Lamelle Delphinium Blue Teapot Stand

In 1913 Ilonka Karasz immigrated to the United States from Budapest, where she had attended the Royal School of Arts and Crafts. In the late 1920s, she joined a number of modernist designer groups, including the American Designers Gallery, for which she exhibited interiors in 1928 and 1929, and the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen, an organization of more than one hundred modernist designers dedicated to elevating standards in contemporary design. She had a very successful career designing furniture, textiles, ceramics, wallpaper, and metalwork.

Karasz designed this teapot stand for Buffalo Pottery as part of a tea set. The simple pattern of the tea set, in Delphinium Blue and white, reflects both her Central European training and her experience in Java, where she spent time ca. 1930. The set was marked "Buffalo China," a "Lamelle Patented Design," in reference to a lamination process developed by Buffalo Pottery, in which a clay center was inlaid into vitreous china to produce wares that were stronger and more resistant to breakage than china alone.