The amazing beauty and variety in these 500 bowls is a testament to the imagination and inventiveness of today's ceramists. Every technique from across the globe, many perfected through centuries of time, is beautifully presented here. John Motzkin's pit-fired bowl, for example, is a wonderful continuation of the traditions of the earliest potters.Holly Walker has taken slip and earthenware methods to new levels. And the possibilities of porcelain are highlighted by both Greg Daly's colorful bowls and the quiet elegance of Meredith Brickell's simple forms. The vast array of styles will inspire you to find and express your own unique artistic vision.

What makes the bowl so enduring? It has everything:form, volume, surface, texture, and color. It can be both useful and decorative, yet the bowl is one of the simplest and most basic forms that ceramists make. You may think that after 10,000 years of history,there's nothing new to say with this vessel. But the 500 masterful,inspired works presented on these pages prove otherwise.They show that the bowl is still being reinterpreted and reinvented every day.

Here is such luminous work as Lynne McCarthy's pinched, paddled, and raku-fired "Yellow Peace,"which shows a maturation of its glaze color into a nuanced surface, and Daniel Rosen's wheel-thrown "Desert Moon," finished with Eggshell and Shiny Black glazes. "For me," says Rosen, "what separates ceramic arts from other media is the transfer of energy from the potter to the vessel, an exchange which I truly believe in and hold dear in my work."

Introduction

The Bowls

Acknowledgments

Contributing Artists