Through a wide display of functional pottery, this reference book offers information and practical tips as well as international coverage of both the design and aesthetics of ceramics and artists's work.

Functional Pottery

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Robin Hopper

Antiques & Collectibles

A&C Black

Learn the art of ceramics with a master!
Step into the studio with master artist Robin Hopper as he opens the door to his more than 50-year exploration of ceramics inRobin Hopper Ceramics.
Discover the "hows" and "whys" behind Robin's artistry while he shares his innovative insight, personal reflection and life's work.Robin Hopper Ceramics paints an intriguing self-portrait of the man within the legendary artist, teacher and arts activist as it urges artists to push themselves further in their work.
More than 400 photos and illustrations showcase finished pieces, ideas and instructions ceramists can easily apply to their own work.
Join Robin as he inspires and instructs artists on topics including form, surface, function, design, development and themes. This is the one autobiography that all ceramic artists should have in their studios to exhilarate, educate and encourage them to explore!

Robin Hopper Ceramics: A Lifetime of Works, Ideas and Teachings

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

Krause+publications

The accepted standard for understanding glazes, this book explores glaze and color making in a hands-on way that follows the empirical understanding used for thousands of years. Hopper provides an impressive description of his extensive research into glaze, color, texture, and surface enrichment. It is the perfect practical complement to any glaze theory or process of calculation, including glaze calculation software programs. The Ceramic Spectrum is mainly a story of personal discovery over a 45-year period, of playing with materials and fire and observing their interaction, of looking at colors and textures in nature and visualizing how to achieve them with ceramic materials, of looking at hundreds of thousands of glaze and color tests, always looking for the elusive or the unknown and sometimes being granted the unimaginable. Long-term interests in geology and ceramic history have also fueled this passion to understand and use elements of the earth to create objects of both usefulness and contemplation. Hopper helps eliminate confusion for others through his personal experiences and observations with this medium. Pottery making is a continuum where one generation has learned from previous generations, some as a family pursuit and some through the inevitable seduction of material and process. The primary intent of The Ceramic Spectrum is not as recipe book, but to demystify an extremely complex subject. Although it has over 500 recipes, all of which work perfectly well and have been widely tested, they are given to suggest parameters in which these glazes develop, to show some of the variables that control both surface and color. This book aims to make available to the student of ceramics whether beginner, advanced, or professional an approach to the study of ceramic glaze and color development which does not rely on the use of published formulas, recipes or the mathematics of ceramic glaze calculation. Glaze making is a process of creative thought. It goes back to the empirical methods, through intuition and observation of materials and fire, in use for nearly 5,000 years before the understanding of glaze formulation by mathematical equation and molecular weight of chemicals. The aim of this book is to encourage personal curiosity and exploration of materials for glaze and color, so that anyone can develop their own glazes, without pain or anguish, and with a very exciting learning experience. The text is perfect as a course outline for either the individual or the group, where shared experiences tend to enhance and speed up the learning process. It should also be usable as a research tool for the understanding and development of colors, which may have previously seemed beyond reach. "For those who feel intimidated by chemical/mathematical formulation, it is my hope that in the exploration of this book it will be possible for the reader to find a new direction in the search for an individual idiom" Robin Hopper

The Ceramic Spectrum

Crafts & Hobbies

American Ceramic Society

Functional Pottery: Form and Aesthetic in Pots of Purpose

The American Ceramic Society

Making Marks is about ceramic surface enrichment, the processes used for achieving it, and the thought concepts, idea development and personal research behind it. "Making marks" is a generalized term used through the visual arts when referring to the alteration of any surface by any of the tools that artists employ. In using this term for the title of this book, Hopper is referring to the huge variety of marks that may be achieved through ceramic decoration processes, at any or all of the varied and various stages that the clay object goes through in its transformation from soft, wet, malleable clay to heat-hardened, impermeable ceramic. In Part I the fundamentals are covered. Before decoration is done, the stages at which the specific process might be done also have to be considered. Will it be done on wet, leather-hard, bone dry or bisque-fired clay, or as an underglaze or even in or after the glaze firing? There are decorative processes for any stage in the cycle. The surface of a ceramic object can be altered at any time, even hundreds or thousands of years after the object was originally made. While you can visually enhance or destroy a form by what you do to the surface, managing it and getting it to work with the form is an art. For those who have basic training in art and design, the first section may be redundant. For those who don't, the first five chapters provide a short, basic, art school primer. Part 2 begins coverage of surface techniques working with plastic and liquid clay processes. The chapters here deal with the process of decoration using graphic tools such as knives, sticks, scalpels, fluting, modeling, sgraffito, expanded spring wires and twisted cutting wires. It then looks at additive and subtractive approaches to surface enrichment, including texture, sprigs, modeling, handbuilding, slip-soaked fibers and washed wax or shellac resist. Additional techniques concern themselves with stamps, terra sigs, texture impressions, Mishima, Hakeme and Onda styles, and colored claywork utilizing Egyptian paste, agateware, neriage, and nerikomi. In Part 3, Hopper delves into pigment processes. Pigments play a large part in surface decoration, and Hopper covers it thoroughly with chapters on the variables of ceramic colorants and basic suggestions for their use and development, mixing and applications. He then looks at brushes (and sponges) as expressive graphic tools, their various types, the marks they make and their use with pigments. As part of his discussion on pigment processes, he also covers various resists (wax, latex, rubber, petroleum jelly, crayons, candles, etc.) as well as using underglaze pencils pastels, pens and trailers of different types. The section is rounded out with an exploration of spraying, from the simplest spattering of the toothbrush to the complexity of the airbrush. Most of us think of glazing first when we think of surfaces, and Hopper covers this critical area in depth as well in Part 4. The various processes of glaze application are shown in this extensive chapter, including brushing, dipping, double dipping, pouring, spraying, trailing, multiple glaze application and glaze intaglio. In the final part, Hopper discusses firing and post-firing processes that affect the surface. The effect that various types of firing have on both body and glaze are looked at from the inert atmosphere of the electric kiln through primitive firing, general reduction and post-firing reduction to the flame markings and fluid glaze of wood firing. Other detailed information is also included on salt and soda firing; altering the fired surface in the bisque or glaze state with sandblasting, cutting and acid etching; and taking work through multiple firings to add decals, lusters, china paints and overglaze enamels.

Making Marks

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Books by Robin Hopper