From Folk Art to Modern Design in Ceramics

From the dusty workshops of village potters to the pristine assembly lines of modern factories; from the makers of pottery to the producers of porcelain in selected areas of Mexico and Denmark the authors observed interviewed and photographed ceramic artists at their work. The result is a story of persistence inspiration collaboration and intrigue success and failure along with individual eccentricities in the process of making ceramic art for an international market. The story is not only that of the potters wheel but of the wheel of time over which the lowly village potter evolves as professional artist who eventually in some instances rejects making corporate porcelain in favor of returning to clay and kiln. The Mexican communities are near Guadalajara. The Danish settings include the towns of Naestved Srring the island of Bornholm and in Copenhagen the porcelain giants Royal Copenhagen and Bing and Grndahl contrasting large scale corporations with small pottery factories. Researched in the 1970s the abandoned manuscript recently rediscovered appears here as written then with current material added to inform and update the historical ethnography providing a rare opportunity to follow up on people and predictions after thirty years to identify change decay and fulfillment.