Janet Koplos is an honorary fellow of the American Craft Council and a contributing editor to Art in America magazine. She is coauthor of Makers: A History of American Studio Craft and author of Contemporary Japanese Sculpture, among many other books, articles, and reviews.

“In What Makes a Potter, art critic Janet Koplos zooms around the contemporary American pottery scene profiling eclectic, beguiling potters with divergent design philosophies and traditions who've fashioned meaningful, sustainable lives. Introductory chapters illuminate the history of American functional pottery, describe the life and work of noted masters, and tease out "the philosophy that justifies handmaking in the post-industrial age." They are a lesson in critiquing and appreciating pottery, using the vocabulary of its aesthetics and imparting understanding of different materials, methods, decoration, and firing techniques. This makes the book a valuable reference for collectors, writers, and curators, too. The pottery community proves diverse: Japanese American Ayumi Horie sells her decal-ornamented ware and fund raises for charitable and political causes from her rural studio in Maine; Iranian-born Sanam Emami has an extensive academic career and uses computer modeling to design complex motifs and forms. Still other potters create large-scale pots geared for galleries and collector commissions or focus on more affordable utilitarian pottery and enjoy interactions with a larger market at craft shows and studio storefronts. What Makes a Potter is an informative study of an engaging group of artists in love with the lives that they have handmade.” - Foreword Magazine, Rachel Jagareski, Nov 2019

"The diversity of pathways into the role of potter is fascinating and this book is the best source for revealing that diversity. It’s clearly the product of a long period of intensive work…I’d like to say that this book is the best of its kind but as far as I know, it’s the only one of its kind." -- Ceramics Art + Perception

"There is no better-qualified writer to take on this subject; she has lived with handmade pots for five decades, written more than 2500 articles for some two dozen periodicals, and received awards for her critical writing...I have never read a pottery book that inspired so much underlining and marginalia; so much curiosity enhancement and gratification in learning the stories of fifty potters, many of whom had been "just names."...This book should be must reading for anyone who cares the least bit about making pots to the best of their ability; who wants to know the human sources behind the pots they use (or wish they did) and what it took to make those pots exist in the world. -- Studio Potter Magazine