Ceramics/ Marguerite Wildenhain
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CERAMICS/ MARGUERITE WILDENHAIN NurEn?mile Marguerite Wildenhain's pottery is a combination of the old and the new, the complex and the simple. The shapes are derived from the classic straight-forward utilitarian objects of the past—jars, cups, etc.—but each object also embodies the contemporary approach to sculptural form. Born in France, Marguerite Wildenhain received her first formal art training in sculpture at the School of Fine and Ap- plied Arts in Berlin. In 1919, after having worked as a designer of porcelain for a factory in Thuringia, she apprenticed as a potter at the Bauhaus in Weimar under Max Krehan and the sculptor Gerhard Marcks. After seven years in Weimar she became chairman of the Ceramic Department at the Municipal School for Arts and Crafts Since 1945, Pond Farm Pottery has been in Halle Saale and designed production an experiment in education and living through the crafts for Marguerite Wild- models for Royal Berlin porcelain. With the rise of the Nazis in 1933 she lost her enhain and the scores of students from all job and moved to Putten, Holland, where parts of the world. Here one finds a com- she operated a workshop and designed munity of potters working not only to for the Regout Porcelain Factory in Maas- perfect their craft, but also to develop a stricht. Shortly before the Nazi invasion sense of personal expression. of Holland in 1940, she emigrated to the Marguerite Wildenhain's pottery has United States and taught at the California been included in every major ceramic College of Arts and Crafts. In 1942, she exhibition since 1937, and she is repre- moved to Guerneville, California, and sented in museum and private collections founded Pond Farm Pottery which has both in Europe and in the United States. been developed into her workshop and In 1958, her book Pottery: Form and summer school. Expression was published. MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY CRAFTS / 29 WEST 53rd STREET, NEW YORK / 2 APRIL-1 MAY 1965 .