This book investigates how British contemporary artists who work with
clay have managed, in the space of a single generation, to take ceramics
from niche-interest craft to the pristine territories of the
contemporary art gallery. This development has been accompanied (and
perhaps propelled) by the kind of critical discussion usually reserved
for the 'higher' discipline of sculpture. Ceramics is now encountering
and colliding with sculpture, both formally and intellectually. Laura
Gray examines what this means for the old hierarchies between art and
craft, the identity of the potter, and the character of a discipline
tied to a specific material but wanting to participate in critical
discussions that extend far beyond clay.