500 Bowls: Contemporary Explorations of a Timeless Design

edited by Suzanne J.E. Tourtillott

Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Lark Books (2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1579903622
Dimensions: 8.0" x 8.0" x 1.1"
Shipping Weight: 2.56 lbs.

The amazing beauty and variety in these 500 bowls is a testament to the imagination and inventiveness of todays ceramists. Every technique from across the globe, many perfected through centuries of time, is beautifully presented here. John Motzkins pit-fired bowl, for example, is a wonderful continuation of the traditions of the earliest potters. Holly Walker has taken slip and earthenware methods to new levels. And the possibilities of porcelain are highlighted by both Greg Dalys colorful bowls and the quiet elegance of Meredith Brickells simple forms. The vast array of styles will inspire you to find and express your own unique artistic vision.

What makes the bowl so enduring? It has everything: form, volume, surface, texture, and color. It can be both useful and decorative, yet the bowl is one of the simplest and most basic forms that ceramists make. You may think that after 10,000 years of history, theres nothing new to say with this vessel. But the 500 masterful, inspired works presented on these pages prove otherwise. They show that the bowl is still being reinterpreted and reinvented every day.

Here is such luminous work as Lynne McCarthys pinched, paddled, and raku-fired "Yellow Peace," which shows a maturation of its glaze color into a nuanced surface, and Daniel Rosens wheel-thrown "Desert Moon," finished with Eggshell and Shiny Black glazes. "For me," says Rosen, "what separates ceramic arts from other media is the transfer of energy from the potter to the vessel, an exchange which I truly believe in and hold dear in my work."

Susan Goldsteins "Sunrise in Kentucky"-a light filled, layered-slab construction with stains-rises to break free of gravitys bounds, while Marta Matray Glovickzkis hand-built porcelain "Rippled Shallow Bowl" seems to be solidly of the earth.

Sandra Byers dramatically cut and carved porcelain "Overlapping Layers" is inspired by a beach shell. The richly repetitive pattern of a leaf inspired Stephen F. Fabricos homage to nature in his "Bowl with Handles."

Suze Lindsays voluptuous "Pedestal Bowl," a salt-fired stoneware piece layered with slips and glazes, invests the functional genre with new presence, as does Gay Smiths raw-glazed porcelain "Tiptoe Bowl," which has a striking altered and faceted surface, as well as added feet and handles.

"Being catapulted into the dimension of creativity," explains Betsy Begor Perkins, "has been the most deeply satisfying thing I've ever experienced... I never looked back." Neither will you.