wconnelley

i did not realize, mea, that your studio was big enough to hold 20 ELEPHANTS!

Michael Cardew, Simon and David Leach, Shoji Hamada,  someone mentioned Hans Coper but did not mention Lucie Rie.  
There are artists that did ceramics which are interesting, including Picasso, Klee, Chagall, Miro, Gauguin.  They aren't potters but their work is interesting in use of color and surface design.  

Lady Kwali from Nigeria was an Abuja potter while Cardew was there.  She was unusual in that she came to the studio as an established female potter in the Nigerian tradition but overcame the (colonial) gender biases of the time.   (This whole thing is interesting because of the British intent to create a Nigerian pottery tradition; Cardew's training of local men as potters in a continent where women are overwhelmingly the potters and do amazing work--imperialism at its finest really).  We recently found some of the African pots that we had in storage....one in particular, probably from Congo, was beautifully round, thin and consistent to be mistaken for thrown, not coiled work, and beautifully reduced in a pit-fire.  
Sometimes, it's less of a potter, but a tradition.   Every region in the US has solid pottery traditions that are very different.  

In terms of american pottery a few yeas back I did a paper on Maria Martinez and another on Juan Quesada. Their work rediscovering the traditional native american ceramic aesthetic and process I think is definitely worth mention.

I tried to think of a few but managed to forget more than i care to admit so I'll just leave this:
 

I just listed contemporary artists on another thread. I want to add this one here. 
http://www.jessicaputnamphillips.com
She is a female combat veteran expressing her experiences in chinaware. I saw her work at the garden party show at NCECA and was at the panel on the GI bill and ceramics. 
I love her work.

Late 19th and early 20th century: Adelaide Robineau, founder and editor for Keramos magazine and the Syracuse national competition that developed into the Everson Museum in Syracuse. Taught at the Women's University in St. Louis with Taxile Doat in the teens.
Maria Longworth Nichols Storer, founder of Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, 
Mary Chase Perry Stratton founder of Pewabic Pottery in Detroit
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sara-galner-saturday-evening-girls-and-paul-revere-pottery
Sara Gainer and the Saturday Evening Girls and the Paul Revere Pottery  on Boston

Carlo Zauli (Faenza-Italy)
Prof.Dr. Gaetano Ballardini (Faenza)
Hans Coper (Germany)
Robin Hopper (Canada)
Eva Zeisel (Hungary and USA)
Otto Lindig (Germany)
Horst Kerstan (Germany)
Edmund de Waal (UK)
Roberto Lugo (USA) "this machine kills hate"...
Lotte Reimers (Germany)
 
Will think of more.....

A strand about the state of Art Education in Aesthetics led to naming important ceramic artists that are historically significant or influenced the ceramic art or technology. To begin with . . .  Marcia listed:  Yanagi, author of the "Unknown Craftsman", Bernard Leach, Hamada, and the young Rudy Autio and Peter Voulkos  Others were Beatrice Wood and Otto Heino,  Lucy Rie, Charles Fergus Binns, Edward Orton Jr,George E. Ohr  , Don Reitz, Johann Friedrich Böttger. One of my favorites as far as influencing the use of the extruder, slips and multilayered slip and glaze was John Glick.
 
Add to the list, name a few. 
 
 
best,
Pres
 

Learning to throw does take a lot of practise. AN instructor can only do so much. I'd say it takes hours /week of practice to get it. Michael Cardew said it takes 7 years before the level of mastering the skill. It is like playing a musical instrument. It takes focus and practice.
 
Marcia