Bowl

Viennese born Gertrud and Otto Natzler created one-of-a-kind ceramic works from the late 1930s to 1971. They worked as a team even before they married and were awarded a bronze medal at the 1937 Paris Exposition International des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne. The Nazi threat, however, forced them to leave their country in 1938, and they found refuge with family members in Los Angeles, where they set up a small pottery. Throughout their over thirty-year artistic partnership—Gertrud produced the wheel thrown forms and Otto glazed them—they produced around 25,000 singular objects. Their prolific output included a wide range of forms, mostly vessels, that are noteworthy for their exceedingly thin and expertly potted shapes and dramatic, idiosyncratic, and often experimental glazes. This bowl is a wonderful example of how their individual contributions combined to make a striking, unified work of art.