A study in form: process and results

This thesis documents the interests that inspired the body of work that is the core of this MFA; it mentions the biographical antecedents that led to it; it muses on the thoughts and dilemmas that were present while the work progressed; it describes the technical details of such progress; and it concludes with a full pictorial record of the body of work produced.

A STUDY IN FORM: PROCESS AND RESULTS by Francisco Burgos A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Art Department of Art and Art History The University of Utah December 2006 Copyright © Francisco Burgos 2006 All Rights Reserved THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE APPROVAL o f a final project paper submitted by Francisco Burgos This final paper has been read by each member of the following supervisory committee and by majority vote has been found to be satisfactory. n - t - W _________________ - - - v Chairman: David Pendell (e . .- , " Q t THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS FINAL READING APPROVAL I have read the final project paper o f _________ Francisco Burgos__________ in its final form and have found that (1) its format, citations, and bibliographic style are consistent and acceptable; (2) its illustrative materials including figures, tables, and charts are in place; and (3) the final manuscript is satisfactory to the Supervisory Committee and is ready for submission to the Graduate School. tZv- fo-f f __, ------v ---------- Date David Pendell Chairperson, Supervisory Committee Approved for the Major Department IilizabethA. Peterson Chairperson Approved for the Graduate Council ABSTRACT This thesis documents the interests that inspired the body of work that is the core of this MFA; it mentions the biographical antecedents that led to it; it muses on the thoughts and dilemmas that were present while the work progressed; it describes the technical details of such progress; and it concludes with a full pictorial record of the body of work produced. This thesis is dedicated to Salvador and Oriol, between whom I stand. CONTENTS ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................iv WORKS EXHIBITED.............................................................................................................vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.........................................................................................................ix ANTECEDENTS.................................................................................................................... 1 THOUGHTS.......................................................................................................................... 2 TECHNICAL.......................................................................................................................... 9 Glazes....................................................................................................................... 10 THE EXHIBITION................................................................................................................... 14 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................... 16 WORKS EXHIBITED........................................................................................................... 17 REFERENCE LIST.................................................................................................................44 WORKS EXHIBITED Trilobe Vase........................................................................................................................... 18 Vase with Three Compartments..........................................................................................19 Large Vessel with Architectural Motifs...............................................................................20 Aeroceramisti: Filippo Tommaso........................................................................................21 Twin Torqued Bottles............................................................................................................22 Torqued Stelle with Black/Red Glaze.................................................................................23 Large Bottle: Dorn us.............................................................................................................24 Large Vessel Named Piranesi............................................................................................. 25 Dislocated Vessel, Triumph of Tectonics.......................................................................... 26 Large Bottle: Luna................................................................................................................27 Equinox..................................................................................................................................28 Large Vessel with Two Spouts, Lidded...............................................................................29 Pre-Cambrian Form...............................................................................................................30 Communicating Vessels: Fluidity of Space....................................................................... 31 Aeroceramisti: Tullio.............................................................................................................32 Centrifugal Approach 1..........................................................................................................33 Centrifugal Approach II.........................................................................................................34 Platter with Yellow Glaze......................................................................................................35 Terpsichore............................................................................................................................36 Platter with Blue Glaze.........................................................................................................37 Platter with Ridges and Red Shino Glaze.......................................................................... 38 Large Bowl with Green/Blue Glaze.....................................................................................39 Point & Counterpoint: Ginger & Fred..................................................................................40 Platter with Ridges and White Slip.....................................................................................41 Low Form with Crawling Shino Glaze..................................................................................42 Large Bottle with Big Shoulders..........................................................................................43 viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Sincere thanks to my graduate committee, Tom Kass, Michael Hullet and, especially, David Pendell for their guidance and friendship, to my wife, Ruth Tsoffar, for her patience and support, and to Salvador Burgos, without whose help this MFA would have been much more difficult to accomplish. ANTECEDENTS During a visit to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in 1991, I came upon an exhibit of medieval Japanese ceramics made for the Tea Ceremony. I was immediately fascinated by the serene beauty and exquisite, bold elegance of the objects and was moved by the strength of character that was revealed in their execution. I decided, on the spot, that I would learn to work in that medium. Since then, my interest has grown to encompass all of ceramic history and tradition, from the Palaeolithic to our days, with the fascinating richness of form, feeling and thought it has developed over the globe. Having a background in architectural design, I am drawn to explore and expand the structural possibilities of the medium. In the tradition of pottery, I am interested in the relations between interior and exterior space, and between form and function. I work with a vocabulary of geometric inspiration; indeed, I often intend to express the beauty of geometric harmony. What I aim for in my work today are still the qualities that I discovered years ago in those traditional Japanese wares, expressed with contemporary forms. THOUGHTS During the first year of my MFA program I was riddled by the question facing ceramists during all of the twentieth century, "is it art? is it craft?" The issue is far from irrelevant, and far from settled, particularly as far as the art and craft establishments are concerned. Too many people, on both sides, still see the choice of medium (clay in this case) as determinant in the cultural status of the product. The determinant, I believe, should rest on the intention of the maker: the intention of the artist being to convey a thought, a feeling, or an emotion; that of the craftsman to create an object, functional, well made, and/or decorative. Surely, there is no clear divide but a continuum between both intentions. (Along with the art?/craft? question is another one, more relevant and perhaps easier to discern: "is it good? is it bad?") There are at opposite ends of the continuum, in one, those potters making the humble, functional pot, and on the other the artists who use clay as a purely sculptural medium, often in installations or in experimental ways, to further dissociate clay from pottery. Between these two extremes, which have little in common besides material, rests the vast majority of ceramic work being produced nowadays. From the studio potter making functional but clearly personal one-of-a-kind pieces to the ceramist who takes function only as a metaphorical reference, the emphasis is on self-expression. Ceramics appear in the upper Paleolithic, that is, somewhere between 14,000 and 15,000 years from today. Certainly, humans had been using clay before. It is not difficult to imagine that clay was one of the first media to be used for visual expression. Readily accessible as mud found by riverbeds, plastic, and inviting to the touch, the modeling of clay with bare hands probably occurred simultaneously with the first drawings traced on the ground with a stick. For practical purposes, clay was used for a long time to seal fiber baskets and improve their properties as containers of grains and seeds. With the discovery of fire, clay was soon turned into ceramics, and some of the earliest ceramic objects on record are clay covered baskets of which the woven vegetable elements have been burned off and the clay turned permanent by fire. Other early ceramic objects are vessels hand-built by pinching wads or coils of clay, and modeled figurines and ritual objects. Soon, ceramic molds were made for pressing clay into, and thus ceramic provided the first technology of multiple production. The invention of the throwing wheel, another early revolutionary technological breakthrough, allowed, from then to this day, the production of vessels, from small plates, bowls and cups to large urns and jars, quickly and cheaply, making ceramic wares commonly accessible. It must be noted that both the use of molds and the throwing wheel have evolved and developed a variety of forms in different cultures and through different historical periods, but remain, basically, in the principle of their use, as they were when they first appeared, thousands of years ago. Ceramics was state of the art technology then, and it is still so today, being used to manufacture insulating tiles to protect space vehicles from heat during re-entry into the atmosphere, computer chips, superconductors or a wide variety of precision tools. Simultaneously with the manufacture of utilitarian vessels, clay continued to be used to make objects of religious or ceremonial purpose, or of purely decorative or aesthetic contemplation: art objects. But the vessel itself, always linked with the preparation and storage of food-a critical human endeavor- also came to be associated with the human form; the vessel as container, as the womb is the cradle of life; the urn as receptacle of human remains. Pots are still described in terms of lips, shoulder, belly and foot, among other anatomical terms, and it was through this association with the human form that vessels first became containers for abstract ideas. Vessels of all sorts are, since prehistory and in most cultures around the world, common household objects; objects with which we have all had daily and intimate contact, an intimate contact rivaled only, perhaps, by clothing. Vessels, their use and symbolism, are deeply imbedded in our collective memory. However, if vessels are intrinsic to the history of ceramics for their purpose and function, they are so as well for the nature of the material and the techniques of fabrication. The potter or ceramist works with wet clay, plastic and soft, with little structural strength. Once formed, clay must be allowed to dry before it is fired, and as it dries it shrinks. Hollowness facilitates evenness of thickness in construction which is essential for even shrinkage. Otherwise shrinkage results in cracks during drying and in the loss of the piece. Throwing at the wheel shapes the clay through the containment and control of centrifugal forces and results naturally in variations of tubular forms, which are self-supporting and also hollow. Casting from molds also produces hollow forms, as does fabrication by means of coils or by pinching wads of clay. Even forms modeled from solid blocks of clay must be 4 hollowed if they are to survive the stresses of drying and firing. It was with the invention of bronze casting that clay came to be used widely by sculptors as a material from which to make solid models that would then be cast in metal. Those models were never fired, remaining as clay, not ceramic. Ceramics has to do with form and volume but also with containment and enclosure, with interior and exterior space and the connection between the two, the opening. Almost as much as with containment, ceramics has to do, traditionally, with surface treatment and decoration, with pattern and color, and most of ceramic production falls rightly within what is called the decorative arts. Also, for its manufacture and its use, ceramics has to do with touch. Holding a ceramic object is fundamental for its enjoyment and appreciation, and related to this is the small size, the domestic scale traditional for ceramics. Bernard Leach suggested that potters should not be infatuated by the desire to create high art in a Western sense, since being a potter is already a noble calling. But Leach was writing about the traditional potter, who makes his wares in the context of an old, if not ancient, pottery tradition (England, Japan), unself­consciously, and who, constrained by the formal vocabulary of that particular tradition and accepting such formal limitations for creative expression, expresses instead, unintentionally but inevitably, his character, his feeling and his emotion. In Zen Buddhism, enlightenment or redemption is understood as reaching freedom from duality, grasping the fundamental unity of the cosmos, and achieving total mindfulness, complete presence in the here and now. This is usually accomplished after long years of arduous meditation and austere discipline: the way of hardship. But there is also in Buddhism the way of ease, the way of the 5 common folk who will also achieve redemption by doing nothing extraordinary, by living one's life in innocence, simply and honestly: the way of grace. In our global village such an option, such a potter exists no more, except in the few societies that still remain somewhat isolated in marginal geographical, cultural or economical areas. In our common world of instant communication and global economy, traditions (such as pottery) have become part of our recent past, often protected like endangered species by national government institutions. Ceramists, all ceramists, have lost the innocence of the "noble savage" and the tutelage of tradition. The satisfaction of practical needs has been taken over by industry. And the ceramist is now free/forced to be an "artist," to bring together, protect and nurture those qualities of character, feeling, emotion and now also of formal or intellectual thought, against the encroaching cultural cacophony. The ceramist, formerly potter, is now a ceramic artist in a lone, willful labor of self­discovery and expression. Herbert Read, in a series of radio talks broadcast by the BBC in the late 1920s and early 30s, advanced a radical proposition (even by today's standards), proposing that pottery is pure art; being freed from any imitative intention, while sculpture, to which it is most nearly related, had from the first an imitative intention, and is perhaps to that extent less free for the expression of the will to form than pottery. This was, of course, before the advent of fully abstract modern sculpture. Contemporary ceramics is characterized by pluralism or, rather, by eclecticism. The facility of communication, mainly through international ceramic magazines and, more recently, the World Wide Web, allows any ceramist in any part 6 of the world to know what is being done anywhere else. This results in a cross­pollination of ideas and techniques (and also in homogenization), and the ceramic scene in the English-speaking world, Europe and Japan has become truly a global village. But the lack of a common standard, the emphasis in virtuosic technique (traditionally associated with decadence and decline) and the tendency towards the spectacular to the detriment of content, often results in dramatic but shallow displays of skill. Even though I am more interested in form than in function, I have great respect for the ceramic craftsman and find that the most intriguing and inspiring work in clay today comes from that in-between world of the "vessel-oriented ceramic object," the art pot, the work that staying with the ceramic tradition of the vessel attempts to open new ways and to express the individual character of the maker. Before starting my MFA I was working on a series of slip-cast porcelain sake bottles and cups. The forms of those pieces were generated by the folding and torsion of paper sheets, coming together end to end, to enclose space. Those paper forms were filled with plaster and turned into models. From the plaster models, casting molds were made. The finished slip-cast bottles and cups are white, translucent, and lightweight; they are geometric, modernist objects, small, precious and intimate, conceived for human contact and ritual. With the MFA program, and access to a spacious studio, there was a jump in scale. The intention was, in part, to explore a contemporary idea, that "bigger is better," and to see where working at a larger scale would lead; a larger workspace made that option possible. I had made a large plaster mold, a shallow 7 dome 32 inches in diameter that I was using as a hump mold to make medium­sized platters. I decided to make a matching concave mold and explore the possibilities; as often happens, the tools or techniques determined the direction of the work. A series of disc-derived forms were produced. Approaching the end of my two-year program, however, I grew dissatisfied with the limitations of the disc forms and, feeling that there was still much to explore with folding planes, I returned to them at a larger scale. After I studied and developed the pieces in small paper maquettes, I cut large cardboard forms to size, made them impermeable with adhesive plastic tape and then covered them with newspaper as a release surface. The forms were assembled, and clay was built up by pressing and paddling wads or coils against the inside of the forms. Once the clay was stiff enough to support itself, the cardboard forms were removed. 8 TECHNICAL With my previous, smaller work, the issue of surface was secondary. Form was commanding, and the individual pieces looked good unglazed, or were easy to coat with a single unifying glaze. At a larger scale surface became critical. I chose to work with a clay-body that I usually liked unglazed when fired to maturing temperature in reduction: Death Valley clay usually fires to a rich deep brown, sometimes with hints of orange or chocolate. I envisioned building my sculptural pieces out of a single material, wanting them to have integrity of form and surface. In order to correct shrinking and cracking problems I added a large amount of grog. The clay-body used for most of the work consists of 2/3 Death Valley (from Laguna Clay Co.) and 1/3 30-mesh grog, with nylon fiber added. For consistency of moisture content in the clay, I came to follow these proportions in every batch mixed: 100 lb. / 45.36 Kg. Death Valley, dry 50 lb. / 22.68 Kg. 30 mesh grog 453.6 gr. (1 % of dry clay) bentonite 453.6 gr. macaloid 2 handfuls of nylon fiber 17 liters of water All the dry ingredients must be mixed together for several minutes before adding the water to ensure the proper dispersal of the nylon fibers. The shrinkage rates were as follows: Bone dry 3% Bisque (c/012) 4% c/2 6% c/6-7 7% This turned out to be a very forgiving clay-body. It allowed me to hand-build fast and thin, and it dried quickly with minimum cracking. It was also very resilient during multiple firings (one piece was fired 3 times to cone 7, 2264° Fahrenheit, and once to cone 10, 2381°). Fired to maturity, however, it had an uninteresting pale beige color. It direly needed a surface coating. This presented for me one of the major technical challenges. The integrity of body and surface was no longer possible; I had to find a finish that would enrich the surface without masking the form. Glazes For a long time I have been interested in Shino-type glazes. Shino glazes originated in the Mino region of Japan during the Momoyama period (1568­1603), are composed mostly of feldspar and ash, and are directly linked to the development of the tea ceremony. Shino-type glazes, developed in the United States during the last 25 years, are composed mostly of feldspar, clay, soda ash and, often, spodumene. Shino-type glazes cover a broad spectrum of formulas with an amazing variety of color and surface. They are also extremely difficult to control, being susceptible to a large number of variables besides glaze composition, including firing schedule and kiln atmosphere, material under the glaze (clay-body, slips, oxides, etc.), method and thickness of application, age of the glaze and, last 10 but not least, how the glaze dries on the ware. When the glaze dries, as the water evaporates, soluble salts move to the surface and accumulate, building up a fine layer in a process called "efflorescence." During firing, these salts will combine with the free carbon created when there is an excess of fuel in the kiln (a "reducing" atmosphere) and produce what is known as "carbon trapping," a thin layer of accumulated carbon on the surface of the glaze, gray or black, subtle or intense, in the best cases with great visual richness. By manipulating the drying process, speeding or slowing it, wetting the wares prior to glazing, or wetting the applied glaze again before it has dried completely, applying wax resist or placing different objects on the drying glaze before efflorescence is complete, etc., the soluble salts will deposit in different ways and produce different fired results. I tested some sixty different Shino-type glazes (all of which can be found in the books and articles listed in the bibliography), applied over different clay-bodies, with different drying methods, under different drying conditions and different firing schedules, and accumulated several hundreds of test tiles. And yet, my understanding of these glazes remains only rudimentary. I was unable to duplicate in Utah some results that I had obtained previously in California, which makes me suspect a difference in the materials available or in the quality of the water. Early body reduction, at 1550°- Fahrenheit, dramatically increases carbon trapping, but it is easy for it to get out of hand and completely blacken the glaze. This "blackening" is guaranteed if the firing is extended to a period of "reduction cooling" after reaching maturity. These glazes have relatively low melting points and can produce good results fired to cone 6 or 7, but they clearly improve when fired to c/ 10. As with many other glazes, it is better to ball-mill them before use. 11 In order to give thickness and texture to the glazes I added EPK, in 12 amounts ranging from 17 to 35%. With 35% added EPK the glaze, now a slip, cracks and has often a dry, unvitrified surface reminiscent of dried mud; with 17% the glaze tends to crawl and always vitrifies at c/7 and above. With the added EPK these glazes/slips will sometimes have adhesion problems but will not run. The glazes that I mostly worked with are the following: P.D. Shino Crack Custer Feldspar Spodumene Soda Ash EPK Nepheline Syenite 0M#4 Ball Clay Magnesium Carbonate 8.00 11.26 2.96 25.93 37.04 11.11 3.70 Warren MacKenzie's Shino-type Nepheline Syenite 0M#4 Spodumene Soda Ash Bentonite 59.2 19.7 14.8 3.9 2.3 Malcolm Davis Ultra-Carbon Trap Nepheline Syenite Kona F-4 Feldspar EPK M0#4 Soda Ash Redart Clay 38.6 9.3 17.0 13.0 16.3 5.7 13 Malcolm Davis Red Shino Nepheline Syenite 42.94 Kona F-4 feldspar 10.34 0M#4 14.47 Soda Ash 7.0 Redart Clay 6.34 Penn State Shino Nepheline Syenite 14.6 Kona F-4 Feldspar 34.0 EPK 9.7 0M#4 4.9 Soda Ash 7.8 Spodumene 29.0 THE EXHIBITION This whole body of work is a study in form. Different pieces study different aspects of geometry, topology, or spatial relations, proportion and the nature of planes and edges. Some pieces address several of these issues at once. Discoids: Several of these pieces, built using the large concave and convex molds described above, explore ways in which disks can be sectioned, displaced and reassembled; they explore proportion and balance within a piece {Domus, Luna); in some cases they also explore relation and balance between two pieces (Centrifugal Approach, Point & Counterpoint). The relation between two pieces is explored as well in Twin Torqued Bottles in which case the large bottles (no disks) define a torquing space between them. Dynamism: The two Aeroceramisti pieces, Tullio and Filippo Tommaso, just like the two that compose Centrifugal Approach, emphasize the dynamism and motion inherent in the disk form. Ceramic-ness: Even though some pieces present no visible openings and might, thus, be considered "sculptures," I often thought it important to make evident the hollow nature of ceramic wares. Ceramic objects are most often hollow, and addressing this fact felt like being truthful to the nature of the medium, to the "ceramic-ness" of ceramics. Many pieces follow the topological type of the bottle, an enclosed container with a narrow neck-like opening, even when such openings might be oddly proportioned or placed in an unusual location or orientation. Interiority: Sometimes I wanted to call attention to the interior of some pieces. A Vessel Named Piranesi has strong recesses in its exterior surface that are reflected in the interior as protrusions and give it a strong sculptural definition; I wanted to make a piece where the interior had as much allure as the exterior. In Communicating Vessels: Fluidity of Space the interior of the pieces is less visible to the eye, but the nature and continuity of that interior space is addressed by the orientation of the openings. In this piece, composed of three vessels, the overall form of the ensemble, as well as the space between each vessel, are also explored. Vessel with Architectural Motifs hopes to suggest, through the articulation of the exterior, the parallel complexity of the interior space. Two-spouted vessels: Large Vessel with Two Spouts, Lidded refers to a common, if less frequent, type of vessel, in this case built at a monumental scale. The two lids provide a roundness of sculptural form while manifesting the hollowness of the piece. In Large Bottle with Big Shoulders, both form and title refer to the anthropomorphic nature of ceramic vessels and to the traditional way of describing them: body, belly, neck, lip, shoulder, foot. Form: Terpsichore plays with form, with proportion and the gentle torsion of planes. It still encloses and contains space, but by having neither top nor bottom its vessel quality is negated. Tooling: Disc, Sawn might be considered a more "conceptual" piece, where the content is the manipulation or tooling of the form. Biomorphic forms: Pre-Cambrian Form and Equinox, though derived from disks, have an organic quality about them, and both provide a multiplicity of associations. They are some of the most richly evocative pieces in the whole exhibit. 15 CONCLUSION I am, overall, pleased with this body of work. With a central interest in form, it explores a wide range of issues. This is both a strength and a fault. A narrower focus would have resulted in a more in-depth study of fewer ideas. But my appetite was exuberant, and I am certain that, had I had more time, additional interests would have come into play. More time, I know, would have also resulted in a more monumental scale of work. I tried to find my own voice and to bring forth forms that would be harmonious and confident, beautiful in a classical way, as sought by the Modernism of the twentieth century. Yet, at the end of this century Modernism has long been left behind and the relevance of beauty itself, alas!, has long been questioned and often dismissed. I aimed to make my work bold, virile, I would say, in concept as well as in execution, and to show in the finished work the love for the material and the joy of the process. What direction the future work will take will be determined in great part, as it did in the past, by fortuitous circumstances, of available workspace, materials, equipment, and time. I suspect that for practical reasons it might come down in scale. But my curiosity and the range of my interests remain unabated. I might start exploring the combination of clay with other materials and perhaps bring more conceptual ideas to conform my work. WORKS EXHIBITED 18 Tri lobe Vase 1999 18"h.xl2"w.xl2"d. Vase with Three Compartments 1999 20"h. x 16"w. x 13"d. 20 Large Vessel with Architectural Motifs 1999 27"h. x 22"w. x 10"d. Aeroceramisti: Filippo Tommaso 1999 23"h. x 31"w. x 10"d. Twin Torqued Bottles 1999 37"h. x 12"w. x 6.5"d. 23 Torqued Stelle with Black/Red Glaze 1999 46"h. x 6"w, x 8"d. 24 Large Bottle: Domus 1999 21"h. x 29"w. x 6"d. w Large Vessel Named Piranesi 1999 27"h. x 24"w. x 10.5"d. 26 Dislocated Vessel, Triumph of Tectonics 1999 31"h. x 24"w. x 12"d. 27 Large Bottle: Luna 1999 21"h. x 31"w. x 6"d. 28 Equinox 1999 8"h. x 31"w. x 31"d. Large Vessel with Two Spouts, Lidded 1999 41"h. x 30"w. x 10"d. 30 Pre-Cambrian Form 1999 9"h. x 13"w. x 9"d. 31 Communicating Vessels: Fluidity of Space 1999 21"h. x 40"w. x 9.5"d. 32 Aeroceramisti: Tullio 1999 27.5"h. x 35"w. x 10"d. 33 Centrifugal Approach I 1999 27"h. x 31"w. x 6"d. Centrifugal Approach II 1999 27"h. x 31"w. x 6"d. 35 Platter with Yellow Glaze 1999 4"h. x 24"w. x 16"d. 36 Terpsichore 1999 23"h. x 38"w. x 10''d. 37 Platter with Blue Glaze 1999 4"h. x 24"w. x 16"d. 38 Platter with Ridges and Red Shino Glaze 1999 4"h. x 26"w. x 18"d. 39 Large Bowl with Green/Blue Glaze 1999 12"h. x 31"w. x 31"d. 40 Point & Counterpoint: Ginger & Fred 1999 20"h. x 36"w. x 8"d. 41 Platter with Ridges and White Slip 1999 5"h. x 28"w. x 16"d. Low Form with Crawling Shino Glaze 1997-99 6"h. x 31"w. x 15"d. 43 Large Bottle with Big Shoulders 1998-99 24"h. x 31"w. x 6"d. I ';. REFERENCE LIST Clark, Garth, ed. Ceramic Art. Comment and Review, 1882-1977. New York: Dutton, 1978. Clark, Garth. The Potter's Art. A Complete History of Pottery in Britain. London: Phaidon, 1995. Cort, Louise A. Seto and Mino Ceramics: Japanese Collections in the Freer Gallery of Art. Washington, D C: Smithsonian Institution, 1992. Currie, Ian. Stoneware Glazes: A Systematic Approach. Maryvale, Qld., Australia: Bootstrap Press, 1985. Dormer, Peter. The New Ceramics, Trends & Traditions. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1994. Fujioka, Ryoichi. Shino and Oribe Ceramics. Tokyo: Kodansha International,1977. Kuspit, Donald. "Directions and Issues in the Ceramic Sculpture of the Nineties." The Studio Potter, June 1998. Lynn, Martha D. Clay Today, Contemporary Ceramists and Their Works. Los Angeles: L.A. County Museum of Art, 1990. Neely, John. "Nice Cooling." Ceramics Monthly, 36, no. 4 (April 1988):48-52. Neely, John. "Firing, Salting, Cooling and Flashing." Ceramics: Art and Perception, no. 2, (1990): 40-42. Robinson, Jim. "Revival Fires: Another Face for Shino." The Studio Potter, (December 1992). Troy, Jack. Wood-Fired Stoneware and Porcelain. Radnor, PA.: Chilton, 1995. Watson, Oliver. Studio Pottery. Twentieth Century British Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Collection. Oxford: Phaidon Christie's, 1993.