Vase

Maria Longworth Nichols was an important figure in the world of American art pottery. She began her career, like many women, as a china painter. Like her rival in Cincinnati, Louise McLaughlin, Storer embraced the French technique of barbotine. She is best known for founding the Rookwood Pottery in 1880, which soon became the largest and longest-lasting art pottery in the United States. Nichols was also an ardent admirer of Asian art. Her father had an extensive collection, and she also collected. Her eyes were open to Japanese motifs and design early on when she was given a copy of the highly influential Manga by Katsushika Hokusai. The prints contained within the albums became critical source material for much of the pottery she decorated in the early 1880s. By the mid 1880s, however, Nichols had ceased her direct involvement with the Rookwood Pottery, perhaps due to the stress of her husband George Ward Nichols’s illness and death. By the late 1890s, as demonstrated by this work, she had begun experimentation in a different direction. Rooted in china painting—the vase is essentially a commercially produced porcelain beaker—she tried to replicate the elusive Chinese sang de boeuf, oxblood red glaze that interested many potters both here and abroad. It is further subtly decorated with the head of a walrus, drawing yet again upon Japanese motifs, this time painted in gold luster.