American
Art Pottery & 20th Century Design
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Cowan
Pottery & the
Cleveland School
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A pottery book like no other!
Cowan's
story in full context
Carefully
researched and documented description of the Alfred University
program
in ceramic engineering; the gradual acceptance of Modernism in
America
(represented by the Cleveland arts scene); the unpredictable twists and
turns in the life of a potter (R. Guy Cowan)
372-pg hdbk Over 1200 illustrations
Nominated
(1997) for a prize in distinguished scholarship, given annually by the
Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Mark
Bassett's first book on ceramics
Co-author
Victoria Naumann Peltz curated the Cowan
Pottery Museum collection at Rocky River (OH) Public Library for
more
than 25 years (a position from which she retired in June 2002)
$65 plus shipping
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"Impressive... The amount of information
is encyclopedic,
the research remarkable, and the range of pottery pictured
exhilarating...
The photos are copious, sharp and color accurate... Please don't let
the
price put you off. This is the book that will stand for a long time, if
not forever, as THE definitive work on Cowan."
--Harvey Duke, The Daze,
Spring 1998
"This book stands leagues ahead of the
horde of
'collectors' books' that vie for the attention and dollars of pottery
dealers
and collectors. In terms of scholarship, detail, and insight there are
few competitors... An exemplary and scholarly study not only of the
Cowan
Pottery but the national shift from studio pottery to industrial art...
A work as expressive in its own way of a knowledge and love of ceramics
as are the products of the Cowan phenomenon it documents."
--Jim Murphy, Ohio History, Summer-Autumn
1999

Complete Cowan
Pottery glaze and shape guide
Biographies
and designs of Cowan artists and students, including Russell
Barnett
Aitken, Elizabeth Andersen, Whitney Atchley, Arthur E. Baggs, Alexander
Blazys, Paul Bogatay, R. Guy Cowan, Ralph Howard Cowan, Edris Eckhardt,
Thelma Frazier, Waylande Gregory, Albert Drexler Jacobson, Katherine
Barnes
Jenkins, Raoul Josset, Paul Manship, Herman Matzen, F. Luis Mora,
Charles
E. Murphy, Elmer Novotny, Margaret Postgate, Horace Potter, Guy L.
Rixford,
Viktor Schreckengost, Elsa Vick Shaw, Walter Sinz, Frank Nelson Wilcox,
and Edward Winter
History, definition,
and examples of fine art and crafts by these and other members
of
the Cleveland School
Other
potters and potteries who feature prominently in this book include
Charles Fergus Binns, Camark, Central New York, Cleveland Pottery and
Tile,
Frankoma, W.S. George (East Palestine), Gladding McBean, Haeger, Anton
Lang, Marblehead, Muncie, Onondaga, Pfaltzgraff, Red Wing, Roseville,
Scio,
Sebring, Selden Bybee, Shenango, Syracuse China, Weller, and Western
Stoneware
Institutions
who figure in the story are Alfred University, the American Ceramic
Society,
the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the
Cleveland
School (now Institute) of Art, the National Ceramics Exhibitions, the
Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Rowfant Club, Technical High School
(Cleveland)
Detailed
discussions of figural flower frogs, Cowan lamps, the Art Deco
movement,
the story of Waylande Gregory, the fine art medium of "ceramic
sculpture,"
later copies and reproductions of Cowan shapes and glazes, and the
three
different styles of the famous Cowan Jazz Bowl
© 2009 Mark Bassett
Updated
8/9/09
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