Author Description

The 2015 volume of Ceramics in America contains two extensive articles that examine ceramic topics from the American West. The rst reports on an interdisciplinary, multiyear study of the architectural tiles, bricks, and domestic pottery produced in Alta California under Spanish control from 1779 to 1849. The use of sophisticated scientific analysis combined with historical and archaeological research and melded with public demonstrations of the making and ring processes should serve as a model for other regional ceramic investigations. Another article is devoted to a thirty-year ethnography of noted Zuni potter Randy Nahohi and his immediate family members. Illustrated with beautiful object and historical photography, readers will witness the journey of a ceramic artist seeking to be innovative in the world of Zuni traditional pottery. In the third and nal article, readers are not only invited into the inner workings of the early-twentieth-century dealings between American industrialist Charles Lang Freer and Chinese art impresario C. T. Loo, but also given an interesting perspective on the dynamics involved. Now in its fteenth year of publication, Ceramics in America is considered the journal of record for historical ceramics scholarship in the American context and is intended for collectors, historical archaeologists, curators, decorative arts students, social historians, and contemporary potters.