Vase with storks

Frederick Hurten Rhead, an Englishman by birth and training, was one of America’s leading ceramists at the turn of the twentieth century. As a potter, designer, decorator, teacher, and author, his influence was far-reaching. Rhead’s career extended across the nation and included positions not only at large commercial establishments but also at small art potteries, educational facilities, and therapeutic institutions. Well versed in many of the major techniques of decoration employed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rhead throughout his long career embraced the English Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau styles, and ultimately, Art Deco. Developing relationships with many of the key figures in the international Art Pottery movement, among them William Percival Jervis, Taxile Doat, and Adelaide Alsop Robineau, Rhead proved to be one of the most diverse and influential ceramists working in the United States. He also became one of the leading champions of modern design in America, in both theory and practice.

This vase employs the technique of slip-trailed outlines through the use of a squeeze bag, one that Rhead brought over from England and employed in various modes throughout his career. He also appropriated motifs from his earlier English work as seen on this vase with an amusing scene of bespectacled storks wearing nightcaps and a band of irregularly spaced sgraffito hearts filling in the lower band in the English manner.