For most of human history, all pottery was what we would now consider traditional folk pottery. Not all artifacts go beyond the basic requirements of utility in pursuit of beauty, but Beautiful Clay considers those that do.In Beautiful Clay, noted scholar of traditional ceramics John A. Burrison writes about how a potter applies aesthetics to utilitarian objects to transform raw clay into something beautiful. Though what is considered beautiful in art changes from...

For over 25,000 years, humans across the globe have shaped, decorated, and fired clay. Despite great differences in location and time, universal themes appear in the world's ceramic traditions, including religious influences, human and animal representations, and mortuary pottery. In Global Clay: Themes in World Ceramic Traditions, noted pottery scholar John A. Burrison explores the recurring artistic themes that tie humanity together, explaining how and why those themes appear ag...

Roots of a Region reveals the importance of folk traditions in shaping and expressing the American South. This overview covers the entire region and all forms of ex-pression-oral, musical, customary, and material.The author establishes how folklore pervades and reflects the region\'s economics, history (espe-cially the Civil War), race rela-tions, religion, and politics. He follows with a catalog of those folk-cultural traits-from food and crafts to music and story-that are distinc...

Winner of the Connecticut Book Award (2011)Winner of the Connecticut League of History Organizations Award of Merit (2012)Connecticut women have long been noted for their creation of colorful and distinctive needlework, including samplers and family registers, bed rugs and memorial pictures, crewel-embroidered bed hangings and garments, silk-embroidered pictures of classical or religious scenes, quilted petticoats and bedcovers, and whitewor...

A rich and imaginative discovery of how ink has shaped culture and why it is here to stayInk is so much a part of daily life that we take it for granted, yet its invention was as significant as the wheel. Ink not only recorded culture, it bought political power, divided peoples, and led to murderous rivalries. Ancient letters on a page were revered as divine light, and precious ink recipes were held secret for centuries. And, when it first hit markets not so long a...

Once the center of agricultural prosperity in Alabama, the rich soil of the Black Belt still features beautiful homes that stand as a testimony to the region�s proud heritage. Join author Jennifer Hale as she explores the history of seventeen of the finest plantation homes in Alabama�s Black Belt. This book chronicles the original owners and slaves of the homes, and traces their descendants who continued to call these plantations home throughout the past two centuries. Discover why the fam...

This pocket-sized guide to identifying and interpreting metal and ceramic marks has been improved with the addition of the most recent hallmarks, along with details of the new hallmarking system.Do you attend car boot sales or browse in antique shops in search of bargains? Have you ever wished you knew more about grandma’s silver spoon? Do you envy the experts’ ability to identify and date old hand-me-downs? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, Collins Gem Antique Marks ...

An easy-to-use, one-stop reference guide for architectural and interior design. Part dictionary, part reference book, Mary Gilliatt's Dictionary of Architecture and Design is a single comprehensive source of information that will help you navigate all decisions related to home decor.Whether you are a home owner, an amateur restorer or decorator, a professional, a realtor, a student, or a do-it-yourselfer, this book will ma...

The Catskills (“Cat Creek” in Dutch), America’s original frontier, northwest of New York City, with its seven hundred thousand acres of forest land preserve and its five counties—Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, Ulster, Schoharie; America’s first great vacationland; the subject of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School paintings that captured the almost godlike majesty of the mountains and landscapes, the skies, waterfalls, pastures, cliffs . . . refuge and home to poets and gangsters, tyco...

From the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world.Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, p...

Renowned folklorist William R. Ferris has captured the voices of southern musicians, artists, writers, and thinkers for forty years—and we have been proud to publish his work in Southern Cultures for nearly half of that time.To celebrate Southern Cultures' 20th anniversary, we present our inaugural special omnibus ebook, The William R. Ferris Reader. Collected here for the first time are all 20 of Bill Ferris’s essays and interviews as they have appeared ...

Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive.It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain.Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with ...