Product Description

Chinese ceramics and their glazes have delighted and enthralled the world for centuries. In this book, Nigel Wood traces the development of Chinese glazes from the Bronze Age to the present day. He carefully describes how Chinese glazes were made, and how they evolved over some 3000 years of continuous production. He provides analyses and shows how their superb qualities can be reproduced with common Western raw materials. The book is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of colour plates of Chinese potters and Chinese kilns.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #853786 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 280 pages

About the Author
Nigel Wood is a well-known potter and a Fellow of the Craft Potters Association. He has long been interested in Far Eastern ceramics and has collaborated on scientific research into this subject with the Ashmolean Museum, Oxfod, and the British Museum and the V&A in London. He has lectured worldwide on the technology of Chinese ceramics, and is the author of numerous articles on the subject. He has also presented papers on ancient Chinese glazes at five conferences in Shanghai and Beijing. He is currently a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford University.

Customer Reviews

An indispensible classic
Any serious student or collector of Chinese ceramics doesn't need this review to tell him this Mr. Wood's exhaustive study is an indispensable guide to the subject. Although it is written with more than sufficient scientific rigor and documentation to satisfy the most demanding academic, it is richly illustrated and written with a clarity that makes it accessible to moderately informed members of the lay public.

While focusing primarily upon the glazes used in Chinese ceramics, Mr. Wood does not neglect the other aspects of the Chinese potter's art, such as clay types, firing, and shapes. Moreover, he frequently successfully links these seemingly technical aspects of the art to the social and utilitarian aspects of the objects. Because of the author's breadth of knowledge and solidity of his scientific grounding, this book contains more and more meaningful information than many of the monographic works devoted to one specific type of Chinese ceramics.

In short, this is not just another book on Chinese ceramics. It is the book no library on the subject can afford to be without.