Large, decorated studio pottery vase by Bauhaus trained California artist Marguerite Wildenhain. Marguerite Wildenhain was highly influential in the pottery development in the United States. Her and her husband Franz brought the ideas of the German Bauhaus and shared these ideas and aesthetics with their many students. Their influences are still seen in studio pottery created today.
Marguerite was born in France and studied arts in England and Germany as a young woman. When the Bauhaus school opened in Wiemar, Germany in 1919 Wildenhain was one of the first to enroll. At the Bauhaus Wildenhain studied alongside painters Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky and worked with sculptor Gerhard Marcks and potter Max Krehan. In 1925 Wildenhain became the first woman to earn the Master Potter certification in Germany. In 1926 Wildenhain left the Bauhaus to accept the position of head of the ceramics workshop at the Burg Giebichenstein School of Fine and Applied Art, however, in 1933 Wildenhain was forced to leave Germany when the Nazi party came into power. Marguerite and her new husband, Franz, worked for a few years in the Netherlands before needing to flee Nazi oppression again. Marguerite emigrated to New York, but Franz was denied emigration status and forced to stay behind. Marguerite worked for a short time in New York before moving out to California where she took a job teaching at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA. Within a few years, Marguerite left CCAC and was able to establish Pond Farm, a ‘school of living’ in Guerneville, CA. There Marguerite taught classes on pottery making and held workshops with fellow California artists. She gained US citizenship in 1945 and was able to have her husband Franz join her at Pond Farm where the two taught their Bauhaus style of pottery making. Franz and Marguerite later parted ways with Franz moving to New York and Marguerite staying in Guerneville. Marguerite continued to teach in California and traveled to give lectures. She also wrote and had published several influential books on ceramics and showed her work in exhibitions around the world.
This vase is large in scale for Marguerite. It has incised lines and earth-tone glazes on the exterior with a radiant blue glazed interior and is marked with jug cipher and ‘Pond Farm’ on the bottom. There is a chip to the lower edge of the rim, and a chip at the edge of the base. (see images).
The vase stands 9.5 inches tall and 8 inches wide at the widest point.
Price $1400
