Creole Clay

Beautifully illustrated with colorful photographs, this volume traces the living heritage of locally made pottery in the English-speaking Caribbean. Patricia Fay combines her own expertise in making ceramics with two decades of interviews, visits, and participant-observation in the region, providing a perspective that is technically informed and anthropologically rigorous. Describing the pottery created in Saint Lucia, Nevis, Antigua, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, and Guyana, Fay reveals that the traditional skills of local potters are inherited from diverse points of origin in Africa, Europe, India, and the Americas. She explores the challenges that lie ahead for this utilitarian art form as the tourist industry expands, showing how heritage ceramics exemplify the continuing Caribbean encounter between old and new, local and global, and traditional and contemporary.