Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Clay : A Human History - Jennifer Lucy Allen

Clay

A Human History

By: Jennifer Lucy Allen

Hardcover | 4 March 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover


$57.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $14.44 with

 or 

Available for Backorder. We will order this from our supplier however there isn't a current ETA.

A human history told through clay--and how it has shaped us from ancient times to the present day.

This book is a love letter to clay, the material that is at the beginning, middle and end of all of our lives; that contains within it the eternal, the elemental, and the everyday.

People have been taking handfuls of earth and forming them into their own image since human history began. Human forms are found everywhere there was a ceramic tradition, and there is a ceramic tradition everywhere there was human activity. The clay these figures are made from was formed in deep geological time. It is the material that God, cast as the potter, uses to form Adam in Genesis. Tomb paintings in Egypt show the god Khum at a potter's wheel, throwing a human. Humans first recorded our own history on clay tablets, the shape of the characters influenced by the clay itself. The first love poem was inscribed in a clay tablet, from a Sumerian bride to her king more than 4000 years ago.

Born out of a desire to know and understand the mysteries of this material, the spiritual and practical applications of clay in both its micro and macro histories, Clay: A Human History is a book of wonder and insight, a hybrid of archaeology, history and lived experience as an amateur potter.

More in Ceramics in Art

A Thousand Feasts : Small Moments of Joy ... A Memoir of Sorts - Nigel Slater
Amazing Glaze : Techniques, Recipes, Finishing, and Firing - Gabriel Kline
The Beauty of Everyday Things : Penguin Modern Classics - Soetsu Yanagi
Additions to Clay Bodies : New Ceramics : New Ceramics - Kathleen Standen
Clayful : The big world of tiny ceramics - Sophia Cai

RRP $29.99

$24.99

17%
OFF
The Potter's Book of Glaze Recipes - Emmanuel Cooper
Ash Glazes : Techniques and Glazing from Natural Sources - Phil Rogers
Strange Clay : Ceramics in Contemporary Art - Ralph Rugoff

RRP $90.00

$64.99

28%
OFF
Special Effect Glazes : New Ceramics - Linda Bloomfield
Anne Dangar - National Gallery of Australia

Hardcover

RRP $79.95

$61.75

23%
OFF
The Potter's Dictionary : Of Materials and Techniques - Frank Hamer
A Potter's Book - Bernard Leach

RRP $69.99

$53.75

23%
OFF