Plaque with nudes and birds
Decorated by Thelma Frazer
Manufacturer Cowan Pottery
Thelma Frazier was a graduate from the influential Cleveland Institute of Art in 1929, and as a student there and shortly after she graduated, she worked as a designer for the Cowan Pottery, where she would have encountered a number of other significant Cleveland-based ceramists, notably Waylande Gregory, Viktor Schreckengost, Edris Eckhardt, and Edward Winter (whom she married in 1939). The Cowan Pottery fully embraced the modern style in the ceramics they produced. This plaque of three nude women feeding birds exemplifies the high French art deco style that Cowan advocated. The design derives from a much –publicized painting by Jean Dupas from the time of the 1925 Exposition in Paris. While Frazier did not capture the sensuosity of the French painting, she nevertheless brought to the design an energetic, modernist design, with its stylized figures and angular lines.
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