AMERICAN

POTTERS TODAY
GARTH CLARK AND OLIVER WATSON

VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

 AMERICA
~ *T'TERS TODAY

TELEPE
GARTH CLARK AND OLIVER WATSON

AMERICAN
POTTERS TODAY

An exhibition of American Studio Pottery

organised by the Ceramics Department, Victoria and Albert Museum,
in conjunction with Garth Clark, Los Angeles,
May 14th- August 3ist 1986
 GF Lip RARY
eS eC

|_ALTON COL’
ety 8

Published by the
Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986
Designed by
Grundy & Northedge Designers
Printed in Great Britain by
Precision Press
ISBN 185177 052 6
Front cover photograph
‘Two Ladies Averting the Angry Swallow’
Rudy Autio (Catalogue No. 2).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dr. Oliver Watson has shown a determination

to find a way around every problem thrown up
by this exhibition and catalogue. It is Oliver
too, who at break-neck speed has compiled the
catalogue entries and biographies of artists
which should help give this book permanent
importance as a work of reference. He was
helped in this task by other members of the
Department of Ceramics, in particular, by
Amanda Fielding. The excellent photographs
were taken by Christine Smith; Philip
Marszalek is responsible for the design and
installation of the exhibition.

We are of course particularly grateful to Garth

Clark who suggested and arranged the
exhibition and gift and to Alice Hohenberg of
his New York branch; to Helen Drutt of the
Drutt Gallery in Philadelphia and to a whole
network ofdonors throughout the United
States, as well as to the British American Arts
Association, through whom the donations are
being made.

JV.G. Mallet
CONTENTS

FOREWORD
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
THE COLOUR PLATES
THE CATALOGUE
INDEX OF DONORS
FOREWORD

iyhe collection of American ceramics shown in this Exhibition is

+ tobe made a permanent gift to this Museum. It is a rare pleasure for
us to be indebted by munificence on this scale; indebted not just by the
monetary value, though this is considerable, but also by the amount of
goodwill, thought, time, energy and enthusiasm that has made it possible.
I need not stress how important we judge the work of contemporary
American potters to be in an international context. We have long felt it a
major failing in own collections that we have been unable to represent
them in anything like an adequate manner. This donation, which as the
catalogue goes to press has just been confirmed, makes the Victoria and
Albert Museum, at a stroke, Europe's most important showcase for the
achievements of Trans-Atlantic ceramic artists. Nowhere else can be
seen a group of up-to-date wide-ranging work of such high quality.
The list of people to whom we owe thanks is long. Garth Clark has
patiently and devotedly nurtured the scheme over several years. The
British American Arts Association has entrusted the collection to our
care. Helen Drutt has contributed her time, expertise and enthusiasm,
and Alice Hohenberg’s help has been invaluable. The Heinz Foundation,
through the Associates of the V&A, has generously funded the travel and
exhibition costs. Last, but by no means least, we are indebted to the
donors of the individual pieces. Their generosity has deprived them of
much loved objects, but has enriched our collections, and thereby our
British and International public. For this contribution to Anglo-American
friendship and understanding, we thank them:
Betty Asher Rena Bransten, Spencer and Carmine Browne, G. L. Bryan,
The Mudd Carr Gallery Garth Clark, Ronald James Cunningham, Anne
Davis, Mark Del Vecchio, Mr and Mrs Del Vecchio, Mrs Richard Devore,
Helen Drutt, Ruth Duckworth, Rochelle Feinstein, Maria Friedrich,
Laurence and Ray Gray Jay and Yvonne Gustin, Philip and Elsie Heller
Mark and Fredda Hindenburg, Daniel Jacobs, Wayne Kuwada, Vicky
L. Lidman, Fred and Estelle Marer Mr and Mrs Robert McClure, Victoria
Munroe, Marilyn Pappas, Mr and Mrs John WPickett, Bill Podmore,
Doris L. Rigg, Susie Schlesinger Frances Senska, Marie C. Smith, Gwen
Laurie and Howard Smits, Marie Steinheimer Edward Swerdlin, Mr and
Mrs Edwin R. Thomas, Jessie S. Wilber Hope and Jay Yampol.

Sir Roy Strong

Director, Victoria and Albert Museum

6
PREFACE

i n March 1980 I was invited to Wichita to lecture at the Annual

_ Conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic
Arts. Nothing this side of the Atlantic can prepare one for such an
occasion. A thousand potters from all over the United States milled round
the foyers of the conference centre: greeting one another; watching
keen-faced salesmen demonstrate equipment and materials; filtering into
lecture-halls where eloquent potters gave “slide presentations” and
spoke with practiced candour about their philosophies of clay, of Life.
Reputations, I felt, were being evaluated by those thoughtful audiences of
bearded men, those plump and pleasing girls sitting silent in the dark.
The ceramics I heard discussed at Wichita were mostly by artists
unfamiliar to an Englishman like myself. Fortunately, however, I had
taken the precaution of studying in advance Garth Clark’s A Century of
Ceramics in the United States. | was therefore delighted when, at one of
the social events accompanying the Conference, someone introduced me
to Garth himself. We talked of the desirability of having recent American
work better represented in the Victoria and Albert, though having
become aware of the high prices prevailing in the U.S.A. Iwas perplexed
as to how this might be achieved. I had reckoned without the proverbial
generosity of the Americans.
I returned to England. Months passed and then, late in1981, Garth Clark
visited us at the Victoria and Albert's Department of Ceramics. He had
set up a Gallery in Los Angeles dealing in modern studio ceramics, and
made the exciting suggestion that some of the collectors he knew might
be persuaded to present works for exhibition in the Victoria and Albert
and for eventual incorporation in the Museum's permanent collections —
a suggestion enthusiastically taken up by my colleague, Dr. Oliver
Watson. This present exhibition is the final result.
Why, you may ask, is it so important that modern studio ceramics from
the U.S.A. should be represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum's
collections? Have we not excellent potters of our own? To the second
question the answer is of course that we have potters who need fear no
comparisons and who are indeed avidly collected in the United States
and elsewhere. But the Victoria and Albert's collections of modern work,
as of ancient, have since the purchases made from the Great Exhibition
of1851 never been narrowly British in scope. The aim has always been to
gather and exhibit the best of contemporary productions, wherever they
are being made. Since the 1950s American studio pottery has been

7
Neen nee

attracting increased international interest and respect. It is important

that our potters, our general public, should be able to judge this work in
the original and from good examples.
To his credit the late Hugh Wakefield of the Victoria and Albert's former
Department of Circulation assembled in 1966 a travelling exhibition re-
presenting the work of twenty American studio potters, and at least some
of the work from that exhibition joined the Museum's permanent collec-
tion. Unfortunately, although works by Rudy Autio, Peter Voulkos, Karen
Karnes, Jerry Rothman, Paul Soldner and William Wyman were included
in the 1966 show, all those potters were represented merely by borrowed
pieces which had to be returned when the show ceased to tour. Karen
Karnes we have purchased in the meanwhile, but the other artists men-
tioned will only now, twenty years later, enter the Museum. It is high time.

We have given Garth Clark a free hand in making his selection,

stipulating only that no works more than about three ft. high or wide
should be acquired. This restriction was dictated partly by the limited
space available to us for display or storage and by the need to keep our
ceramics clean and unbroken by displaying them in glazed cases.
However, the restriction in scale also arose from a positive mistrust of
“museum” ceramics that have no place in a world inhabited by people,
children and dogs. Breakable work that would occupy the entire floor of a
living-room is not for us.

Smaller ceramic sculpture was not ruled out, though it should be

remembered that modern sculpture as such is in London the concern not
of the V&A but of the Tate Gallery. Already at the time of the Circulation
Department's exhibition in the 1960s Hugh Wakefield could write of some
of the pieces shown: “In these, ideas of function and usefulness are
discredited, and it is often difficult to distinguish the pottery from
ceramic sculpture except on the ground that the former has internal as
well as external shape”. The word ‘vessel’, that crops up in some recent
statements by American ceramic artists, reflects a continuing concern
for internal shape and volume even after the abandonment of function.
On the one hand it may have been recognised that a potentially good
vessel can very easily transgress an invisible frontier and become a
piece of sculpture and not necessarily a good one; on the other hand the
term ‘vessel’ is used to avoid the associations of the word ‘pot’, which
some American practioners of ceramics seem to find too limiting. Many
of the vessels in the present show ask to be judged not as pots but as
commentaries on the nature of pots. Though not restricted to vessels’
the exhibition deliberately leans in their direction, touching only lightly
either on useable pots or on purely sculptural ceramics.

Some of the work on show may prove hard for a British public to accept,
brought up as we have been on taboos established by the Arts and Crafts
movement. Yet I believe we have much to learn from the vigour of the
Americans, their unashamed eclecticism, their courage and their wil-
lingness to try their hands at anything. Now that this collection is on
British soil, we shall at least have no further excuse to praise or
condemn their work unseen.
J. V.G. Mallet

8
INTRODUCTION

| n 1876, a critic attending the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia

_ remarked that “American attempts at ceramic decoration are such as
to make the judicious grieve... (there was) nothing to even approach
the lower grades of European ware”.* This was a fair assessment.
Modern American achievement in the ancient art of pottery had been
slight. Ceramic manufacture at that time lacked any kind of national
character or individuality. Certainly it had no claim to be an art form. Yet
within the ruins of decorative excess in the Centennial were the first
flickers of a revolution that was, by 1950, to transform the role, form and
language of the humble pot in American and abroad.

ART POTTERY: THE EARLY YEARS 1876-1914

The first signs of individual energy in the field appeared in the same
Centennial Exposition. A group of young socialites from Cincinnati
exhibited china painted wares. Their exhibit passed without comment
but two of the Cincinnati china painters, Mary Louise McLaughlin
(1847-1939) and Maria Longworth Nichols (1849-1932), were to ignite the
rage in America for art pottery.

McLaughlin, impressed by Ernest Chaplet’s procés barbotine wares

from the Haviland Auteuil studio in Paris, began to experiment with
underglaze slip decoration. Working almost entirely by empiric experi-
ment, she not only discovered how to reproduce the Barbotine but also
sophisticated the process. Her discoveries became the foundation for a
type of decoration known as “Cincinnati Faience” which dominated
American art pottery for nearly four decades.

It was this technique that Maria Longworth Nichols adopted when she
opened her Rookwood Pottery in 1880. The first few years of the pottery
were somewhat amateurish. Nichols employed women decorators who
had had little art training and no pottery experience. Clara Chapman
Newton, a decorator at the Pottery and its secretary remembers how
Oscar Wilde, “that fashionable Disciple of the Aesthetic” responded to
the wares:

“T was not, even at that time, when the newspapers contained accounts
of his vagaries, prepared for the calla-lily leaf overcoat and the shrimp
pink necktie of the individual who was shuddering visibly over a vase
which he was pronouncing “too branchy”. The next day in his lecture Mr.
Wilde scored the pottery to the intense amusement of Mrs Nichols who

9
has a sense of humour and fully appreciated that artistically we had
much to learn”.?
In 1883 Nichols turned over management of the pottery to William Watts
Taylor and Rookwood surged ahead. One of the decorators, Laura Anne
Fry, had adapted a throat atomiser to apply slips on greenware — greatly
refining the appearance and finish of the works. It allowed for delicate
tonal grading of colors and was the first primitive use of air brushing in
the pottery studios. By1889 Rookwood had received a Gold Medal in the
Exposition Universelle in Paris and by 1900 had earned the Exposition’s
coveted Grand Prix. Fig. 1. Fig. 2. The American art pottery movement
was launched.

Women continued to play a major role in the development of art pottery

but as it became profitable more male decorators entered the field. By
1900 the art pottery market was large and commercially successful.
Although much has been made of American art pottery in recent years it
must be acknowledged that the wares produced were generally inferior
to comparable work in Europe. Rookwood displayed a certain bourgeois
genius. But for the greater part art pottery made a stronger contribution
to America’s commerce than that to its culture.

There are two notable exceptions — Adelaide Alsop Robineau (1865-1929)

and George E. Ohr (1857-1918). Both were studio potters rather than
manufacturers of art pottery. Robineau and Ohr are- unquestionably two
of the most important fin de siécle studio potters and belong in the
company of France's Chaplet, England's Martin Brothers and the other Fig. 1. Vase, made by Rookwood Pottery,
talented pioneers of the period. They were also the two polar extremes of decorated by Constance A. Baker, Cincinatti,
creative expression in their medium. 1899 (H.21”)
Victoria & Albert Museum
Robineau stressed the precious qualities of porcelain. As the editor of
Keramik Studio, a highly successful magazine for the tens of thousands
of china painting enthusiasts in the United States, she was extremely
well informed of international developments in art theory and style.
Largely self-taught, Robineau was producing exceptional porcelains
within two years of beginning her education as a studio potter. Her works
were powerful yet refined, with complex surfaces of matt and crystalline
glazes over elegant, incised modeiling.

In 1911 Robineau won the Grand Prize for a group of 55 porcelains at the
Turin Exposition. The judges were so impressed by the works that they
gave her the Diploma de Benemerenza in addition, declaring her
porcelains to be “the best in the world”. This was a heady achievement
for an unknown American woman artist who had only began her career
as a Studio potter nine years earlier.

George Ohr on the other hand stressed the expressionistic, sensual and
plastic qualities of pottery. He was a prophet in many ways. He
anticipated a radical plastic energy and irreverence that was to define
the American style in vessel making from the 1950's onwards. He threw
paper thin pots that were ruffled, pummelled, folded, twisted and
pinched into rhythmic, fluid shapes. Fig. 3. Long, sensual handles were
added to many of his pots.
10
 RA NTS ST TT POY Wa os Re 2 INL ELI BEIT fe DS Ee BEE, NREL LAER, SEER

But Ohr'’s success was not to come in his own lifetime. Ohr failed to be
accepted for severals reasons. Firstly he lacked the formal education
and middle-class background that characterised most of the members of
the Arts and Crafts Movement. His aesthetic was also too radical for his
time and his overt use of erotic symbolism was a little too pointed for the
cultured, nouveau riche collectors of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Ohr was forgotten long before his death in 1918. He did not attract
attention again until 1972 when an antique dealer found the greater part
of Ohr'’s oeuvre — seven to eight thousand pieces — stored in barrels of
sawdust in the family warehouse. Since then Ohr has become a major
inspiration to the contemporary potter and to other artists as well. In
1984 the American painter Jasper Johns presented a gentle homage to
potter, using his pots as central images in a memorable exhibition at the
Castelli Gallery in New York.
The two potters, Ohr and Robineau, symbolise the extremes that are still
current in American pottery. On the one hand the search for cultural
literacy and for technical tour de force as exemplified in the work of
Robineau and continued today in the work of artists such as Richard
Notkin and Adrian Saxe.
On the other hand the example of Ohr lives on in the raw edge of
expressionist energy. This dynamic, push-pull play with clay’s plastic
limits is of course the aesthetic for which American ceramics is better
known, finding a particular fluency in the hands of Peter Voulkos. But
between these two aesthetic poles are many other aesthetic values as
we shall explore.
Fig. 2. Vase, made by Rookwood Pottery,
decorated by Olga G. Reed, Cincinatti, 1900 BETWEEN THE WARS: THE WATERSHED YEARS 1918-1945
(H.31”). Shown in the Exposition Universelle, It is of interest to note the difference in character between American and
Paris 1900
Victoria & Albert Museum
British pottery during the period 1918-1945. Whereas Britain was domi-
nated by a slightly puritanical vision of pottery (either the utilitarianism
of Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew — or the minimalist Orientalism of
William Staite Murray) American potters tended to see themselves as
artists ina more liberated and more decorative sense. Utility was hardly
considered an issue at all. Vessels were made simply for the purpose of
expressing beauty. Craftsmanship was viewed much more informally
than in Britain and the Orient had yet to become a dominant cultural
Fig. 3. Bowl, made by George E. Ohr, Biloxi, influence.
Massachusetts,
Victoria & Albert Museum
The following comment, by Henry Varnum Poor (1887-1970), a leading
painter in New York during the 1920's and 1930's and one of the country’s
most talented potters, gives a sense of the difference in aesthetic spirit:
“My work has never been notable for technical perfection. In my first
show of pottery at the Montross Gallery about 1925, I enraged the
potters by showing warped and even kiln-cracked plates because |
considered them as works of art. Luckily the critics agreed; the show
was sold out and played some part in bringing American ceramics to
Nic
This irreverence in American ceramics towards the established values
of Western ceramics was to continue and become more pronounced. In
the years that followed a respect for fine craftsmanship, for technically
perfect works and also for the canons of good taste, were to diminish in
LS ITT ELS SN EIS OT A TOOTS NL LEO DE EEE]

11
or

favour of more vigorous and unconventional virtues; the display of

feelings, of energy and of intuitive manipulation of the clay.
However there were only hints of the coming expressionistic surge
during the 1920's and 1930's. Essentially this was a watershed period. It
produced the talents of Poor and of Maija Grotell and Glen Lukens but
was otherwise dominated by mawkish, lumpen imitations of the work of
France’ great Art Deco studio potters. :
Political unease in Europe brought some European potters to America
such as Getrud and Otto Natzler from Vienna and the Bauhauslers,
Franz and Marguerite Wildenhain. But the most important figure to
come from abroad was Thomas Samuel (Sam) Haile. His stay in the
United States was brief, from 1939 to 1944. But his impact was
electrifying. His insouciant approach to craftmanship and his stress on
issues of art, endeared him to the American ceramists. Writing on Haile
for his Memorial Exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art in1949,
the director Robert Richman wrote:
“To Americans conditioned to ceramic trivia — fish, gazelles and earrings
— the work of Sam Haile is a fresh wind. Here is pottery that is not only
perfection in form, and glazes miraculously controlled, but with decora-
tions like those of Greek and Etruscan pots. And always the simple
statement: this is a pot, this is a dish, this is a jug. Haile could throw
stoneware to the absolute limit of its yield point, achieving thereby a
rhythmic tension quite of the same essence as sculpture”.*

THE FIFTIES: THE OTIS EXPERIMENT

The Fifties is the complex decade of change in American ceramics and
the changes it wrought were to be felt internationally. At the heart of this
revolution in the vessel aesthetic was Peter Voulkos and the group of
talented “students” who gathered around him at the Otis Art Institute in
Los Angeles from 1954-1958. During these years Voulkos changed from a
maker of functional, stoneware pottery to a radical vessel maker, piling
up volumes on top of one another, gouging holes into the once sacro-
sanct volume of the pot, adding four or five spouts with the freedom of an
assemblage artist, drawing vigorously on the surface and encouraging,
for the first time in Western ceramics, the surface to engage in dynamic
competition with the form.
Voulkos’s influences came from several areas: music, European art,
Greek pots and Japan. Leach played a role in developing Voulkos's
curiousity about Japanese pottery. He met with Leach on several
occasions during Leach’s triumphal tour of the United States in 1953.
Leach the scholar intrigued Voulkos. But it was Hamada, who accom-
panied Leach and Soetsu Yanagi on the tour, who inspired Voulkos artist
to artist.
Voulkos was fascinated by Hamada’ intuitive response to the clay. Other
elements of Japanese pottery now began to interest Voulkos, in particu-
lar the more rugged aesthetics of Shigaraki and Bizen with their accent
on the gestural and the unexpected. This was cross pollinated with an
obsessive interest in Picasso ceramics, Jazz, the sculptures of Wotruba
and other interests. In 1958 he was introduced to the New York School
painters by Rose Slivka, editor of Craft Horizons, and thereafter the
12
SRR SE nS Ste Pe ee ease re eS Se

action painting ideals of Abstract Expressionism were introduced to

Voulkos's inspirational mix.
The teacher-student relationship at Otis was extremely informal and
Voulkos learnt almost as much from his students as they learnt from him.
He attracted a particularly brilliant group; Ken Price, John Mason, Jerry
Rothman, Paul Soldner, Henry Takemoto, Mac McCloud and Billy Al
Bengston. Takemoto turned to ceramic industry, McCloud became a poet
and Bengston a successful painter. But the rest remained in ceramics
and have remained leaders and innovators in their field for three
decades.
By the end of the 1950's Voulkos and his students had created a unique
body of pottery. It challenged many of the mores of taste, structure and
surface/form hierarchy of Western pottery. The works were released
from decorative subservience and projected a sense of raw, expression-
ist power. The vessel as a format for fine art expression was finally
liberated and nothing in American ceramics was to be quite the same
again. The impact of the Otis group was not felt only in the world of
ceramics but had considerable impact on avant garde West Coast
painting and sculpture. In1959 Voulkos left Otis for the more laissez faire
climate of the University of California at Berkeley in Northern California
—and there a new surge of development took place.

THE SIXTIES: THE ASSAULT ON GOOD TASTE

The redefining of the vessel that began at Otis continued in Berkeley.
Voulkos, a magnetic, charismatic teacher, attracted new students and
followers. Ron Nagle and Jim Melchert were influenced by him and both
created exceptional work. Melchert was to create his series of “Leg
Pots” in 1962 which are amongst the most extreme explorations of the
vessel format. Nagle made large dramatically coloured works before
turning to the refined, so-called “fetish-finish” style for which he is now
known. Robert Arneson made vessles in the Sixties as well creating
funky, humorous, lumpish pots that he termed “the mastadon school of
droppings”.
By 1964 the momentum for this redefinition of the vessel was over. The
brilliant Takemoto stopped making work, Voulkos turned from clay to
metal sculpture, Mason made only sculptural forms, Melchert drifted
closer to Conceptual Art and Arneson, never that involved in pottery,
concentrated on his role as “Pop-Fringe Bandit” making seditious,
offensive, vulgar ceramic sculptures.
Ceramists were beginning to experience a certain anguish. They saw
themselves as artists. Many of their peers in painting and sculpture
viewed them as equals. They were celebrated by the more adventurous
art press such as Artforum. But in general the art establishment still
viewed them as craftsmen and beneath serious consideration.
In this climate the vessel became a particularly embarassing reminder
of plebian roots and was treated with the same disdain and discomfort as
the socially ambitious might feel towards country cousins. The Sixties
was therefore characterised by an accent on the sculptural and a denial
of pottery. Some Univerisities even refused to teach vessel making in
their ceramics courses.
a IEE A DEES EE OE IL LOT ODS EERE SSE EAE BS AG SR

13
What was beneficial during this decade was an assault on the canons of
good taste, a rather suffocating inheritance from the decorative arts.
Led by Arneson and the “Funk” movement in the San Francisco Bay
area, the “vessel” began to appear in rude and visceral forms: as toilets
bowls, as teapots with penis spouts and vaginal openings. Banal humour
played a major role in this phase. Ceramics celebrated the low-brow, the
second-hand and the trivial.

In looking back at this very controversial moment, it is surprising how

little work of substance was produced considering the number of artists
who were active. Few of these artists have survived into the Kighties.
But in some ways the “quality” of the Funk movement is unimportant in
the conventional sense. What the Funk movement provided was a
moment of exorcism. The notion of good taste was expunged from
American ceramic art and with it all the precious, cloying, sentimental,
gilded, display-cabinet affectations. It left the artist free of the expecta-
tions of taste and opened areas of exploration previously considered
off-limits such as kitsch and other eccentric aspects of popular culture.

THE SEVENTIES: HOLLYWOOD-MAGRITTE

In the early to mid-Seventies the preference for a sculptural mode of
expression continued at the expense of the pot. Good potters were
working at this time but very much in the shadows while the spotlight
was reserved for the glitzy, flamboyant new movement in ceramic
sculpture. The Seventies saw a refinement, moving away from the
pungent imagery and hobby-craft aesthetic of the Sixties. But the
refinement was not necessarily an improvement.
What emerged in this decade was a treatment of clay that had about as
much dignity as teaching animals to perform silly tricks. Ceramists
discovered that clay could imitate almost any material and so there was
a massive outpouring of trompe l'oeil objects — fake leather, fake denim,
fake snakeskin, fake metal and most unfortunate of all, fake art.
I have named this the “Hol/lywood-Magritte” phase of American ceram-
ics. The style was a mixture of slick surface handling, superficial use of
Surrealist imagery and pretentious, sophomoric attempts at Dadaist
nose-thumbing. The movement (if it can be graced with any suggestion of
cogency) prospered simply because illusionism readily appeals to the
uneducated sensibility. But by the end of the decade it had begun to lose
its appeal, leaving behind, as with the Funk movement, a small body of
legitimate art and a massive legacy of tawdry, fussy bric-a-brac.
There was of course other work being done during this time. Viola Frey's
remarkable sculpture and stunning platters were just beginning to be
re-appraised. Kenneth Price produced a series of brightly coloured,
hard-edged cup “environments” that had a touch of genius. Bob Turner,
influenced by Voulkos, turned to a new style of work — quiet, understated
and mesmerizing.

THE EIGHTIES:
The Kighties have delivered a new maturity. This is the first decade since
the Fifties that has not produced a large, populist, stylistic movement of
one kind or another. Instead it is characterised by strong growth from a
SS
TSTRE EE

14
aS NR LEER ae aT AEARRI a Fe ae er EP LSS AIRS PRUECOME PIT TBO De IARI PRD STS ED Ra ae aa a

smallish number of ceramists. It is a decade of individual achievement

with some of the pioneers of the 1950's producing the best work of their
career.
At the same time it brought a rapidly changing ceramics market. At one
point about five years ago the American Crafts Council estimated that
there were about100,000 professional ceramists in the United States. Of
course many of these were “professionally” involved in a very casual
sense, teaching ceramic in high schools or exhibiting on the occasional
country fair, or selling moulded and china-painted horrors. But the field
was immense. Although there are no accurate statistics, that number
has decreased considerably in the Eighties.
Today the ceramist is receiving conflicting and confusing economic
signals. The best potters are occasionally getting as much as $40,000
for their works. Many sell all they produce in the $2,000-$8,000 range.
Museums are actively collecting contemporary ceramics and the work is
being shown in some of the finest art galleries in the country.
For some, contemporary ceramic’s journey into the world of art has been
a glamorous success story. But the other side of the coin is a little more
sobering. Ceramic departments in Universities and Colleges have been
the major patrons of the field since 1900, providing adequate salaries,
low teaching loads and often a free studio. But the educational industry
is now retrenching. Today’ students have more materialist goals and
head for the faculties of engineering, law and medicine rather than the
studio arts. So teaching posts are diminishing as enrolments plummet.
At the same time the “middle market” for medium priced ceramics is
very soft and there have been numerous closures of craft shops in the
past year.
The reasons for this condition are complex and for many its consequ-
ences will be painful. But on the positive side the arrival of a smaller,
tougher, more discriminating market has had a startling effect on the
quality and energy of work. Also it is a market that has clearly indicated
that it is prepared to pay realistically for special talent.

The American ceramist now has a much more enthusiastic and more
broadly informed audience than ever before. At the high end of the
market pots and sculpture are bought by art collectors rather than craft
collectors and this has altered the once introverted nature of the
medium. In sculpture we have seen the maturing of a movement in
figurative sculpture that has been impressive and is earning its place in
the sculptural mainstream with talents such as Viola Frey, Robert
Arneson, Mary Frank, Stephen De Staebler and others.

In terms of the vessel we have seen several new freedoms. One of the
most evident of these is the use of imagery. This “pictorialisation” of the
vessel is now a feature of pottery in America. It is neither new nor a
movement. But in this decade it has reached new levels of sophistication
and invention.
One of the first to work in this area was Rudy Autio who abandoned his
Abstract Expressionist style in 1965 and turned to the figure. The work
has grown progressively more ambitious in content, scale and in spatial

15
concerns. Now Autio makes some vessels that are over four feet in
height with vistas of plump floating ladies and animals. The work has the
voluptuous economy of line of Matisse but with Chagall’s disdain for
gravity.
Vessel making reflects the pluralism in American arts in general.
Modernism is not dead but it is also no longer boss. Some potters deal
with the figure (Autio, Akio Takamori), others with landscape. (Higby,
Buzio) while Richard Notkin explores didactic political issues in his witty
series of “Cooling Towers” teapots that are modelled after the formal
values and style of Qing Yixing wares. The vessel as an abstract,
muscular and unadorned volume continues as well in work by Richard
Devore, Bill Daley, Rudy Staffel and others. Betty Woodman brings into
the field the issues of the active P&D (Pattern and Decoration) school—a
movement in American painting that has legitimised the use of a
decorative language in the fine arts. Utilitarian pottery, while not
thriving, is finding new voices as well, with particularly fresh input
coming from artists such as Mark Pharis.
Overall there is a multiplicity of options, a freedom of choice and a lack of
dogma in American pottery. The work is shown in a serious context and
collected accordingly. The importance of the private patron has created
a more competitive edge and toughened the work aesthetically. This may
seem to be a nirvana to potters of other countries where their art is still
grossly undervalued and its place in the cultural hierarchy still some-
what ambiguous. But the American pottery worldis far from being a
paradise. The risk factor has increased as the market has become
smaller and more elitist. Artists have found that the professional
pressures and expectations have increased uncomfortably. The costs of
running and equipping a studio have risen dramatically.
Furthermore the chances of young artists being able to sustain them-
selves until their work is developed enough to find acceptance, have
been greatly diminished. American pottery is riding a high and fast
moving aesthetic wave at the moment but very major challenges lie
ahead if its three decades of leadership in the ceramic arts are to
continue. Most of all, as we pause to celebrate the achievement of
today’s masters in American pottery, we must turn our thoughts and our
energies to tomorrow's masters and find ways for our current energies
and successes to fuel the pedagogical needs of the future.
Garth Clark.

1. Isaac Clarke, Art and/ndustry (Washington D.C) p. ccxvii.

2. Clara Chapman Newton, “The Early Days of Rookwood,’ undated manuscript,
Cincinnati, Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio.
3. H. V. Poor to Senator William Benton, October 11, 1966. William Benton Papers,
Archives of American Art, reel 925, frame 873.
4. “The Arts of Living”, Architectural Forum (March1949), P.177.

16
Plate 1. (Cat. 1) Jane AEBERSOLD. ‘Blue Red Spangle’
Plate 2 (Cat 2) Rudy AUTIO. Two Ladies Averting the Angry Swallow’
‘

18
Plate 3. (Cat. 3) Ralph BACERRA. ‘Teapot’

19
Plate 4. (Cat. 4) Christina BERTONI. ‘Full Point’

Plate 5. (Cat. 6) Lydia BUZIO. Soho Roofscape’

20
Plate 6. (Cat. 7) Philip CORNELIUS. ‘Winchester’
SS
SSIS I SS

21
Plate 7. (Cat. 8) William DALEY. ‘To Josiah W
Se EE Te A

22
Plate 8. (Cat. 9) Richard DEVORE. ‘Pot’
23
 a

Plate 9. (Cat. 10) Rick DILLINGHAM. ‘Untitled’

SSS SE EET Se SS a a a TTS

24
Plate 10. (Cat. 1) Ruth DUCKWORTH. ‘Two Forms’
a ES EE ES, EEE)

D5)
Plate 11. (Cat. 13) Michael DUVALL. ‘Vessel on Platform’

26
Plate 12. (Cat, 14)Ken FERGUSON. Adam and Eve’
27
Plate 13, (Cat. 15) Viola FREY. ‘Untitled’
28
Plate 14. (Cat. 16) Andrea GILL. ‘Romantic Image’

29
Plate 15. (Cat. 17) John GILL. ‘Bottle’
ESSE 5SS TS 2 I ET ECE TIT

30
 TARR

Plate 16. (Cat. 18) Christopher GUSTIN. Jar’

SS aa a a ET TTD OT EEA SDI OE 2 BER EE EE SR

3
Plate 17. (Cat. 19) Wayne HIGBY. ‘Broken Mesa Landscape Bowl’

32
Plate 18. (Cat. 22) Anne KRAUS. ‘The Garden’
SS a a TLS EL TE aT ET ET EE ED AN OE OTE AG OTE SPETS EBLE TEE TE DEE ETS

3 (ce)
Plate 19. (Cat. 23) James LAWTON. ‘Black Parallelogram Coffee Pot With Jeans’
SLL ES SIE BR SS a EE I TEES OTD,

34
Plate 20. (Cat. 24) Phillip MABERRY. ‘Boy George’
enn eee
SS ST TS

35
Plate 21. (Cat. 25)Warren MACKENZIE. ‘Bow! aaa
eS

36
Plate 22. (Cat. 26) Roberta MARKS. ‘Fire Ritual’
anne eee eeeeeee errr

37
Plate 23. (Cat. 29) Ron NAGLE. ‘Untitled Cup’
ee a
SS 2 SBS SS

38
Plate 24. (Cat. 31) Art NELSON ‘Meta Vessel’
SS
SSS

39
Plate 25. (Cat. 33) Richard NOTKIN. ‘Double Cooling Towers Teapot No. 10°

Plate 26. (Cat. 34) Mark PHARIS. ‘Teapot’

el

40
Plate 27. (Cat. 35) Elsa RADY. ‘Blade Runner’
Plate 28. (Cat. 87) Jerry ROTHMAN. ‘Black Tureen’
Plate 29. (Cat. 39) Judith SALOMON. ‘Untitled Container’

43
Plate 30. (Cat. 40) Adrian SAXE. ‘Untitled Vessel’
ES SS a

44
Plate 31. (Cat. 41) Anna SILVER. ‘Teapot’

45
Plate 32. (Cat. 42) Paul SOLDNER ‘Untitled’
SSS a pT ee TD)

46
Plate 33. (Cat. 43) Rudolph STAFFEL. ‘Light Gathere
SS
Plate 34. (Cat. 44) Chris STALEY. Vase’

48
Plate 35. (Cat. 45) Susanne STEPHENSON. ‘Extruded Footed Vase’

49
Plate 36. (Cat. 47) Akio TAKAMORI. ‘Two Women’

50
Plate 37. (Cat. 48) Irvin TEPPER. ‘Decaffeinated Petaluma
cee een eS
SS

51
Plate 38. (Cat. 49) Peter VOULKOS. ‘Untitled Plate’
ES a LI OI EE A ES OS LE SST STD ALE LTE TITEL TET TEE EET

52
Plate 39. (Cat. 50) Kurt WEISER. ‘Untitled Vessel’
53
Plate 40. (Cat. 51) Beatrice WOOD. ‘Blue Crater Lustre Footed Bowl’
SES
EN a SL SES ea a a TS STEN

94
Plate 41. (Cat. 52) Betty WOODMAN. ‘Teapot’
 te
Fee!

oN

ES a a ITS SEI OT GOEL TRA TAAL

56
INTRODUCTION

mn his book serves a three-fold purpose: it is a guide to the exhibition

= American Potters Today, it is a permanent record of the generous
gifts which made the exhibition possible, and it is, in addition, a
catalogue of all the Museum's pieces of American studio pottery.

The objects here illustrated and catalogued, divide into two groups. The
first, comprising the forty-two items that make up American Potters
Today, consists of the pieces that have entered, or will soon enter, the
Museum's permanent collection through the good offices of Garth Clark,
the British American Arts Association, and the generosity of the donors
involved. These pieces have, by and large, all been made within the last
few years. They form the core of, and the reason for, both the exhibition
and the catalogue and are all illustrated in colour.

The second and smaller group consists of those works that entered the
Museum before 1986. Their acquisition occured in a somewhat
haphazard fashion, and they in no sense form a coherent whole. Most
were purchased from the exhibition mounted and toured by the Circula-
tion Department in 1966. Others have been acquired later in a more
random and opportunistic manner —such as when the artist happened to
be showing in London. They are illustrated in black-and-white.

In spite of the clear difference in nature of these two groups, we have

thought it more convenient to arrange the catalogue in one sequence in
alphabetical order. This prevents the need for the reader to look for
information on potters in two separate places. The distinction between
the different pieces is clearly indicated by the fact that the earlier
acquisitions have their black and white photographs alongside their
catalogue entries. The pieces that comprise American Potters Today
have Museum numbers of the year 1986, and the donors’ names are
recorded. Their colour illustrations are grouped immediately before this
introduction. Where a potter's work is represented in both groups, a
separate catalogue entry is given, but the biographical details and the
bibliography are not repeated.

In the catalogue entries,a brief biography of each artist is given together

with a few bibliographical references. These are not exhaustive, but are
hoped to be a useful starting point for any further reading. The
quotations contained in the biographies are by the potters themselves
and, in most cases, are taken from one of the listed references.
09
SLT IS OL A SE oS TT ES BSI A

Magazines and books on American studio pottery are becoming more

readily available in the UK; one might suggest as useful for those
interested in pursuing the subject the magazines American Ceramics,
The Studio Potter Ceramics Monthly Craft Horizons and its successor
American Craft, and, as a general survey, Garth Clark and Margie
Hughto, A Century of Ceramics in the United States, 1878-1978, Dutton
Paperback, New York, 1979, and Garth Clark, American Potters; the Work
of Twenty Modern Masters, Watson-Guptill, New York, 1981 — here
abbreviated to Clark, Century... and Clark, American Potters. The
exhibition Echoes which toured the United States in 1983 contains
illustrations of the work of a wide variety of contemporary potters,
together with historical sources and parallels.
Two collections have been recently shown in Europe. One belonging to
the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam was shown at the Crafts Council
Gallery in London in 1982: West Coast Ceramics, Stedelijk, Amsterdam,
1979; the other, that did not come to this country, was titled “Whos afraid
of American Pottery?”. Its catalogue was published in the mededeling-
enblad nederlandse vereniging van vrienden van de ceramiek, 109/N0,
1983. The Amsterdam show concentrated on the sculptural funk work of
the Bay Area of San Francisco which is not represented here; but both
exhibitions included some artists also shown here.
Oliver Watson,
Department of Ceramics,
Victoria and Albert Museum.

The contemporary vessel is an object that presents the formal essence of

the pot exaggerated to reveal a personal artistic vision uninhibited by
pragmatic issues of function
Wayne Higby,
“The Vessel is like a Pot”
American Ceramics
3/4,1985

60
1 Jane Ford AEBERSOLD, ‘Blue Red Spangle’ 1983
Glazed stoneware with reduction lustre. H.17”. Mus. No. C26-1986
Donor: Ms Rochelle Feinstein, New York
Born in 1941, Aebersold trained at Tulane University, New Orleans and at
Alfred University where she obtained her MFA in 1971; she now works at
Bennington College, Vermont. Her work is hand-built stoneware,
characterised by a limited range of strong, simple shapes, decorated in
painterly fashion with rich, strongly coloured lustrous glazes. Her
inspiration is found in a variety of sources: in ceramics, such as
Japanese Iga, Shino and Oribe wares, or in contemporary painting, such
as Rothko and Frankenthaler. Of primary importance are also the
colours and textures of nature. Her pots are intended for use: “. .. Many
of the vase forms I see as holding flowers. This is very important. But |
think visual function is equally important: the pots are organised to be
looked at...”
Joanne Burstein, “Jane Ford Aebersold”, American Ceramics, 2/1, Winter 1983
Jane Ford: Recent Work, Everson Museum ofArt, 1979
“Jane Ford: Recent Work”, Ceramics Monthly. May, 1979

2 RudyAUTIO, ‘Two Ladies Averting the Angry Swallow 1983

Stoneware. H. 22”. Mus. No. C27-1986
Donor: Frances Senska and Jessie Wilber, Montana
Born in 1926 in Montana, Autio received his MFA in1952 at Washington
State University. From1952 to 1956, he was resident artist at the Archie
Bray Foundation, Montana — a brick works where the owner, who had an
interest in the arts, allowed Autio to develop a studio using the factory's
resources. For the first two years Peter Voulkos, a fellow student from
earlier days, worked with him, building a large high-firing kiln and
participating in workshops with visiting potters: amongst others,
Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada visited Montana in the winter of1952.
In1957, Autio became Professor of Ceramics and Sculpture at Montana
State University where he is now Professor Emeritus of Art. He has from
the beginning shown a primary interest in sculpture — to an even greater
extent than Voulkos — though not abandoning the vessel as a formal focus
of his work. Some of his most important works of the late 1950s and early
1960s are large architectural murals, commissioned for various public
buildings in Montana. Sculpture in steel and other non-ceramic
materials developed in importance during the late 1960s. His interest in
figurative themes for his sculptural vessels is first seen in the early
1960s, and has continued to the present.
Autio’s pots are mostly hand-built from large slabs of stoneware:
decoration is incised, and recently brightly coloured low-fired glazes are
continued on next page.
SSE | SESS SP a I EE

61
 2 Continued
applied. During visits to his family’s original homeland — Finland — he
worked in porcelain at the Arabia Porcelain Factory. His designs have a
strong painterly quality; the vigorous and spontaneous forms are
matched by the quality of his drawing. The sources for his work are many
and varied: the folk history of his native state of Montana, Japanese
prints, Picasso's ceramics, and contemporary American painting and
sculpture.
Along with Voulkos, and others who were asociated with him in the
1950s, Autio has been, and continues to be, a major influence on the
American ceramic world.
E. Lebow, “The Flesh Pots of Rudy Autio”, American Ceramics, 4/1,1985
Rudy Autio, catalogue of a retrospective exhibition, published by Champion Paper
Company, Stamford, Conn., 1983 (with excellent detailed biography and bibliography)
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century . . .,1979

3 Ralph BACERRA, ‘Teapot’

Glazed earthenware. H.15.5”. Mus. No. C28 to b-1986
Donor: Ronald James Cunningham, California
Born in California in1938, Bacerra studied at the Chouinard Art School,
Los Angeles, obtaining his BFA in 1961, and later becoming head of the
Ceramics Department there. His work shows consummate technical
control and skill in decoration. The relationship between form — here of a
somewhat baroque nature — and the dense, colourful and highly
texturised patterning provides a dynamic interplay that is this potter's
characteristic interest. Bacerra, who acts as a consultant to the ceramic
industry, has encouraged his students to obtain a detailed understanding
of ceramic technology and glaze chemistry — in strong contrast to
Voulkos’s approach.
Sarah Dodine, “Ralph Bacerra’, American Ceramics, 2/3, 1983
Clark, Century ...,1979

62
4 Christina BERTONI, ‘Full Point’ 1984
Glazed eathernware, graphite, L.14.5”. Mus. No. C29-1986
Donor: Maria Friedrich and Victoria Munroe, New York
Born in1945 and trained at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
Bertoni obtained her MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan.
Currently teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design, her work deals
with ideas, often of a cosmological nature: “. .. My claywork is a
process of exploring a body of ideas and attempting to articulate them
visually. Bowls are vehicles for my speculations on the nature of such
things as existence/non-existence, order/chaos, microcosm/
macrocosm, space/matter . . .”. Much of her earlier work was concerned
with astronomical themes and the relationships of inside and outside
surfaces —a concern followed in the piece exhibited here, though with a
rather more organic and earthy quality of material than previously.
K. McCready, Contemporary American Ceramics: Twenty Artists, Exhibition catalogue,
Newport Harbour Art Museum, California, 1985
S. Wechsler, “Celestial Bodies”, American Ceramics, 1/IV,1983
“Portfolio: Christina Bertoni’, American Crafts, Feb/March, 1983

3 Sally BOWEN-PRANGE, ‘Edge-scape Vessel’ 1976

Glazed porcelain. H.8.5”. Mus. No. C183-1977
Born in1927, Bowen-Prange took a BA at the University of Michigan in
psychology, design and ceramics in 1950. She took up potting full time in
the mid-1950s and spent 1968-9 studying under Wally Keeler at Sutton
Art School.

63
 6 Lidya BUZIO, ‘Soho Roofscape’ 1983
Burnished earthenware. D.13”. Mus. No. C30-1986
Donor: Betty Asher, California
Born in1948 in Montevideo, Uruguay, Buzio studied painting, drawing
and ceramics before coming to the United States in1972. The dramatic
cityscapes of New York, where she works, gave an initial inspiration for
her work. Although the use of unglazed burnished surfaces makes
reference to American Indian and Pre-Columbian pottery, her work is far
from historicist. In her exploration of form and the space contained
within it —both real and illusionary — she is following an absolutely
contemporary interest.
Lidya Buzio, “Ceramic Cityscapes’, Studio Potter 11/2, 1983
Ed Lebow, “Lidya Buzio in Perspective’, American Ceramics, 2, Spring, 1983
Ed Lebow, “Lidya Buzio Duple Rhythms”, Ceramic Arts, Spring, 1983

7 Philip CORNELIUS, ‘Winchester’ 1982

Glazed porcelain. H.10”, W.7”, D.3.5”. Mus. No. C31&a-1986
Donor: Gwen Laurie and Howard Smits, California
Born in1934, Cornelius trained at San Jose State University, California,
and obtained his MFA in 1965 from the Claremont Graduate School. He is
now Professor of Art at Pasadena City College where he is a highly
respected and influential teacher. His early work consisted of thrown
stoneware often with detailed decorative painting. He still produces
robustly thrown, Japanese-inspired stonewares with strong textured
finishes; the piece shown here however, reveals another of his major
concerns —an interest in the fine, hard-edged fragility of which clay, and
especially porcelain, is capable. These pieces, “thinware” constructed
from paper-thin sheets of porcelain, are based on tea-pot forms but have
a high-tech’, somewhat menacing military aspect.
Joanne Burstein, “Philip Cornelius: The Container Continuum”, American Ceramics, 1/4,
Winter, 1982

64
8 William DALEY, ‘To Josiah W: 1980
Unglazed stoneware. H.19”, W.20", D.17”. Mus. No. C32-1986
Donor: Mr and Mrs John W. Pickett, FA
Previously exhibited: “Contemporary Ceramics. A Response to
Wedgwood” Travelling exhibition organised by Museum of the
Philadelphia Civic Centre with the Buten Museum of Wedgwood,
Merion, Pa.
Born in1925, Daley studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston,
and Columbia University Teachers College, New York City, where he
received his M.Ed. in 1951. Since 1966 he has taught at the Philadelphia
College of Art, where he now heads the ceramics department. Daley's
work has always been sculptural, handbuilt and unglazed. His work
includes murals, both ceramic and bronze, as well as the large vessels
represented here. A concern with the definition and delineation of
volume, with special relationships and geometry, dominates his work:
“.. the structure of pattern and the way it defines space . . .”. The clay
is left unglazed, uncoloured and barely textured; the thickness of the
walls is uniform. Such pieces are constructed upside-down on a plaster
of Styrofoam mould. The potter works first on the outside form and
afterwards on the interior, when he develops the interplay of the outer
and inner surfaces and spaces. Daley is one of the few potters who have
achieved in their work a truly architectural monumentality which is not
merely aresult of size.
William Daley Selected Works 1954-1982, Carreiro Gallery, Massachusetts College of Art,
1982
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Michael McTwigan, “Duality in Clay: William Daley”, American Ceramics,
Dec 1980-Jan 1981
Clark, Century .. .,1979

9 Richard DEVORE, ‘Vase’

Stoneware. H.11”. Mus. No. C33-1986
Donor: Mrs Richard DeVore, Colorado
Born in1938, DeVore studied at the University of Toledo, Ohio, before
obtaining his MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills,
Michigan, under the tutelage of the Finnish-born potter Maija Grotell.
He is now Professor of Art at the Colorado State University. Originally
working as a painter, DeVore responded to Grotell’s view that painting
was somehow too easy and that”... the real challenge in
contemporary art is in the ceramic field . . .”. DeVore confesses to find
continued on next page.

65
 9 Continued
“_. ceramic materials and processes tedious, rather sloppy, terribly
indirect and generally quite frustrating, yet it is the only appropriate
means to my end.” The quiet, seemingly reposed and understated
appearance of his pots reveal on closer consideration an unexpected
spatial tension and dynamism. The restrained quality of the surfaces
reveals complex layers of colours and textures. The initial appearance of
fragility gives way to a surprising strength:
“.. Tosome degree these pots defy the security of that volume and
space that is inside. There is a tension present, a pressure from the back
trying to move forward. You have the dichotomous feeling that the bowl
is three-dimensional and yet that it is trying to pull itself into a two-
dimensional relationship.”
The relaxed, informal feel that his pots initially evoke disguises a deeply
considered approach to his work. New forms are worked out in detail on
paper and his meticulous method of hand-building is diametrically
opposed to Voulkos’s spontaneous creativity. His pieces, in their colours,
textures and movement, have a strong fleshy, even sexual, quality; a
feeling accentuated by folds and crevices, and, in this piece, by the
hidden inner cavity that suggests further contained and continuous
space.
Richard DeVore, 1972-1982, exhibition catalogue, Milwaukee Art Museum, 1983
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Richard DeVore: Pottery exhibition catalogue, Exhibit A, Chicago, 1981
Clark, Century . . .,1979

10 Rick DILLINGHAM, ‘Untitled’ 1985

Stoneware. H.11.5”. Mus. No. €34-1986
Donor: Mudd Carr Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Born in 1952, Dillingham took his BFA at the University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, and, in1976, his MFA at the Claremont Graduate School,
Scripps College, California. One of Dillingham’s formative influences was
that of handling broken Indian pots which he restored in the University’s
Anthropological Museum in New Mexico. This first impelled him to break
his own pots before decorating and restoring them. The contrast
between the unity of the pot’s form and the visual (and physical)
discontinuity of the decoration —a “planned randomness” — is typical of
this potter’s work. His colours and decorations make references to
Pueblo pots and the landscape in which they were made.
S. Zwinger, “Rick Dillingham”, American Ceramics, 3/1,1984
Dave Roberts, “American Raku”, Ceramic Review, 76,1982
“Rick Dillingham”, Ceramics Monthly November, 1980

66
1 Ruth DUCKWORTH, ‘Two Forms’ 1985
Unglazed porcelain H.(larger) 7”. Mus. Nos. C67&a and 68&a-1986
Donor: Helen Drutt, Philadelphia and Ruth Duckworth, Chicago
Ruth Duckworth was born in Hamburg in 1919. She came to Britain as a
refugee in 1936, and studied sculpture at the Liverpool School of Art until
1940. She moved to London in1945 and for three years earned a living by
carving tombstones. In 1956 she approached Lucie Rie about glazing
some clay sculptures, and was advised to get formal ceramic training.
She studied at the Central School for two years, since when all her major
work has been in clay. She taught at the Central School until offered a job
in 1964 at the University of Chicago. She went to the States intending
initially to lecture for only one year but has stayed ever since; she retired
from the University in1977. Duckworth’s work in Britain was important
in demonstrating what sculpture and hand-building had to offer the
ceramic world — at that time dominated by Leach’s oriental aesthetic.
She has continued a successful career as an artist and teacher in the
States. The range of her work is large, from vast murals to small refined
pieces such as those shown here. One of her continuous themes has
been the vessel as a focus for the exploration of form and contained
space. Much of her other work evokes natural forms and the landscape
from which she draws so much of her inspiration.
E. Cooper, “Ruth Duckworth
— Artist Potter”, Ceramic Review 68, 1981
Clark, Century ...,1979
Ruth Duckworth, Ceramiek 1979, Exhibition catalogue, Museum Boymans-van
Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1979
R. Duckworth and A. Westphal, Ruth Duckworth, exhibition catalogue, Gallery of
American Ceramics, Evanston, Illinois, 1977

12 Ruth DUCKWORTH, ‘Form’1979

Porcelain. H.7”. Mus. No. Ci8&a-1980
The Museum also has a number of other pieces made by Duckworth
before she left for the States, or on early trips back to this country:
Circ. 241-1959 Dish, stoneware, D.15.15”, 1959
Circ. 242-1959 Asymetrical vase, stoneware, H.10”, 1959
Circ. 617-1962 Tile Mask, stoneware, H.6”, 1962
Circ. 763-1967 Small form, porcelain, H.4.5”, 1966
Circ. 764-1967 ‘Weed pot’, stoneware, H.12”, 1966

67
 SE TD ER I I SS ETI TIT EST IE I ES EE]

13 Michael DUVALL, ‘Vessel on Platform’ 1985

Low fired white clay, underglaze colours. H.12”. Mus. No. C35-1986
Donor: Marie Steinheimer, Michigan
Born in 1950, Duvall trained at Wayne State University, Detroit,
Michigan from1972-4. His work combines, in a post-modernistic
manner, references to Art Deco architectural details with fashionable
colours of the 1950s. These interests parallel the work of Italian
designers, particularly the Memphis Group.
Craft Horizons, August1978
Ceramics Monthly November 1978, January 1979, June 1980
Craft International, April1983

14 Kenneth FERGUSON, ‘Adam and Eve Platter’ 1982

Porcelain. D.23”. Mus. No. C36-1986
(Inscribed round the rim: ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the women don't
get you, the liquor must. )
Donor: Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio, Los Angeles
Born in1928, Ferguson obtained his BFA in painting at the Carnegie
Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and his MFA in
ceramics at Alfred University, New York. From 1958 to 1964 he was the
manager and potter-in-residence at the Archie Bray Foundation,
Montana, following in the footsteps of Rudy Autio. From 1964 he
developed the Kansas City Art Institute into one of the country’s leading
centres for pottery education.
“T enjoy the versatility of clay. For this reason Iwork with functional and
nonfunctional forms, stoneware, salt firing, raku, porcelain and low-
temperature, thrown forms, hand building and castware. I reflect the
fine arts, traditional crafts, and a need to make things. I try to be honest
with myself and honest with clay”.
Ferguson is one of the more traditional potters represented, a potter
who at one time made ‘production wares’ of a functional nature in large
quantities. His early training as a painter is revealed in the skill with
which his drawing does not ‘decorate’ a pot, but is fully integrated with
its form.
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Victoria Melcher, “Tradition and Vitality: the ceramics of Ken Ferguson”, American Craft,
39, January 1980
Clark, Century .. .,1979
Charlotte Sewalt, “An interview with Ken Ferguson”, Ceramics Monthly 26, February
1978

68
15 Viola FREY, ‘Untitled’ 1983
Low fired white clay. D.17”. Mus. No. C37-1986
Donor: Rena Bransten, California
Born in 1938, Frey trained at the California College of Arts and Crafts,
before taking her MFA in1958 at Tulane University, Louisiana. She now
teaches at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland. Viola Frey
is more ofapure sculptor than any of the other artists shown here, and
she works equally in bronze and as a painter. Her work combines a
variety of images which she sees as symbolic and important in American
vernacular culture, and in folk-lore world-wide. In ceramics, she is best
known for her larger-than-life figures, pieces standing over 7 foot tall.
Her series of ‘grandmothers’ is particularly extensive, and draws on
childhood memories when dolled-up ladies with their dresses and hats
were the only ‘beautiful’ things she saw. Her work is replete with
symbols whose meaning is not always explicit. They are often, as in this
plaque, drawn from different cultures, and they acquire a contemporary
significance by their new-found associations. Her work in clay is
energetic, rapid and enigmatic.
Garth Clark and Pattison Simms “It’s all Part of Clay: Viola Frey”, exhibition catalogue,
Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, 1984
J. Kelly, “Viola Frey’, American Ceramics, 3/1,1984
Viola Frey; paintings, sculptures, drawings, Quay Gallery, San Francisco, 1988 (with
detailed biography and bibliography)
Clark, Century .. .,1979

16 Andrea GILL, ‘Romantic Image’ 1985

Earthenware with vitreous slips. H.15”. Mus. No. C88
& a-1986
Donor: Laurence and Ray Gray, Maryland
Born in 1948, Andrea Gill took her BFA at the Rhode Island School of
Design in painting, before learing the rudiments of ceramics with the
production potter Roger Harvey in Cape Cod. She took her MFA at Alfred
University in1976, having spent a year at the Kansas City Art Institute.
The attraction of pottery was confirmed for her by a visit to Europe,
particularly to the Barcelona Museum of Ceramics, where the potential
of low fired earthenwares and maiolicas made a strong impression. Her
work, using and developing from these traditional techniques, is
essentially decorative, drawing on a wide range of historical sources for
ideas in forms and decoration. Though she maintains that her work is
within a ‘functional’ tradition, the forms and decorations play visual
games about the relationships between them, and about the whole
notion of ‘use’: “I think I'm trying to stay close to what pottery is about, to
stay within the framework of vessels, and yet say that pottery doesnt
have to be functional to be valid . . .”
Carolyn Carr, “Andrea Gill/John Gill”, American Craft, December1983
—January 1984
Who’ Afraid of American Pottery, exhibition catalogue, 1983
Susan Wechsler, “Andrea Gill”, American Ceramics, Autumn, 1982

69
 ESSE ES SEN IS IS SE BT I TS SE EO NES a

17 John GILL, ‘Bottle’ 1985

Hand built stoneware. H.20”. Mus. No. 39-1986
Donor: Marie C. Smith and Doris L. Rigg, Colorado
Born in1949, Gill studied sculpture at the Cornish School of Art, Seattle.
He then spent time at the Kansas City Art Institute where Ken Ferguson
was an important influence, where he took his BFA in1973 and where he
met, and eventually married, Andrea Gill. He obtained his MFA atAlfred
University, New York in1975. Though his work in handbuilt stoneware is
strongly sculptural, John Gill sees himself very much as a potter
working within the ‘container tradition’. His concern with form and
volume is directed to the contained inner space, whereas he sees the
‘pure’ sculptor more concerned with the exterior space of an object. His
work contains subtle allusions to earlier ceramic traditions — to Oriental
wares in the green and blue glazes, or in certain spouts to Persian
bronze-age pots.
Michael McTwigan, “A Handful of Beauty, A Hint of Beast”, American Ceramics, 3/4,1985
Carolyn Carr, “Andrea Gill/John Gill’, American Craft, December1983
— January 1984

18 Christopher GUSTIN, Jar’ 1983

Stoneware with sandblasted glaze. H.32”. Mus. No. C40-1986
Donor: Jay and Yvonne Gustin, Los Angeles.
Born in1952, Gustin obtained his MFA at the Kansas City Art Institute,
and his MFA, in1977, at Alfred University, New York. His work explores
the plastic qualities of clay. The thrown and altered shapes, and soft
glaze colours and textures, reveal the potter’s interest in the human
form.
“Portfolio: A Potter's Journey”, Ceramics Monthly, December, 1982
American Ceramics, 1/2, 1982
Studio Potter 13/1,1984

19 Wayne HIGBY, ‘Broken Mesa Landscape Bowl 1984

Karthenware, raku glazed. H.8”, D.12.5”. Mus. No. C41-1986
Donor: Helen W. Drutt English, Philadelphia
Born in1948, Higby obtained his MFA in1968 at the University of
Michigan; he is now Professor of Art, and chairman of the Ceramics
Faculty at Alfred University, New York. The work for which he is best
known — the landscape bowls such as that shown here which exploit a
skilful decorative talent and the particular qualities of Raku glazes to
provide satisfying and intriguing illusions. Their consummate
craftsmanship and artistic sense tend to conceal a more important
concern for the artist: an interest in the vessel as a fundamental and
FL a SS RY TS I I I RT IEEE IEA

70
19 Continued
archetypal form:
“... As the bowl radiates outward, it becomes a metaphor for human
consciousness and our strange existence in space. The bowl form has
that potential resonance; it can deal with finite space and infinite
illusory space — things that also exist in our psyches”.
An early interest in Minoan pottery provided Higby with the idea of the
pot as a metaphor, while Islamic pottery and tiles showed him the
possibilities of complete integration of decoration and shape. These two
concerns are united in his work.
W. Higby, “The Vessel is like a Pot”, American Ceramics, 3/4, 1985
Louise Klemperer, “Wayne Higby”, American Ceramics, 3/4,1985 Clark, Century .. .,1979

20 Karen KARNES, ‘Covered Jar’ 1979

Saltglazed stoneware. H.20.4 cms. Mus. No. C101&a-1979
Born in1920, Karen Karnes studied at Alfred University, New York, and,
with her husband David Weinrib, was potter-in-residence at Black
Mountain College, North Carolina from 1952-4, from where she helped
organise Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada’s USA tour in1952. She set up
her workshop in Stony Point, NY, where she worked from 1954 until1979.
Strongly functionalist in outlook, Karnes has won acclaim for her
saltglazed wares, particularly her jars with ‘landscaped’ lids.
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century . . .,1979

21 Howard KOTTLER, ‘Vase’ 1965

Porcelain. H.11.5”. Mus No. C672-1969

Howard KOTTLER, ‘Branch Pot’ 1965

Stoneware. H.27”. Mus. No. C673-1969
Published: American Studio Pottery Victoria and Albert Museum, 1968
Born in 1930, Kottler took his BA, MA and finally in1964 his PhD at Ohio
State University, Columbus, since when he has taught at Washington
State University, Seattle. His early work consisted of functional
stoneware or, like the pieces illustrated here, more mannered
‘expressionist’ vases. He later developed along different lines, using
commercial moulds and prepared glazes in a witty, deliberately
‘tasteless’ manner.
Clark, Century .. .,1979
American Studio Pottery, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1968

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 22 Anne KRAUS, ‘The Garden’1985
Stoneware. H.9”. Mus. No. C42-1986
Donor: Hope and Jay Yampol, New York
Born in 1956, Kraus studied painting at the University of Pennsylvania
before taking her BFA in ceramics at Alfred University, New York. She is
one of the few ceramic artists using traditional china-painting methods
for her decoration. Her work represents the new ‘pictorialism’ of
American ceramics.

23 James LAWTON, ‘Black Parallelogram Coffee Pot with

Jeans’
Earthenware, raku fired. L.12”. Mus. No. C48 to b-1986
Donor; Mr and Mrs Anthony Del Vecchio, California
Born in1954, Lawton took a BSc in ceramics and enamels at the Florida
State University, and his MFA in ceramics in1980 at Louisiana State
University.
“My work is a synthesis of the actual and the imaginary, of the pottery
object in still life and in real life. . . .The intent of the glaze imagery is to
orient the pottery object to its “household” or casual surroundings.
Serving bowls, Queen Anne chairs, teapots, tables and sofas float upon
the surface, creating an animated iconography of objects. This produces
a particular context not found in a neutrally aloof gallery setting.”
The disturbing form of the pot, as if viewed in a distorting mirror, coupled
with the realistic representation of the floating clothes, give a surreal
atmosphere to the piece.
“James Lawton”, Ceramics Monthly, May, 1984

24 Phillip MABERRY, ‘Boy George’ 1984

Glazed earthenware. D.20”. Mus. No. C44-1986
Donor: Anne Davis, Texas, in memory of her mother
Born in1951, Maberry took his BFA in ceramics at the East Texas State
University, and undertook graduate studies at the Weslyan University,
Connecticut from 1975-1977. He now works in New York. This dish shows
Maberry’s talent for ceramic painting at its most spontaneous and
assured, both in the bold depiction of his subject and in the outrageous,
but entirely successful, use of colour.
James Cobb, “Phillip Maberry’, American Ceramics, 3/3,1984
ArtNews, March, 1982
Se a EES I ITS ETT SS

2
25 Warren MACKENZIE, ‘Bowl’ 1983
Stoneware. D.19”. Mus. No. C45-1986
Donor: Mr and Mrs Robert McClure, Minneapolis
Born in1924, Warren Mackenzie graduated from the Art Institute of
Chicago in 1947. With his wife Alix, he travelled to England in1950 and
spent two years with Bernard Leach at St Ives, establishing a life-long
friendship. On their return, MacKenzie and his wife (who died in 1962)
set up a pottery in Minnesota, where, since 1954, Mackenzie has been
head of the University’s ceramics department. MacKenzie has been one
of the main forces in the establishment in the United States of production
potteries for functional ware based on the ideals of Bernard Leach. He
organised the now legendary tour of the US by Leach, Hamada and
Yanagi in 1952. Through his teaching and lecturing as much as by the
example of his own work, he has been a great influence on generations of
potters. His artistic credo is directly related to that of Leach and the
Japanese mingei ideas of artistic value appearing from the supression of
individuality and anonymous repetition of simple, useful wares:
“... Vitality of form is not limited because (a pot) will be used during a
meal. The craft of pottery is dependent upon the physical contact of the
observer, and in handling, washing, drinking from, .. .”", and”... each
piece .. . becomes a sketch or a variation of an idea which may develop
over hours, days or months and require ten to several hundred pieces in
order to come to full development . . . From thousands of pots produced
some few may sing. The others are sound stepping stones to these high
POIMES
Howath and Ball, “Holding the Center; Warren Mackenzie and the Core of Vesselmaking”,
American Ceramics, 3/4,1985
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century . . .,1979
J. Reeve, “Warren Mackenzie and the Straight Pot”, Craft Horizons, June, 1976

26 Roberta MARKS, ‘Fire Ritual’ 1985

Earthenware, with acrylic paint. H.21”. Mus. No. C46-1986
Donor: Edward Swerdlin, Florida
Born in 1936, Marks grew up in New York, took her BFA at the University
of Miami and her MFA at the University of South Florida. She came to
ceramics relatively late, having worked as a painter and a sculptor
producing mixed media constructions. Her pots derive their inspiration
from pre-historic and primitive work: hand built and unglazed, they rely
for their initial impact on the dynamism of their form. She has lately
introduced additional pattern and colour through painting—though
continued on next page.

73
EE NE IE

26 Continued
acrylic, not glazed —which serves to enhance, articulate or counter the
pot’s natural movement.
G. Clark, F. Gros, H-Y Shapiro & M. Wittmer, roberta b. marks /ethos, exhibition
catalogue, 1983
Clark, Century .. .,1979

27 James MELCHERT, ‘Platinum Bowl’ 1964

Earthenware, with platinum glaze. D.9”. Mus. No. Circ. 670-1969
James MELCHERT, ‘Wall Vase’ 1966
Earthenware, with platinum lustre. H.13.5”. Mus. No. Circ. 671-1969
Born in1930, Melchert took his BA at Princeton University and his MFA
at the University of Chicago in 1957. He studied with Voulkos at Berkeley,
California, from 1958-1961. Starting from an ‘abstract expressionist’
mode in stonewares, Melchert developed an interest in moulded,
figurative, and painted low-fired whitewares, and ventured into the
more extreme ends of ceramic art. In1972, he and a group of colleagues
in Amsterdam dipped their heads into buckets of slip and recorded the
drying process on video.
Clark, Century .. .,1979
American Studio Pottery, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1968

28 Jens MORRISON, Circus’ Vase, 1983

Earthenware. H.7.75”. Mus. No. C174&a-1984
Given by Howard Jacobson
Born in 1944, Morrison took his BA at San Diego State University and his
MFA, in 1970, at Mills College, California. He has researched extensively
in Mexican folk-craft.
“Tam nota ‘potter’ at all but rather a ceramic artist-sculptor. I do, from
time to time, make jars which I consider small three-dimensional
paintings.”
29 Kon NAGLE, ‘Untitled Cup’
Multi-fired earthenware. H.6.8”. Mus. No. C66-1986
Donor: Rena Bransten, San Francisco
Nagle, born in 1939, studied at San Francisco State University, obtaining
his BA in1962. His conventional training was disrupted by contact with
the work of Voulkos and students from the Otis Art Institute, and by
meeting Voulkos himself when he came to Berkeley in1959. Nagle did
not, however, follow the ‘macho blood-and-guts’ styles of the Abstract
Expressionist potters, but responded more to the finely made, highly
coloured, low-fired (but equally revolutionary) work by potters such as
Ken Price. This kind of work was later to be known as the ‘fetish finish’
school.
Together with Jim Melchert, Nagle took over the Ceramic Department of
the San Francisco Art Institute and converted it from a high-fired
stoneware studio to one concerned with low-fired ceramics. His work
exploits the potentials of this medium in highly finished, colourful and
excellently crafted work on a small scale. Since the 1960s, Nagle has
concentrated on a series of ‘cups’, such as the piece shown here, which
have evolved into highly stylised forms refering only at a distance to the
original inspiration. They are exercises in form, texture and colour,
which draw on a wide variety of sources, from Japanese Momoyama
wares to 1950s Californian decor. Nagle is also a songwriter and
producer, and has produced special sound effects for films:
“I carry lyrics and color chips around in the same bag. My music and art
have similarities: they're both emotional, warm and romantic; they're
abstract and semi-slick; they both have flash and style, but I’m also
shooting for content.”
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century ...,1979
Ron Nagle, exhibition booklet, San Francisco Art Institute, 1978
A. Meisel, “Prizing and Apprizing the cup: Ron Nagle”, Craft Horizons, December, 1975
E. Ward and J. Pugliese, “Ron Nagle’, Craft Horizons, June, 1971

30 Gertrud and Otto NATZLER, ‘Bottle’ 1960

Stoneware with apple-green glaze. H.8.75". Mus. No. Circ. 674-1969
Both born in 1908 in Vienna, Gertrud and Otto met in 1938 and began to
work together on ceramics. Gertrud (who died in 1971) had trained at the
Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule and threw the pots, Otto had no formal
training but devised the glazes. The moved to the USA in1938 and settled
in Los Angeles. Their work together won great acclaim for the clean
precise ‘classical’ forms and the considerable inventiveness of the
glazes.
Clark, Century .. .,1979
 SS ESS I FLT PRET EET ELIE IO ISR EE OTE EEE

31 Art NELSON, ‘Meta Vessel’ 1984

White earthenware. H.15”. Mus. No. C47 to b-1986
Donor: Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio, Los Angeles
Born in1942, Nelson took his BA at the University of Colorado and his
MFA at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1969, where he is
currently Associate Professor. His early grounding in mathematics and
music inform and inspire his approach to ceramics. Though concerned
with ‘the vessel’, Nelson treats it here as a solid—the pure forms, and
bright contrasting colours providing rhythm and counterpoint to a self-
contained whole.
Charles Fiske, “Art Nelson”, American Ceramics, Winter, 1983

32 Win NG, ‘Covered Jar’ 1966

Stoneware. H.16”, D.13”. Mus. No. Circ. 583 &a-1966
Born in1936 in San Francisco, Ng obtained his BFA in1959 at the San
Francisco Art Institute. He is best known for his sculptural work, often
on a monumental scale. He gave up his interest in ceramics in the late
1960s, but has recently returned to the field.
Clark, Century ...

33 Richard NOTKIN, ‘Double Cooling Towers Teapot No. 10°

1984
Unglazed stoneware. H.6”. Mus. No. C48 &a-1986
Donor: Philip and Elsie Heller, Chicago
Born in 1948, Notkin took his BFA in the Kansas City Art Institute, and his
MFA at the University of California, in1973; he now works in Oregon. His
concern with ecology and social questions is seen in the imagery he
employs — some of his constructions specifically deal with survival,
whether of endangered animal species, or of ourselves. The “Cooling
Towers Teapot’, one of a series started in1983, can be seen as a comment
on the industrial requirements (and hence ecological impact) of so
harmless a thing as a cup of tea. The work's impact is carried largely by
the extraordinary craftsmanship and technical control demonstrated.
Lynn Eder, “Richard Notkin”, Ceramics Monthly, November 1982
West Coast Ceramics, exhibition catalogue, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1979 (shown
also at the Crafts Council, London)

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34 Mark PHARIS, ‘Teapot’ 1985
Saltglazed stoneware. L.14”, H.6.5”. Mus. No. C49
& a-1986
Donor: G.L. Bryan, Winsconsin
Pharis studied under Warren MacKenzie at the University of Minnesota
from 1967-1971. He works within a functional tradition, employing a
limited range of shapes and natural coloured glazes. His forms, as
demonstrated by the teapot exhibited here, can be innovative, and
Pharis has developed a distinctive, individual style.
“Portfolio”, American Craft, July 1984
“Minnesota Potters”, Studio Potter Winter 1975-6

35 Elsa RADY, ‘Blade Runner’ 1985

Porcelain. H.10”. Mus. No. C50-1986
Donor: Anne Davis, Texas
Born in1948, Rady studied at the Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles
from 1962-1966. She concentrates upon particular expressive qualities
within a fairly narrow format: her porcelain vessels, based on a cone
shape, exquisitely made and glazed in intense though not always bright
colours, have rims cut to form ‘wings’. The configuration of these ‘wings’
give life, interest and movement to the cool precision of the shapes and
colours.
M. McCloud, “Elsa Rady: Porcelain Vessels’, American Ceramics, 3/4, 1985
Melinda Wortz, E/sa Rady: Porcelain, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, 1984

36 Daniel RHODES, Jar’

Unglazed stoneware. H.12.5”. Mus. No. Circ. 668-1969
Born in19f1, Rhodes studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and at Alfred
University, New York, where he was taught by, among others, Sam Haile,
in 1941. In1962-3 he worked in Japan. Rhodes has always been primarily
concerned with the sculptural possibilities of clay and has been
particularly infuential through his writing: Clay and Glazes for the Potter
1957, Kilns, 1968 and Pottery Form, 1976.
Clark, Century..., 1979
D. Rhodes, “The Search for Form”, Studio Potter 13/1, December, 1984
37 Jerry ROTHMAN, ‘Black Tureen’ 1983
Porcelain. H.18”. Mus. No. C51&a-1986
Donor: Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio, Los Angeles
Born in1933, Rothman studied furniture-making at the Los Angeles City
College, before taking a BA at the Art Centre School in1956, and studying
with Voulkos at the Otis Institute for two years, where he eventually took
his MFA in 1961. Rothman has always worked as potter and as a sculptor
in both metal and clay. Recent ‘potter's’ work, such as the piece exhibited
here, has played on his own divergent interests: between functional and
sculptural, between ‘classic’ and ‘baroque’, between the serious and the
comic. This tureen is functional but its impact is sculptural, it stands as a
‘orand object’, but is supported on bricks; it is witty, but the shiny black
glaze gives sinister, menacing overtones.
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century .. .,1979

38 Jerry ROTHMAN, ‘Sky Pot’

Stoneware. H.36.5”. Mus. No. Circ. 256-1970

39 Judith SALOMON, ‘Untitled Container’ 1983

Earthenware. L.13”. Mus. No. C52 &a-1986
Donor: Spencer and Carmine Browne, Colorado
Born in1952, Salomon took her BFA at the Rochester Institute, New York,
and her MFA atAlfred University, in1977. Her work is characterised by
boldly built slab forms, and the use of bright coloured glazes. Her forms
are functional, and this vase invites use for flowers.
Five Perspectives. Exhibition catalogue, Akron Art Museum, Ohio 1983
40 Adrian SAXE, ‘Untitled Vessel’ 1985
Stoneware and porcelain. H.20”, D.17”. Mus. No. C53&a-1986
Donor: Mark and Fredda Hindenburg, Los Angeles
Born in 1948, Saxe studied ‘with Bacerra at the Chouinard Art School,
Los Angeles, before taking his BFA at the California Institute of the Arts
in 1974; he now teaches and works at UCLA. His initial ceramic
inspiration comes not from sculpture, nor from oriental wares, but from
the opulent, even decadent, excesses of mid-18th century Europe,
Sevres in particular. His pieces are meticulously made, and are eclectic
in their imagery. Resonances of grand rococo vases are suggested even
in the piece displayed here, with its formal division into three parts — the
foot, here elementally conceived as a craggy mass; the body, smooth
porcelain in an opulent 18th century burgundy colour, and the gilded lid
and finial. The distortions and contradictions involved — the vicious
commando dagger with knuckle-duster forming the delicate and
expensive crown to the piece (in his earlier pieces often an antelope
figure), the earthy crags of the foot threatening to engulf the fine
porcelain body —are all part of Saxe's dialogue:
“The bases represent their material source, which in turn
metaphorically indicates ceramic and aesthetic foundations. The vessel
on the other hand, is a more refined, culturally determined,
manifestation of the medium. Then, finally, comes the antelope again —
the contrasting gesture that can be represented, but unlike the rest of
the piece, cannot be controlled.”
One might add that the dagger finial is here a comment on the culture
determining his present work.
“Adrian Saxe: Between Sévres and Moyomama’, Bulletin of the Eveson Museum of Art,
January-February, 1983
“Review: Adrian Saxe”, American Ceramics, 2/3, Autumn, 1983
Garth Clark, “Adrian Saxe: an interview”, American Ceramics, 1/4, Autumn, 1982
Clark, Century ...

4| Anna SILVER, ‘Teapot’ 1983

Harthenware. H.15", D.16.5”. Mus. No. C54 &a-1986
Donor: Wayne Kuwada, Los Angeles
Born in1935, Silver has studied in California, both at Berkeley and Los
Angeles, and at the Otis Art Institute. The grand scale, and bold colourful
painted decoration show a Californian optimism and self-assurance
which are typical of this potter's work.
Karen Chambers, “Anna Silver”, Craft International, April-June, 1985

79
 SS __ae ___\jqqLN'V"—w-_=aD

42 Paul SOLDNER, ‘Untitled’ 1983

Raku fired earthenware. H.20”, W.22”. Mus. No. C55-1986
Donor: Fred and Estelle Marer, Los Angeles
Born in 1921, Soldner took his BA at the University of Colorado, before
developing an interest in ceramics. He was Voulkos’s first student in 1954
at the Los Angeles Art Institute where he obtained his MFA in 1956.
Unlike his contemporaries there, Soldner continued to make functional
ceramics, and his work has rarely strayed far from the vessel format.
The title ‘VOCO’ (for Vessel Oriented Clay Object) given to some pieces
indicates that he sees the vessel as a formal focus for his work, not as a
functional limitation. Guided by nothing more than Bernard Leach’s
A Potters Book, Soldner gave a first demonstration of raku firing at a fair
in1960. This led to a continuing involvement with a technique which he
only discovered later was but distantly related to the Japanese. After
firing, Soldner uses various smoking techniques to stain or glaze the
piece while still hot. His particular version ofraku has developed into a
Western, particularly American, branch, distinct from that of the
Japanese. His work is strongly sculptural, and sensual in feeling, but it
speaks through the natural tactile and colouristic qualities of clay in a
spontaneous spirit which relates to certain Japanese traditions as much
as to the ‘abstract expressionist’ movement in which Soldner developed.
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century .. .,1979
Elaine Levin, “Portfolio: Paul Soldner’, Ceramics Monthly, June, 1979
Paul Soldner, “Raku As | Know It”, Ceramics Review, April, 1973

43 Rudolf STAFFEL, ‘Light Gatherer’ 1981

Porcelain. H.8”. Mus. No. C56-1986
Donor: Helen W. Drutt English
Born in 1911, Staffel studied from 1931 at the Art Institute of Chicago, and
taught from1940 until his retirement in 1978 at the Tyler School of Art,
Philadelphia. Staffel turned to work in porcelain only in the mid-1950s,
previously considering it alien to craft traditions. From the mid-1960s he
began to play with the translucency of this material, and has since that
time been progressively more daring and innovative. His vessels are
thrown, then cut and altered — pieces are added, walls are shaved down.
The technical problems of seeing such fine and complicated vessels
through the firing are enormous, and failures are frequent. This is a spur
to Staffel’s exploration. His interest in the light-transmitting and
transforming qualities of porcelain lead him to ever finer, ever more
risky work: “The best body | have worked with, is the body I know little or
nothing about”.
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century .. .,1979
P.& k. Winokur, “The Light of Rudolf Staffel”, Craft Horizons, 37, April, 1977

80
44 Chris STALEY, ‘Vase’
Porcelain. H15”. Mus. No. C57-1986
Donor: Bill Podmore, New York
Born in 1954, Staley took his BFA at Wittenberg University, Ohio, and his
MFA atAlfred University, New York; he now teaches at the Rhode Island
School of Design. His work is traditional, though not historicist: “I try to
make pots that are mine but that also celebrate the history of pottery”.
His work explores the plastic quality of clay: ‘It’s a struggle to find that
point where the clay is fluid and also has a clarity of form”.
“Christopher Staley”, Ceramic Monthly, October, 1984

45 Susanne STEPHENSON, ‘Extruded Footed Vase’ 1983

Porcelain with coloured clays. H.21”. Mus. No. C58-1986
Donor: Daniel Jacobs, New York
Born in1935, Stephenson studied at the Carniegie-Mellon University in
Pittsburg and took her MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan,
in 1959, under the tuition of Maija Grotell. She travelled to Japan in1962
to study wood-firing and ash-glazes, and to Spain in 1973 to study lustre
decoration. She started work as a straight-forward potter, with a
primary interest in decoration. In the late 1970s her work developed a
new sculptural direction, though her pieces still remain essentially
‘vessels’. Her interests now focus on dynamism and movement, on the
way a piece rests or presents itself in space, and in a more integrated
and integrating use of colour. The present vase belongs to a series where
the foot, formed from extruded pieces, serves to break an earthbound
static immobility and provides a sense of lift and free-floating movement.
The painting is conceived as landscape.
J. Koplos, “Alternations: The Ceramics of Susanne Stephenson”, American Craft, 42,
December 1982-January 1983
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century ...,1979

46 Ann Adair STOCKTON, ‘Plate’ 1965

Porcelain. D.16.5”. Mus. No. Circ. 362-1970
Ann Stockton was born in1936 and trained at the University of California
and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work owes a debt to the
‘abstract expressionist’ school of potting.
 47 Akio TAKAMORI, ‘Two Women’ 1985
Stoneware. H.24”, W.20”. Mus. No. C59-1986
Donor: Vicky L. Lidman, Montana
Born in1950, in Japan, Takamori trained in Japan at the Musashino Art
College, Tokyo, before coming to the United States where he took a BFA
at the Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri, and a MFA, in1978, at Alfred
University, New York. He is at present the resident artist at the Archie
Bray Foundation, Helena, Montana. Until recently he also maintained a
studio in Japan, and exhibited there. His figural vases, in distinctive and
striking style, draw on primitive art and mythology, and his interest in
the relationship between two- and three-dimensional images relates to
traditional Oriental painting.
Andy Masisse, “The Battleground of Eros’, American Ceramics, 5/1, 1986
“Akio Takamori”, Ceramics Monthly, September1983

48 Irvin TEPPER, ‘Decaffeinated Petaluma’ 1985

Porcelain. H.7”, D.8.5”. Mus. No. C60 & a-1986
Donor: Susie Schlesinger, California
Tepper trained as a ceramicist in graduate school, but abandoned clay in
the mid-1960s to work in other media — drawing, photography and video.
His return to ceramics as an addition to other media came about as a
result of an obsession with a coffee-cup he came across in1975: an
ordinary commercial cup that had a crooked handle. The imperfection of
the machine-made object exerted a fascination that has operated ever
since in his drawings and in a series of ceramic pieces cast from, or
modelled on, the original. These cups are altered, worn, and cracked.
The artist wants to imbue the object with its own history and let it show
the passing of time and tell its own story:
“The first one, | cracked the porcelain after it had been cast and pasted it
back together. |wanted it to look really old, like it was the last cup of
coffee . . . The cup has to have age. It has to look like it’s been worn down
its seen something that it has to tell about. Some are just elegant things.
Others have their own personality.”
P. Schimmel, “Conversation Pieces: The Cups of Irvin Tepper”, American Ceramics, 3/2,
1984
R. Cohen, “Irvin Tepper”, Artnews, 83/10, December, 1984
Irvin Tepper exhibition leaflet, Vanderwoude tananbaum Gallery, New York, September,
1984

82
49 Peter VOULKOS, ‘Plate’ 1977
Stoneware and porcelain. D.23.5”. Mus. No. C61-1986
Donor: Fred and Estelle Marer, Los Angeles
Born in1924 in Bozeman, Montana, Peter Voulkos studied painting at
Montana State University, and ceramics at California College of Arts and
Crafts, obtaining his MFA in1952. He spent two years with Rudy Autio at
the Archie Bray Institute in Montana, before moving to the Otis Art
Institute, Los Angeles in1954. Until this moment, Voulkos had been a
somewhat conventional potter, making production-line table wares, and
vases decorated with “modern” motifs. His skill as a thrower was
prodigeous, and he won recognition in fairs and exhibitions as early as
1949. While working with Autio in Montana in 1953, he visited New York,
where the “modern art scene” impressed him profoundly, in particular
the painters Franz Kline and de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Rothko. In
1954 he was appointed head of the ceramics department of the Otis Art
Institute, Los Angeles (later renamed the Los Angeles County Art
Institute).
Here, with a group of enthusiastic students, he was to change the whole
outlook of American potters, liberating, exploring and transforming the
boundaries of accepted ceramic form and concerns. He dragged
ceramics from the precious study of historic work and from
considerations of function, as exemplified by the orientalist school of
Leach, and pushed it to the forefront of artistic experiment and
expression. Challenge and experiment were the key notes to the group's
work. Clay was to be an expressive medium, in which the processes of its
making —a direct reflection of the energy and excitement of the potter—
were to speak loudest:
“.. [like to handle materials that I can't quite control. When I can
control it too much. . . |start contriving.
When you are experimenting on the wheel there are a lot of things you
cannot explain. You just say to yourself, ‘the form will find its way’ — it
always does. That's what makes it exciting. The minute you begin to feel
you understand what you are doing it loses that searching quality. You
reach a point where you are no longer concerned with keeping this blob
of clay centered on the wheel and up in the air. Your emotions take over
and what happens just happens.”
Voulko’s work has changed and evolved, both during the Otis period, and
later, when he moved to the University of California at Berkeley in 1959.
Starting as a domestic potter, the scale of his work grew as he altered
and manipulated the forms, and added piece to piece. Monumental
sculpture developed, but always with the wheel as the initial forming
process. In the early 1960s, Voulkos made the transistion to work in
metal. Though his major later works are in bronze, ceramics have made
regular appearances. In the 1970s, a series of transformed dishes (of
which one is shown here), which are very ‘ceramic’ in feeling, but which
he shows as ‘drawings’, represent an important output in this field.
Voulkos’s importance is undeniable as an artist but he is of equal
importance as a teacher. Those who worked with him at Otis and
continued on next page.
SL TEL BP ELSA DOLE AD TPES RENE TE TOLLS BL CIEL CRN

83
49 Continued
Berkeley testify to the energetic and creative atmosphere that pervaded
his studio in which the heirarchical division between teacher and taught
broke down. Many of his students went on to become important figures
in their own right — Soldner, Price, Mason, Arneson, Melchert, Nagle,
Frimkess, Rothman, Shaw and others. Even when they are not following
the same roads as Voulkos, they are following paths that would have
been impossible to find without his inspiration and the work they had
achieved together at Otis and Berkeley.
Voulkos appears little interested in the materials of ceramics, seeing
creativity in the manipulation of the material rather than in its nature.
He unhesitatingly used epoxy paints when unable to trust a glaze to
produce his required effect. Most of his works are stonewares, usually
constructed from wheelthrown elements, with slips, low-fired glazes
and paints to provide the colours.
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century .. .,1979
Elaine Levin, “Peter Voulkos”, Ceramic Review, 57, May-June, 1979
Rose Slivka, Peter Voulkos; a dialogue with clay, New York, 1978, with detailed biography
and bibliography.

50 Kurt WEISER, ‘Untitled Vessel’ 1982

Porcelain. H.16”. Mus. No. C62-1986
Donor: Mark Del Vecchio, Los Angeles
Born in1950, Weiser is currently the Director of the Archie Bray
Foundation in Helena, Montana. After a period of making exotic bird
vessels, Weiser has concentrated on pieces of simpler form, which
depend on sculptural presence and tactile coloured surface for their
appeal.
Kurt Weiser, “The Fire's Unpredictable Nature”, Studio Potter, 11/2, 1983

o1 Beatrice WOOD, ‘Blue Crater Lustre Footed Bowl 1978

Earthenware D.8.5”, H.4.5”. Mus. No. C63-1986
Donor: Garth Clark, Los Angeles
Beatrice Wood was born in1893 in San Francisco, and broke from her
conventional background to study drawing and then acting, both in the
States and in Paris. In 1916 she was introduced to the New York dada
group, and became an intimate friend of Marcel Duchamp, contributing
to his avant-garde magazines Rouge and Blind Man. She first tried her
hand at potting in 1933 in order to make a teapot to match some old
lustre plates she had bought in Holland. Thus began a life-long
commitment to ceramics. She studied at the University of South
TTTS TEE II ISTTE IT IES AIS
51 Continued
California, and briefly with the potters Gertrud and Otto Natzler. In1948
she moved to Ojai, California, and in1974 moved into the Happy Valley
Foundation there —a progressive educational community founded by her
friends Annie Besant, Aldous Huxley and Khrishnamurti. She is best
known in the ceramic field for her lustre glazes — opulent boiling
surfaces that gleam and scintillate in green, gold and blue. The reduced
in-glaze lustre technique is difficult and unpredictable: her straight-
forward forms are rendered impressive by the extremely arduous firing
process which they have so obviously undergone in order to acquire the
breathtaking glaze effects. Her work illustrates the maxim that
Duchamp impressed upon her: “Never do the commonplace; rules are
fatal to the progress of art.”
Beatrice Wood Retrospective, Visual Arts Centre, California State University, Fullerton,
Ca., 1983, (with detailed biography and bibliography. ).
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century .. .,1979
R. Bryan, “The ceramics of Beatrice Wood”, Craft Horizons, XXX/2, March, 1970

52 Betty WOODMAN, ‘Teapot’

Earthenware. H.11”, W.16.5”. Mus. No. C65 to b-1986
Donor: Mr and Mrs Edwin R. Thomas, St Louis
Born in1930, Woodman studied at Alfred University, New York, from1948
to1950. She maintains three studios, in New York, in Boulder, Colorado,
and in Italy where she pots each year during the summer. Woodman is a
committed earthernware potter, whose forms and glazes fully exploit the
low-fired material's special qualities. To a degree rare among
contemporary potters, she retains in the finished pot a full sense of the
plastic qualities of soft unfired clay, and of the forming processes it has
undergone. She exploits the nature of low-fired glazes to give clear bright
colours, and their tendency to flow and run in the firing. In these
matters, Woodman is following age-old ceramic traditions, resonances
of which are seen in her forms and decoration — Chinese Tang wares,
pre-classical Mediterranean earthenwares and Kuropean country
pottery. Though much of her work is constructed, it bears witness to her
considerable talents as a ‘thrower’ of clay on the wheel.
Betty Woodman, “The Italian Experience”, Studio Potter, 11/2, 1983
Clark, American Potters, 1981
Clark, Century .. .,1979
R. DeVore, “Ceramics of Betty Woodman’, Craft Horizons, 38, February, 1978

85
 53 Betty WOODMAN, ‘Pitcher’ 1982
Earthenware with slip decoration. H.13.75”, W.16”. Mus. No. C220-1984

54 William WYMAN, ‘Temple No. 9'1977

White earthenware. H.14”, W17”. Mus. No. C64-1986
Donor: Marilyn Pappas, Cambridge, Mass
Born in1922, Wyman trained in the Massachusetts College of Art and at
Columbia Unversity; he worked at Alfred Unversity in1953. He died in
1980. In the 1960s, Wyman was known for large slab built sculptures,
which developed eventually into the ‘Temple’ series, one of which is
shown here. Wyman’s work is cerebral, the craft in clay a means to an
end: “I have always been concerned with making expression transcend
technique”. His involvement in the 1960s with social and political
questions, gave way to more generalised and abstract ideas, and his
work is imbued with an atmosphere of isolation and alienation:
“What fascinates me is the opportunity to play with the illusion of infinity
within a definite form . . . fone becomes absorbed in passing through
the tiny openings, entering the pieces and exploring the dark interiors,
one can be caught up in a limitless trip in time and space, a sort of
confrontation, if you will, with infinity. The experience of disorientation
occurs when we engage in the play between the concrete reassuring
exteriors and in the floating mystery of the inner space.”
S. J. Montgomery, “William Wyman”, American Ceramics, 4/3, 1985
Clark, Century . . .,1979
Israel Horowitz, “William Wyman: the rebel in the conservative’, Craft Horizons, October,
1970

86
INDEX OF DONORS

The pieces that form the group American Potters Today are given to the
Victoria and Albert Museum through the British American Arts Associa-
tion. The index that follows lists the individual donors with the potters
whose work they have given:
ASHER, Betty BUZIO, Lidya
BRANSTEN, Rena FREY, Viola
NAGLE, Ron
BROWNE, Spencer and Carmine SALOMON, Judith
BRYAN, G.L. PHARIS, Mark
CARR GALLERY, The Mudd DILLINGHAM, Rick
CLARK, Garth FERGUSON, Kenneth
NELSON, Art
ROTHMAN, Jerry
WOOD, Beatrice
CUNNINGHAM, Ronald James BACERRA, Ralph
DAVIS, Anne MABERRY, Phillip
RADY, Elsa
Del VECCHIO, Mr and Mrs Anthony LAWTON, James
Del VECCHIO, Mark FERGUSON, Kenneth
NELSON, Art
ROTHMAN, Jerry
WEISER, Kurt
DeVORE, Mrs Richard DeVORE, Richard
DRUTT, Helen DUCKWORTH, Ruth
HIGBY, Wayne
STAFFEL, Rudolph
DUCKWORTH, Ruth DUCKWORTH, Ruth
FEINSTEIN, Rochelle AEBERSOLD, Jane Ford
FREIDRICH, Maria BERTONI, Christina
GRAY, Laurence and Ray GILL, Andrea
GUSTIN, Jay and Yvonne GUSTIN, Christopher
HELLER, Philip and Elsie NOTKIN, Richard
HINDENBURG, Mark and Fredda SAXE, Adrian
JACOBS, Daniel STEPHENSON, Susanne
KUWADA, Wayne SILVER, Anna
LIDMAN, Vicky L. TAKAMORI, Akio
MARKER, Fred and Estelle SOLDNER, Paul
VOULKOS, Peter
McClure, Mr and Mrs Robert MACKENZIE, Warren
MUNROE, Victoria BERTONI, Christina
PAPPAS, Marilyn WYMAN, William
PICKETT, Mr and Mrs John W. DALEY, William
PODMORE, Bill STALEY, Chris
RIGG, Doris L. GILL, John
SCHLESINGER, Susie TEPPER, Irvin
SENSKA, Frances AUTIO, Rudy
SMITH, Marie C. GILL, John
SMITS, Gwen Laurie and Howard CORNELIUS, Philip
STEINHEIMER, Marie DUVALL, Michael
SWERDLIN, Edward MARKS, Roberta
THOMAS, Mr and Mrs Edwin R. WOODMAN, Bettw
WILBER, Jessie S. AUTIO, Rudy
YAMPOL, Hope and Jay KRAUS, Anne

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