the Jagannatha Temple required earthenware in great quantities for the creation of distribution of the sacred food that is an integral feature of daily ritual and pilgrimage. Several hundred potters participate as temple servants in maintaining the temple's ritual cycle by performing their divinely assigned task. This study observes the potters' technical prowess, sustained by devotion, but also examines the tensions within their relationships to more powerful temple servants and authorities. The role of the potter as temple servants is at once glorious, as demonstrated by texts and personal interpretations of the potters' divinely-appointed service, and pathetic, as shown in the brutality of caste-based hierarchy and cash-based exchange penetrating the modern temple's daily operations. The accompanying DVD shows the potters at work and records their skills and products as well as the annual festival that celebrates their role as temple servants.

Temple Potters of Puri

Late nineteenth century, the objects illustrate the long history of ceramic production within the Seto-Mino region.

Seto and Mino Ceramics

Bruce Altshuler

Ryū Niimi

Bert Winther-Tamaki

This volume presents the ceramic oeuvre of Isamu Noguchi and includes other major ceramic artists from postwar Japan, analyzing the conflict between modernity and tradition and the search for cultural identity.

A Close Embrace of the Earth

Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics

Meghen Jones

Ceramics and Modernity in Japan offers a set of critical perspectives on the creation, patronage, circulation, and preservation of ceramics during Japan’s most dramatic period of modernization, the 1860s to 1960s. As in other parts of the world, ceramics in modern Japan developed along the three ontological trajectories of art, craft, and design. Yet, it is widely believed that no other modern nation was engaged with ceramics as much as Japan—a "potter’s paradise"—in terms of creation, exhibition, and discourse. This book explores how Japanese ceramics came to achieve such a status and why they were such significant forms of cultural production. Its medium-specific focus encourages examination of issues regarding materials and practices unique to ceramics, including their distinct role throughout Japanese cultural history. Going beyond descriptive historical treatments of ceramics as the products of individuals or particular styles, the closely intertwined chapters also probe the relationship between ceramics and modernity, including the ways in which ceramics in Japan were related to their counterparts in Asia and Europe. Featuring contributions by leading international specialists, this book will be useful to students and scholars of art history, design, and Japanese studies.

Louise Allison Cort

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