Lamelle Delphinium Blue Saucer

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 saucer for Buffalo Pottery as part of a tea set. This simple pattern, with a white center and a Delphinium Blue border, 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.