By Carol E. Mayer. Anvil Press/Burnaby Art Gallery, 127 pp, $32.95, softcover

In the introduction to her fine book honouring senior West Coast ceramicist Tam Irving, Carol E. Mayer recollects the "dearth of critical literature" concerning contemporary ceramics two decades ago. She also cites the "interminable art/craft debate" she encountered when she became interested in the field. The first condition has improved, she writes, but as for the second, hierarchical differences still exist among high art, applied art, and craft.

Irving's work as a production potter and his continuing creation of mould-made and wheel-thrown vessels complicates his escape from the low end of the ladder, despite the distinctive, sturdy beauty of his wares. Much of Irving's recent output occupies the realm of sculpture, albeit, of the formalist variety. The debate now might be not so much high art versus craft, but modernism versus postmodernism. In contemporary critical discourse, it is not the what that matters as much as the why.

In surveying Irving's oeuvre, Mayer establishes personal, social, and cultural contexts for his work. She cites his early influences, including Henry Moore, Jean Arp, and Isamu Noguchi, and examines various ceramic movements that have coincided with his career. She also discusses his avid interest in finding and employing local materials in the creation of his characteristic celadon and tenmoku glazes. "I derive a great deal of pleasure from knowing that the glaze that I have on this pot is made from these materials," Irving says. "I can visualize the actual outcroppings."

Among the most compelling of Irving's works is the series of still-lifes he created between 1994 and 2006. Mayer explains their inspiration in the still-life paintings of Giorgio Morandi and William Bailey. She also charts the evolution of Irving's components from simple vessels to abstracted figures, whose twisting and cavorting are more about theatre and psychology than the deconstruction of art history.

Mayer, a senior curator at the UBC Museum of Anthropology, has produced an immensely readable and informative text and Irving's ceramic art is also well served by the book's handsome design and photography. This is an admirable production, for this or any other season.