Category Archives: magpie

I said this when I visited the Archaelogical Museum in Athens, and I still believe it’s true: if you want to see the finest examples of Attic Greek ceramics, don’t look in Greece.* They were begged, bought, or stolen from the country in the colonial period and now sit in Northern European museums–such as Berlin’sContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Altes Museum”

Edmund de Waal includes an extended account of the development of “red porcelain” or Meissen red wares in White Road, but the upshot is that on the way to discovering a formula for a European white porcelain, Böttger and his assistants in Augustus the Strong’s kilns in Meissen first discovered a way to reliably produceContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Meissen “Red Porcelain””

I’ve learned a lot about these ceramic traditions on my trip to Athens, and they’re really special. A little historical background: these were the two cultures that preceded and most heavily influenced Classical Athenian culture. The Cyclades are a flock of Aegean islands fenced in by Greece, Turkey, and Crete, the mythical home of theContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Mycenean and Cycladean Wares”

I thought I would go through a few more ceramics and potters in my personal collection after I did John Almeda. Charles Voltz was a French potter who set up shop in the 1950s in the renowned region of Vallauris, famous first for its range of native clays and later for the ceramicists who cameContinue reading “Ceramics Saturdays: Charles Voltz”