Description
A contemporary guide to creating beautiful, translucent ceramics.
Porcelain and bone china are known and prized for their fineness, delicacy, and translucence, but can be difficult to use and pose particular problems for the potters and ceramic artists using it.
In Luminous Clay, bone china expert Angela Mellor aims to demystify these clays, encouraging more ceramists to explore these exciting mediums. The book explains a new way of working with bone china, a clay body created by the addition of bone ash to porcelain. With the introduction of paper pulp the clay is transformed, allowing freedom of expression through hand-building that was previously impossible and allowing the potter to take full advantage of its whiteness and translucency. Gorgeous photography throughout demonstrates how ceramicists around the world are able to create extraordinary pieces that ripple and bend light.
Mellor covers the main methods of working with bone china, including mould-making and slipcasting, along with techniques that have allowed her to play with the transparency and surface of clay. Decorating methods, firing procedures and electrical lighting to maximise translucency are also explored along with stunning images and methods used by other ceramists.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- Conforms with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec v1.1
- WCAG level AA
- WCAG v2.2 compliant
- Accessibility request contact
Support for non-visual reading
- No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
- Has alternative text descriptions for images
Visual adjustments
Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified (font, spacing, colors)
Navigation
- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
- All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
- Content is enhanced with ARIA roles to optimize organization and facilitate navigation
- Purposes of all links are made clear
Rich content
Language tagging provided
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. A brief history of porcelain
2. Early work and research
3. Methodology
4. Paperclay
5. Inspiration and design
6. Lighting
7. My work since 2006
Bibliography
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Index
Product details
| Published | Jan 15 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 192 |
| ISBN | 9781789943900 |
| Imprint | Herbert Press |
| Illustrations | Over 150 colour illustrations throughout |
| Series | New Ceramics |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Reviews
Related Titles
