Customer Reviews

The Traditional Pottery of Papua New Guinea

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This book is rich in content and visuals--loaded with examples of the finest clay works from PNG, along with pictures of their makers at work. These men and women were true artists. We are shown how coiling was done, and how a pot can be fashioned by the paddle and anvil technique--the two basic potmaking traditions of Melanesia. The authors include maps showing all villages with pot making industries at the time the first edition of this book came out in the early eighties, as well as then extinct villages that once were pottery producers. We are also shown the regions where men predominantly make pottery, others where it is the women, or where both collaborate in the process of making and decorating clay objects for utilitarian and ritual use. This is a completely informative and thoroughly enjoyable record of a remarkable tradition, far better than anything you could pull off the Web on the subject in facts and in details and in images.