Edmund de Waal on The Pot Book

"Since the first edition of The Pot Book, the world has changed in very interesting and complex ways," the artist and writer Edmund de Waal tells Phaidon.com.

"Firstly, there's a new generation of people who are using clay, who it's really important to represent fully. We wanted to bring forward the voices of the people who are now flourishing in ceramics. The other thing that's important is that there are historically important things that have emerged."

Ogawa Machiko, Red Vessel (Akai utsuwa), 2021. Picture credit: Courtesy Joan B Mirviss Ltd / The Lizi Behmoaras Collection / Photo: Richard Goodbody Porcelain and stoneware with iron-oxide slip glaze, height 39.4 cm (15 1⁄ 2 inches), width 33.7 cm (13 1⁄ 4 inches)

After a successful initial publication in 2011, The Pot Book: A Global Survey of Ceramic Craft and Design, edited by Edmund de Waal, is set to return with a fresh, textured cover as well as updated and new featured entries. The survey celebrates a range of ceramics from ancient to contemporary, with each entry including a large-scale photograph of the work and a helpful text to provide historical and stylistic context.

Documenting the extraordinary range and variety of ceramics over thirty thousand years, The Pot Book surveys mankind’s fascinating exploration of this inexhaustible vessel. 

Yongzheng, Bottle Vase, early eighteenth century, Qing Dynasty, China. Picture credit: © RMN / Musée Guimet, Paris/Richard Lambert Porcelain, height 20 cm (7 3⁄ 4 inches)

The comprehensive collection ranges from a hand-painted jug made by an unnamed artisan in China in the third millennium BC and a delicate porcelain plate from eighteenth century Copenhagen, to a vase by Italian designer Ettore Sottsass, and the works of artists Theaster Gates and Louise Bourgeois. 

"The mapping of the world of ceramics is much broader and deeper than it was 15 years ago,” de Waal tells Phaidon.com. “So there are particular people who I overlooked in the first edition, who I really wanted to bring into focus now. There are historic figures, in many ways pioneering figures, who, 15 years ago, I was only partially aware of, whose practices I now really wanted to amplify. And so in that sense, this is me looking back into the world of ceramics in a fresher and more engaged way in terms of geography, gender, and diversity." 
 

Jabulile Nala, Ukhamba, 2023. Picture credit: Courtesy Art Formes Gallery,
Cape Town, South Africa / Photo: Barry White for Art Formes
Hand-coiled terracotta, burnished and smoke-fired, height 26 cm (10 inches),16 cm (6 inches), 28 cm (11 inches)

"For instance, there's this really amazing story of an enslaved potter called David Drake, who, when I was doing research for the first book 20 years ago, was not even really a footnote. But he now has this very powerful presence within the world of ceramics,  because of what he made and because of his significance as someone who made work in extraordinary, appalling conditions.”

"Who championed that? Theaster Gates. Theaster wasn't in the first edition, but is absolutely present in this edition as one of the most significant forces shaping contemporary ceramics. So, there are people whose practice is extraordinary in itself and who are also extraordinary for their advocacy for traditions within ceramics. They bring with them very remarkable and cadenced histories, and by so doing they open up worlds of possibilities."

Takuro Kuwata, Tea Bowl, 2021. Picture credit: Courtesy the artist and Salon 94 © Takuro Kuwata/Photo: Courtesy the Studio Porcelain, glaze, pigment, platinum and steel, height 39.4 cm (151⁄ 2 inches), diameter 41.9 cm (161⁄ 2 inches)

"Another example is Simone Lee, who's significant, in terms of the way in which she uses clay in terms of the vessel and the body being so closely allied. And when you think about Simone, then you think about all the other younger ceramic artists who have absolutely riffed off the possibilities that she's brought into the mix, and also take you back into some of the traditions which Simone is grounded in. So it's a great moment."

Did writing the original book, and considering the new additions in the updated book inspire de Waal to change the way he looked at his own work?

Beate Kuhn, Jug (Kännchen), 1957. Picture credit: Karl Scheid, Düdelsheim, Germany. Courtesy Susanne Kuhn / Photo: Karl Scheid Red earthenware clay, height 21 cm (81⁄ 4 inches), diameter 14.5 cm (53⁄ 4 inches)

“Absolutely,” he says. “I think as an artist, you’re always interested in who your interlocutors are, who you're in conversation with. And, of course, you can be in conversation with your peers, someone like Theaster or Simone, or you can be completely energised by a younger generation of artists. I'm now older, in my 60s, so it’s very exciting. Your interlocutors can be living artists, but then you can absolutely get energised by the practice of people from millennia ago and think, oh my goodness. Why wasn't I aware of the extraordinary resonance of this piece of Minoan pottery?"
 
“The joy of editing a book like this is that it allows you to be highly digressive. For me, the vigour of this book lies in its plurality. Not in its singularity. You can make all kinds of threads going through the book, but they weave together and then split apart again. And so the extraordinary endlessness of possibility with clay, which the book celebrates, is that you're endlessly moving between functionality and the symbolic. You're moving to narrative storytelling, and lyrical concision. You're moving between, expiration of techniques, the technical aspects, and making something which is remarkable in its impossibility, trying to do something with clay and minerals and fire.”

Theaster Gates, ‘A Clay Sermon’, 2021. Picture credit: © Theaster Gates/Photo: © Whitechapel Gallery (Theo Christelis) Exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2021–22, dimensions variable

A redesigned, textured and debossed cover elevates the updated survey, to achieve the illusion of a glazed pot on the front cover. The new introduction by de Waal and a revised glossary at the back rounds out the beautiful and endlessly fascinating survey.

"Theoretically, it is a completely new book in terms of the decisions that we've made about new people, or new topics within the book, and renewing images that I felt hadn't lasted so well from the first edition," de Waal says. "One of the nice new decisions, was with the cover, which is gorgeous. It’s a Korean moon jar, with extraordinary colours. There's lots that's new, so all of it feels very different from the last book."

Anne Currier, The Operator, 2022. Picture credit: Photo: Anne Currier Ceramic, digital print, painted wood panels, height 38 cm (15 inches), width 47 cm (181⁄ 2 inches)

Brand new features have been thoughtfully chosen to ensure a diverse spread across time, identities, and geography. Each entry is sequenced in alphabetical order by the name of the artist, the school, or style, creating a grand tour through the very finest examples of the art form.

“All of them have been sort of exercises in discernment,” de Waal says. “But the heart of it remains the same, which is that the book is based around serendipity - that you will have one image on one side and another image on the other, and good God, you do not know what you're going to get. That sort of synapse of visual energy, or cultural energy between two kinds of practice, two artists, two kinds of working is what the Phaidon books are so good at."

Akiko Hiraj, Moon Jar, 2016. Picture credit: Photo: Jon Stokes
Stoneware, porcelain slip, paper fibre, wood ash and white glaze, height 52 cm (21 inches), width 46 cm (181⁄ 2 inches)

“There are so many happy accidents in this book. And I can't claim anything other than delight over that because it simply is alphabetised. But my god, it works. It really works, page after page. You just exclaim, oh, God, look at these things together!”

Get a copy of the new and updated edition of The Pot Book: A Global Survey of Ceramic Craft and Design, here.