Our First Beatrice Wood

Although we are best known for our focus on European mid century ceramics, every once in a while we acquire a great piece of American ceramic art. A small but wonderful primitive figural vase in multi colored luster glaze, dating to the 1960s and 4.5 inches tall.

Beatrice Wood (1893-1998) was an Artist and ceramicist who was born in San Francisco, studied art in Paris and worked with Marcel Duchamp in New York. In 1916 she founded The Blind Man magazine with Marcel Duchamp and writer Henri-Pierre Roché. She was know as the "Mama of Dada"

Beatrice Wood at an Exhibition of her Work at the Takashimaya Department Store in Tokyo, 1961.

In her early forties she moved to Los Angeles after a series of artistic careers, most notably as an actress, on the East Coast.
 While on a trip to the Netherlands she purchased a pair of baroque plates with a luster glaze. She wanted to find matching pieces but after an unsuccessful hunt, decided to enroll in a ceramic class at Hollywood High School and make her own.
 This hobby turned into a passion that would last the next sixty years, she studied with some of the most notable names in American ceramics, including Gertrude and Otto Natzler. Ultimately she developed a signature style of luster glaze that draws the metallic salts to the surface by starving the kiln of oxygen. 


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