Book Launch

Friday, Sept. 18th at 4:30 pm

The Alfred Ceramic Art Museum is delighted to host a book launch of multiple new releases:

Art historian Ezra Shales will be on site talking about his new book Pitchers of American Life: Art Within Reach published by Bloomsbury. Like his previous book, The Shape of Craft (Reaktion 2017), the content pulls into dialogue art-craft-design silos in provocative and accessible ways and dwells on the importance and pleasures of tactile learning directly from artifacts. From the title pun on 'pictures' to its 200 color images, Pitchers of American Life foregrounds humor, play and finger pokes as ways to navigate American history and cultural identity.

Alfred University's own Meghen Jones will talk about Path of the Teabowl, a monumental book she edited in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name here at ACAM. Originating in China and developed in Korea and Japan, the teabowl has been a special category of ceramics for more than a thousand years. Path of the Teabowl illuminates the historical, geographic, stylistic, and conceptual trajectories of this iconic genre, tracing its evolution from the black and brown glazed bowls used by Song Dynasty Buddhist monks to the avant-garde explorations of contemporary artists worldwide.

The museum will also be launching its own most recent catalog: History: A Legacy in Motion. Alfred Ceramic Art 1900-2025, showcasing the artist-teachers that helped to establish and continue to maintain Alfred's reputation.  

We will also be having a sale on all museum catalogs! Come out to celebrate our fantastic publications.