SUZANNE TOURTILLOTT

What motivates and inspires the finest porcelain artists working today? Forty internationally celebrated masters reveal their secrets, explaining just how they work with this incredibly demanding ceramic material, prized for its pristine beauty. Pure white and wonderfully delicate, porcelain is what clay potters usually graduate to only after years of honing their skills. This diverse collection showcases the results of that dedication, and the versatility is simply breathtaking: Claire Curneen presents highly emotive, tactile figurative forms. Edmund de Waal's elegant celadon site-specific vessel installations are renowned for their meditative presence. Harlan House's finely carved vessels take inspiration from nature's organic forms, while Bodil Manz's eggshell porcelain cylinders are so translucent that you can sometimes discern light and shadow passing through the walls of his pots.

A visual directory of 500 contemporary ceramic jugs

In the hands of an expert ceramist, the once-simple cup can become an extraordinary work of art--as these 500 magnificent examples so beautifully prove. The exciting pieces come from an international array of artists, each with a unique perspective. The stylishly varied collection has a little bit of everything: the cups range from handbuilt to wheel-thrown, practical to sculptural, round to square. Benjamin Schulman's "Stacked Teacup Set" takes a strictly functional approach, while Heather O'Brien's "Dessert Cups on Stand" focuses on aesthetic form rather than usefulness. Annette Gates' "Espresso Shot Cups with Rubies" has a surface design of simple abstract lines and dots of glaze and jewels. Some are whimsical, others starkly conceptual. Every one is a treat for the eye.