Warren Mackenzie: An American Potter - Hardcover

Lewis, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 4770015283 ISBN 13: 9784770015280

Publisher: Kodansha USA Inc, 1991

Synopsis

Fifth in Kodansha's award-winning series on American craftspersons. Warren MacKenzie has spent his life working in a wide-ranging folkcraft tradition that draws inspiration from the great potter Bernard Leach in Britain and the mingei movement of postwar Japan.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

MacKenzie's pottery, made on his Minnesota farm, contains references to the flasks and storage jars of pioneering homesteaders. Yet he is no simple rustic potter. As an apprentice to famous Cornwall ceramicist Bernard Leach in the 1950s, MacKenzie, now 67, absorbed the influences of Japan's mingei movement, in which his mentor was steeped. Mingei (or folkcraft) strived for beauty born of unself-conscious humility, and MacKenzie's work fulfills this ideal in its sensuous enjoyment of spontaneous runs and crazes, its exuberant finger wipes, drips and splotches, its textures made with unlikely tools. In this lavishly illustrated retrospective, Lewis, a Pittsburgh architect and urban designer, decodes the cultural cross-fertilization in MacKenzie's pottery, with influences ranging from ancient Greece to Mayan and early Christian rituals. This album offers a rare personal glimpse of a well-known craftsperson who has assiduously avoided the spotlight.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

MacKenzie is one of the best American potters working today. This warm, sympathetic biography by a close friend follows his career through his study at the Art Institute of Chicago, his apprenticeship with a master (Bernard Leach), the many years of balancing the demands of university teaching with family responsibilities and work in a rural Minnesota studio, and, finally, his retirement from teaching into full-time work as a potter. More than just the biography of one man, this book is a portrait of the lifestyle of the successful artist in contemporary America. The illustrations are excellent and give us a good overview of MacKenzie's work. Highly recommended for art collections.
-Constance Ashmore Fairchild, Univ. of Illinois Lib., Urbana-Champaign
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kodansha USA Inc
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 4770015283
• ISBN 13: 9784770015280
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192