Introduction 6
Chapter 1 1900-20
The Theatre of Technique: Doat and Robineau 20
Orientalist styles: Chaplet to Bindesboll 25
Art Nouveau 30
Gauguin and Expressionism 37
Ceramics and painting 40
Native styles: reinventing the vernacular 46
Ceramics and interiors: Vienna and Prague 51
Chapter 2 1920-45
After the Russian Revolution: 'the parade of objects' 58
Scandinavia 65
The Bauhaus 67
Italian Futurism 76
Art Deco 79
Women and ceramics; figures and figuration 82
Romantic Nationalism: Bernard Leach and Japan 88
Britain in the 1930s 98
Germany and the USA in the 1930s 103
Chapter 3 1945-65
Japan: radical beginnings 109
Isamu Noguchi 115
Postwar Europe: Salto, Coper, Duckworth 121
'High unseriousness': painters and clay 132
Pablo Picasso 133
Joan Miro 137
CoBrA 140
Lucio Fontana 142
Reactions to Picasso in the 1950s 145
Studio pottery after 1945 148
Postwar America 154
Peter Voulkos and Otis 156
Chapter 4 1965-2000
Pop and Funk ceramics 164
Critical commentaries, new contexts 173
'A Field of Possibilities': Politics, Performance and Environment 175
Installation 183
Still life 193
Postmodernism 200
Nationalism 205
Conclusion 212
Select Bibliography 216
List of Illustrations 219
Index 222