Homer, Ceramics, and Marketplace Anxieties

This reading discussed the history of a ceramic marketplace, explaining how ceramics has only enjoyed a specific fine arts market for the last fifty years. Before that, ceramic arts have been wedged into craft or decorative arts markets. During the 18th century, ceramics only gained recognition within a decorative arts context, with collectors gathering porcelain objects as a demonstration of wealth rather than artistic merit, or antique dealers hopping onto the "vase mania" created by Josiah Wedgewood.

The nineteenth century witnessed several important moments of ceramic advocacy, such as the Arts and Crafts Movement which promoted pottery as a  rebuttal to the low quality industrial product. However, even this movement had its problems; for instance, the "dirty work" of pottery (clay mixing, throwing, kiln firing, etc.) was all completed by "nameless labourers," while the fine artists recognized within the field only completed the plans, sketches, and china painting of pots. In the early 19th century, potters managed to make a living in industry, or by adopting secondary careers catering to tourism or teaching (which often became a primary occupation).

In the 20th century, studio artist Bernard Leach sought to establish pottery as an accessible and affordable art form, but his business plan was full of fallacy, hypocrisy, idealism, and dishonesty. Where he failed in making ceramics accessible, he succeeded in establishing unhealthy expectations that all pots be inexpensive, causing more damage than good to the marketplace. Only in the 1950s did ceramic artists begin to establish their own fine arts market, caused by the academic rebellion by artists like Peter Voulkos. Even so, many potters found themselves existing as part of an insular, self generating economy in which potential fine artists busied themselves teaching instead of making an asserted effort to make and sell art. In the last 50 years, ceramics has enjoyed larger economic growth and acknowledgement as a fine art, but it still lacks the prestige and market value of many painters. It is therefore important for ceramic artists to advocate for themselves in the marketplace.

In order to make it as an artist, a potter must "give up their cherished culture of amateurism," abandon the undiscriminating idealism popularized by Leach, and refute the privileged opposition to involvement with a market economy which is often provided by ceramic artists with other means of income. There is no such thing as a starving artist; fruitless struggles to create art will eventually lead one to take on a new profession and cease to exist as an artist. Advocating for the value of one's art is necessary to sustain ceramics as a legitimate form of fine art.