Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Great Place for Books

We were in Asheville this past weekend and I had a chance to roam the aisles of Highwater Clay and visit some fun places. I got lost looking for Piedmont Paper, which is a distributor of packing materials and boxes, and turned around in the parking lot of The Screen Door, which was well off the beaten path. It was an enormous building divided up into vendor areas, so there were a lot of antiques, artist work, and some stuff that some people might term "junk". I got caught up looking at old wooden circles, blocks and spindles, wondering what I could use them for but was able to pry myself away to visit the large book area. Sorry there are no links for you, but I am very short on time this am.
I came away with a copy of Pioneer Pottery by Mick Cardew and a book by Richard Zakin that highlighted 36 potters, one of which was Bruce Cochrane. Of course, there was more--a book of beautiful watercolors of fish, an art deco decoration book and a book on making musical instruments out of gourds.
Even though the gourds, fish and art deco don't seem to have anything in common with pottery, there is actually a theme. I want to make some musical instruments EVENTUALLY out of clay and this book was a jumping off point. I also want to do more fish decor inside of some platters, so inspiration was needed, and I want to make stamps for texture and saw some good things in the art deco book.
And you just thought I had a book compulsion! Well, you're probably right, but it's important to justify your purchases.......Off to check the kiln!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

They say that people who buy books will live a long time...cause they have to have time to read all those books!
-pb

Vicki Gill, potter said...

I should be guaranteed at least 200 more years!