QotW: When looking for Ceramics related reading material, do you look for technique\, guided process, aesthetic, or historic related reading?

[Pres]

Hi folks, 

I have a new question for you this week, involving reading.

QotW: When looking for Ceramics related reading material, do you look for technique\, guided process, aesthetic, or historic related reading?

In my earlier days, when learning how to throw, and make pieces, I would often select suck up any reading material I could on technique. Looking for all of the ways to throw, trim, assemble and anything else. I was voracious in my perusal of Ceramics Monthly, and then when Pottery Making came out it was my new favorite. I have always been more about technique,  figuring I could figure out the process of how to make something. I got tired of reading someone else's analysis of an artists work early on. To me work speaks for itself. What I see and feel if anything is up to me. However, when it comes to histories I enjoy the progress of an idea through history, and the migration of a process through the parts of the world. It is amazing how much we have learned from other cultures about ceramics, and even how much we have lost from other cultures as we displaced them. Truly fascinating.

So once again, I will ask

  QotW: When looking for Ceramics related reading material, do you look for technique\, guided process, aesthetic, or historic related reading?

best,

Pres

[Chilly]

In my early days, I read whatever I could get from the local library, or was available in the pottery room at the local community centre.

 

Now, I'm more choosy, but most of my reading is this forum, and the rabbit holes (links) provided by everyone here.

[Denice]

If I have a interest in a technique that I haven't tried yet I will check it out video's on-line first and make sure it is something I want to delve deeper into.   My next step is to start investigating books on-line on the subject.   I will start out with one or two books and may order more later.   Our local library stopped expanding it's art book collection,  they said not that many people checked them out.   I don,t mind buying books,  no one would write them if people didn't purchase them.     Denice

[Pres]

Excellent points @Chilly & @Denice as electronic mediums do seem to be replacing books in hand. I also believe that some of us have become lazy, looking for an answer to a specific question instead of researching material for the answer. When you have a forum, it is easy to go there and post "What does cone mean?" Than to research it. I have often seen questions that I wondered how much the poster thought about it before asking.  At the same time, I believe that videos of technique certainly give more information than a description or a series of pictures. One example here is a pulling technique that one of my students has adopted that inverts the right hand on the outside to make the pull. . . I tried it, not for me, but he uses it constantly with good success. 

I rely on my library, and hope to have all of the books out before Christmas again.

 

best,

Pres

[Mark C.]

I'm heading the other way-still subscribe to CM since the early 70s although at times I wonder why-

dropped pottery making as it aims more for beginners and I got little from it.I donated all my issues to a local fire arts center

These days it more technical reading for me-Kilns and materials-glazes-high fire reduction and salt

less about technique these days for me

I am no longer expanding library and will down size it in next year or two.

 

 

[Denice]

I also love buying historical books about art.  When I find them at a estate sale it is like finding a treasure trove,  they are coming down in price now because younger people just want to look it up on the internet.   I have quit buying so many books recently ,   having  two estate sales after  my mother in-laws death I realized I need to downsize my stuff.    Denice