Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Clay Works: Earthen Sculpture in South Asia

Clay Works: Earthen Sculpture in South Asia

Bean, Susan S.

Hardcover

Art HistoryIndian & South Asian ArtSculpting

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1350505048
ISBN13: 9781350505049
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Published: Feb 5 2026
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.70
Height: 0.91 Width: 6.11 Depth: 9.31
Language: English

Until recently, polychrome terracruda (air-dried clay) sculpture has been virtually absent from exhibitions and scholarship on South Asian art history. This is beginning to change.
As early Indic texts and accounts published in the last few centuries attest, this malleable and dynamic medium has played a fundamental role in the region's visual arts.

This boundary-breaking book traces the longstanding interactions between clay, sculptors, and their clienteles; shaping and reshaping religious practices, social formations, and aesthetic values across the region. The first chapter explores the history of terracruda as artistic medium; the following two chapters present long trajectories of practice in the Buddhist Himalayas and the Deccan; and the latter two chapters offer insight into terracruda sculpture's role in cultural transformations-the 18th and 19th-century artistic florescence in Bengal, and British colonial displays of terracruda figures at international exhibitions. Employing an ecological approach that recognizes substances, things, and objects as players in the world, Clay Works celebrates the contributions of clay's supple plasticity and ephemerality and brings a much-needed and timely perspective to South Asian art history.

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