Ceramics in America 2010

Now in its tenth year of publication, Ceramics in America is considered the journal of record for historical ceramic scholarship in the American context.

The 2010 volume of Ceramics in America is the second of two issues to document the results of a multiyear research project on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century earthenware traditions of the North Carolina piedmont. This issue, a companion to the 2009 volume expands, current preconceptions of North Carolina slipware by identifying other regional ceramic traditions. In tandem, the two volumes serve as a compendium catalog for the traveling exhibition Art in Clay: Masterworks of North Carolina Earthenware, sponsored by Old Salem Museums Gardens, the Chipstone Foundation, and the Caxambas Foundation.

Setting a new standard for American ceramic studies, this transdisciplinary effort draws on archaeology, art history, religion, ceramics, technology, and many other areas of inquiry resulting in a substantively revised history of this much-admired North Carolina pottery tradition. Many examples of highly decorative slipware and intriguing figural bottles are illustrated here for the first time with the precise color photography of Gavin Ashworth.