Highlights Archives
Wisconsin Ceramic Art Goes Online
The American Art Pottery movement originated in 1876 when a group of women china decorators in Cincinnati began to experiment with ceramic glaze techniques inspired by British Arts and Crafts pottery. This new approach to ceramics as an art form caught on quickly, and studios producing ceramic art sprang up across the United States. A new online tour of 175 objects from the Wisconsin Historical Museum shows the diverse range of ceramic art made by Wisconsin artisans from the 1880s to the 1960s.
One of Wisconsin's most innovative and influential ceramists was Milwaukee native Susan Frackelton. In the 1880s Frackelton gained national recognition as a china decorator when she developed a line of paints, patented a portable kiln, and published "Tried by Fire" (1885), an instructional manual for amateur china painters. Frackelton went on to make distinctive salt-glazed stoneware.
Pauline Jacobus was another woman who made a successful career from ceramic art. She established the Pauline Pottery in Chicago in 1883, using molds and a staff of decorators to produce vases, candlesticks, and other ornamental wares. In 1888 Jacobus moved the pottery to Edgerton, Wisconsin, to be near high-quality clay beds.
The success of the Pauline Pottery attracted a number of other ceramic artists to Edgerton. The museum's collection includes work by Thorwald Samson and Louis Ipson, two Danish potters who came to Edgerton to work with Jacobus. The pair began producing terra-cotta figurines and plaques under the name American Art Clay Works in 1892 (renamed Edgerton Art Clay Works in 1895). In 1903 they developed a new line of ceramics, the Norse Pottery, modeled after ancient Scandinavian artifacts.
New ceramic art businesses emerged in Madison in the mid-20th century. These included Century House, operated by Priscilla and Max Howell, and the Ceramic Arts Studio, founded by Lawrence Rabbitt. Working with designer Betty Harrington, the Ceramic Arts Studio became the most commercially successful of the Madison potteries, producing up to 500,000 molded ceramic figurines and other items at its peak in the late 1940s. Included in the online tour are pieces that have Rabbitt's and Harrington's marks.
Wisconsin ceramic art can be found in the collections of several other museums and local historical societies around the state. The Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database includes images of Pauline Pottery at the Neville Public Museum of Brown County, Pauline and other Edgerton potteries at the Rock County Historical Society and the Kenosha Public Museum, and work by Susan Frackelton at the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Milwaukee Art Museum. More information about each of these artisans, as well as other Wisconsin potteries, is available from the Wisconsin Pottery Association, a statewide organization of ceramic collectors.
The Wisconsin ceramic art collection is the seventh of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's online tours, joining children's clothing, paintings, quilts, moccasins, dolls, and samplers.
:: Posted March 26, 2008
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