At Man Tiques Limited, there is a more unusual selection of late 19th-century German steins, among them one selling for $385 - a cobalt blue-and-gray stoneware piece, bearing the image of the Munich child.

The tall stoneware pieces by James Jansma, who works in Princeton, might remind viewers of Giacometti's figures.

Honorable mentions went to Thom Joyce of Argos for "This World-This Circus," created from found welded steel, and to John Maffucci from Tallix for an untitled stoneware piece.

Frank Bosco from Jersey City has an intriguing stoneware piece that looks like a tangle of separate skeins of ceramic with purple glaze.

One 26-inch-tall gray stoneware piece from the Kaya Kingdom glows with red and orange patches of color and is exuberantly shaped with a narrow neck, flared mouth and pointed base.

Toshiko Takaezu's stoneware piece "Closed Form" looks ritualistic at the end of what is known as the Red Garden.

Among the newer forms she has produced are "moons," spherical stoneware pieces about two feet in diameter, sometimes explosively colored, at other times so subtly nuanced that their presence borders on the ghostly.

Two stoneware pieces that passed through the youngsters' hands ended up in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of American Folk Art.

Individual potters whose work is displayed include Roman Blanchard of Bakersfield, who hand-throws stoneware pieces such as mugs ($7), covered jars, honey pots and pitchers in blue with a white maple tree wax relief ($12.50).

The durable and functional creamy white and blue stoneware pieces are unique and easily identifiable.