Pottery books for Christmas

Ive been enjoying reading one of my excellent Christmas presents:

Functional Pottery: Form and Aesthetic in Pots of Purpose

I've checked out Robin Hopper's videos on form and proportion from the library before, and was happy to see much of the same material expanded upon in this book.

This book covers all kinds of kitchenware, plates, mugs, bowls, goblets, butter dishes, pitchers, teapots. He also covers proportions and esthetics of form, along with praticalities like center of gravity, weight, and making things 'fit' the human body for use.

He also has a broad definition of 'funtional' pottery that isn't just dinner service, but includes decorative ware that serves as objects of beauty and contemplation. 

New blogs and old friends

Google Reader had a suggestion of a blog I might be interested in

http://claycraft.blogspot.com

So I was browsing through and found this post about my long-lost first pottery instructor who moved to the other side of the country:

http://claycraft.blogspot.com/2008/11/jamie-kirkpatrick-display.html

You never really know what or who is going to pop up out of the past on the internet these days. And if you haven't given Google Reader a try yet, check it out. I really don't know how I'd keep all the blogs I follow manageable without it.

Pottery section now on Alltop

For those of you that don't know about it, Alltop.com is a nifty blog aggregator that groups blogs by topic or area of interest. They generally strive to have the most popular blogs as determined by their own ranking criteria.

Within each topic, they list their top blogs, along with the last five post titles in an easy to scan 'magazine' format.  Very easy to lose several hours exploring....

The Great news is  -- They now have a Pottery Topic.

Congrats to Jen Mecca, Emily Murphy, and Bulldog Pottery for making the first cut! You need to go and get yourselves a badge for your blogs here: http://badges.alltop.com/

Go check them out...  the more traffic they get from all us potters the better. It might get them to expand the number of pottery feeds in our section!

What color green are you?

All of this glaze testing going on out in the pottery blogosphere got me thinking about color --

You Are Teal Green

You are a one of a kind, original person. There's no one even close to being like you. Expressive and creative, you have a knack for making the impossible possible. While you are a bit offbeat, you don't scare people away with your quirks. Your warm personality nicely counteracts and strange habits you may have.

What Color Green Are You?

Words of wisdom for artists and other creatives

Here's a little gem I found going through the old posts from the Red Deer College'sArt Blog

The Incomplete Manifesto for Growth:

http://www.brucemaudesign.com/incomplete_manifesto.html

Some of my favorites include 

4) Love your experiments.

6) Capture accidents.

34) Make mistakes faster

 and 

26) Don't enter awards competitions - 'Just dont. It's not good for you'

Check it out for a goldmine of wisdom and sanity.