Vase with picnickers

The Finnish-born Maija Grotell was one of the most influential potters working in the vessel tradition during the 1930s and 1940s. Even though a relatively large number of women had played important roles in the Art Pottery movement of the early twentieth Century, few female ceramists were active between the wars. Grotell was one of the exceptions. After first studying in her native Finland, in 1927 Grotell immigrated to the United States to study under master potter and influential teacher, Charles Fergus Binns at the New York State Clay-Working School at Alfred University. Like so many other potters, Grotell soon began teaching to sustain her ceramics career. She worked in the crafts program at the Henry Street Settlement House in New York until she moved to Cranbrook in 1938; while in New York, she also taught at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, for two years beginning in 1936. Grotell expressed herself in a graceful, calligraphic idiom comparable to the French artist. Her scene of picnicking figures on this vase exemplifies how she turned to the essentials of the decorative approach of Matisse and the so-called School of Paris. Actually, she had begun work in this style while still in her native Finland, and then emphasized it when she came to New York. The figures are rendered as linear elements—arcs that express the joy of relaxing and eating al fresco.