Customer Reviews

The Figure in Fired Clay

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Betty Blandino's new book, The Figure in Fired Clay is spectacular. The collection of gorgeous photos alone make it a very thumbable coffee table book, but--make no mistake--it is more than that.

Blandino reviews the history of the seemingly universal tendency of people all over the world to take a lump of clay and mold it into a recognizable figure. Many of these artefacts come from civilizations of which we have no other surviving record. I loved the section on the earliest clay figures, and also the wonderful photographs of the work of contemporary ceramicists, many of whom were quite new to me.

Betty Blandino is a distinguished potter herself, and this is what brings this book to life. As she says in the Foreword: "Nothing but a small lump of soft clay accompanying these paper pages could have allowed those who have not used it to understand and feel the pleasure of this tolerant, flexible material as well as appreciating the wilfulness of its character."

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in pottery, and/or the human form, and perhaps like me have not seen how these two interests go together.