中文简介：

本书介绍了伦敦维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆（V&A）收藏的20世纪和当代英国陶瓷，以及这些作品与其他艺术形式和整个文化之间的对话。文章提到了一些当代英国陶艺家，如Rachel Kneebone、Grayson Perry和Edmund de Waal，并将他们放在更广泛的国际艺术团体中考虑。此外，文章还强调了陶器实验的重要性，以及20世纪中后期陶艺家的工作和他们对陶器作为一种激进和当代艺术实践的重塑。文章列举了几位陶艺家，如Bernard Leach、Michael Cardew、Lucie Rie、Hans Coper、Alan Caiger-Smith等，介绍了他们开创性的方法和对形式重新思考的影响，并指出这些陶艺家的参考点来自于东亚、非洲、古地中海和中东等地区的传统。V&A高级策展人艾伦·格雷夫斯（Alun Graves）向所有陶瓷爱好者——收藏家、从业者、历史学家和对现当代艺术和手工艺品感兴趣的人——提供了历史背景，记录了这种媒介向一种表达性的、有时是干涉主义的艺术形式的转变。

英文简介：

A magnificent catalogue of the V&A's collection of twentieth-century and contemporary British ceramics.

Contemporary ceramicists working in Britain, including Rachel Kneebone, Grayson Perry and Edmund de Waal, are part of a broader international group of artists experimenting with clay, considering how it intersects and works in dialogue with other art forms and with culture at large. Recent experimentation with the medium owes much to the rapid evolution of ceramics into an expanded field, and to the work of mid- to late 20th-century potters and their reinvention of ceramics as a radical and contemporary art practice. The pioneering methods and rethinking of form in the work of exponents such as Bernard Leach, Michael Cardew, Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and Alan Caiger-Smith – whose reference points were drawn from East Asia, Africa, the ancient Mediterranean and the Middle East as much as from their own heritage – continue to influence and inspire contemporary makers. In his introductory essay, Alun Graves, Senior Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, provides all lovers of ceramics – collectors, practitioners, historians and those interested in modern and contemporary art and crafts – with the historical context, documenting the medium's shift into an expressive, and sometimes interventionist, art form.