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  Rose Cabat/American Studio Ceramics Rare “Feelie” Porcelain Vessel, c. 1980-85

  ROSE CABAT (1914-2015) USA

  Rare and important large scale “Feelie” c. 1980-85

  Thin walled porcelain vessel with a silky satiny matte drip glaze

  Signed: incised CABAT on bottom

  For more information on Rose Cabat see: Rose Erni Cabat Retrospective 1936-1986 (Tuscon, AZ: Tuscon Museum of Art, 1986)

  H: 3 5/8″

  Price: $1,650

  Rose Cabat was an American studio ceramicist living in Tucson. Considered one of the most important ceramic artists of the Mid-century Modernist movement, Cabat is best known for her innovative glazes on small porcelain pots called “feelies” which she developed in the 1960s. Her organic forms often resemble the shape of onions and figs, and her glazes range from organic to jewel tones. Cabat was born in 1914 in the Bronx, New York, began to work in ceramics in the late 1930′s, and moved to Arizona in 1942, where she continued to make innovative ceramics.

  Feelies:
  Feelies are described as onion, fig, cucumber, and saucer-shaped ceramic vases terminating in an upward closed neck. Bruce Block, an avid collector, has described them as sensual and tactile with a very specific unforgettable texture, spiritual seeming to contain a type of energy. Rose Cabat had developed a silky satiny glaze, and it wasn’t until around 1960 that she had hit upon the first of the appropriate form, svelte and sleek to match the glaze. She exclaimed, “Now this one’s a feelie.”, coining the term. Upon developing the new glazes, she felt that she needed new forms to apply the glazes to, different from what she made before, “craft fair” style coiled heads and wind bells. She is quoted as saying, “The old things did not look good … I wanted simpler shapes that went with the glazes.”They are typically globular in shape, tightening down to a minuscule neck glazed to a satin surface. The tactile experience is most important. The nature of the neck is such that it is closed, so narrow that it cannot hold anything. Cabat would reply when asked why the necks of her feelies are so narrow, “A vase can hold weeds or flowers, but can’t it just be a spot of beauty?”

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  Fontana Arte Italian, Mid-Century Glass “Fruit” Bookends, circa 1950

  FONTANA ARTE   Milan, Italy

  “Glass fruit” bookends   c. 1950

  Glass, chromium-plated brass

  For more information see: Fontana Arte, Una storia Trasparente, Laura Falconi (Milan: Skira, 1998).

  H:  5” x W:  3 3/8” x D:  5”

  Price: $3,500

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  Aaron Bohrod / F. Carlton Ball, Monumental, Hand Thrown Pottery Eve Vase 1952-56

  AARON BOHROD  (1907-1997)  USA
  F. CARLTON BALL  (1911- 1992)  USA

  “Eve” vase 1952-56

  Monumental glazed stoneware vase with a brown and cream beige glaze with sgraffito decoration of four stylized nudes.

  Signed: A. Bohrod  F.C. Ball (inscribed)

  Illustrated: Aaron Bohrod: Figure Sketches, Edwin E. Elliott and Howard E. Wooden (Dodge City, Kansas:  Gall and Shaull, 1990) p. 17, fig. 32. A Decade of Still Life: Aaron Bohrod (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966) p. 41.

  H: 20 3/4 x Dia: 12 1/2″

  Price: $29,000

  ***Aaron Bohrod himself considered this vase his most important work in ceramic. This exact vase is illustrated in “A Decade of Still Life: Aaron Bohrod” in a bisque state. There is a stable firing crack that is visible on the base (see photo) near the Bohrod signature which happened in the firing, but in no way affects the structure of the piece. A letter from Aaron Bohrod himself describing this piece and the history surrounding it also accompanies the vase.

  For more information see: The Potter’s Art in California: 1885-1955, Hazel V. Bray (Oakland: Oakland Museum Art Department, 1980) pp. 56-57.

  A painter of cityscapes, landscapes and trompe l’oeil paintings, Aaron Bohrod lived in Chicago from birth until 1948, when he moved to Madison, Wisconsin. There he was a member of the University of Wisconsin’s art faculty. Bohrod was a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he also attended the Arts Students League in New York.

  Aaron Bohrod was an American artist who was nationally known in his lifetime. He was the subject of frequent exhibitions and gallery shows in various locations, generally focusing on a particular chronological period of his artistic production. The recipient of numerous prizes and awards (including two Guggenheims and the purchase prize at the “Artists for Victory” exhibition of 1942-43 at the Metropolitan Museum in New York), he was both proficient and prolific as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and as an illustrator. In addition, he was the author of several books on art and an autobiography. Although he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York with a number of well-known and influential teachers, the one who exerted the most profound influence on him was John Sloan, who taught him to value both the Old Masters and the visual reality of the urban American scene. Bohrod returned to Chicago after studying with Sloan in New York “determined to do in my own way with my own city what Sloan had done with New York.” (Bohrod’s stylistic development has been typically characterized in terms of his early relationship to the gritty urban realism of the Ashcan School with which Sloan was associated and his later magic realism style with its virtuoso and meticulous technique and witty visual repartee, almost as if they were two separate and unrelated developments. Although his own description of the origins of his unique still life approach in his autobiographical book, A Decade of Still Life, may have guided critics to look at his oeuvre in this way, a closer assessment reveals clear connections between the earlier and alter periods. Before 1940, for example, he had created a prototype of the still lifes that were to become his hallmark. By the mid 1950s, he began to dedicate himself to the creation of paintings that are by turns resonant, mysterious, evocative and humorous. The studied and careful detail of the bricks on the buildings foreshadow the care that Bohrod will lavish on each of the carefully observed and realized objects in his later still lifes, while the anecdotal detail predicts the accumulation of objects on which his later work depends. The polished and masterful technique of this later work also suggests the Old Masters to whom he was introduced by Sloan.

  F. Carlton Ball (1911-1992)
  F. Carlton Ball was born in Sutter Creek, California, He studied art at Sacramento Junior College before enrolling at USC. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1933. He later did graduate studies under Glen Lukens at USC. He taught at several colleges/universities, such as the CCAC (his first position in 1935), Mills College, University of Wisconsin at Madison, University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, USC University of Puget Sound and etc. From our research, we believe his last teaching position was in Tacoma, Washington, at the Tacoma Community College. Primarily known for his throwing, he did combine his pots with the decorative artistry of his first wife Kathryn Uhl Ball and most importantly, the Wisconsin artist, Aaron Bohrod. He exhibited at the Association of San Francisco Potters, 1952 Los Angeles County Fair’s 6000 Years Art in Clay and the Crocker-Kingsley of Sacramento, California, to mention a few locations. Exhibited at the Nationals in 1941-1949, 1951-1960 and 1966.

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  Barry L. Thumma, Face of America, Gelatin silver print 1980

  BARRY L. THUMMA (1947-2003) USA

  Face of America   1980

  Gelatin silver print

  Size: H: 13 3/8” x W: 11”

  Size (with board): H: 14” x W: 11”

  Size (framed): H: 21 ¼” x W: 17”

  Price: $2,750

  Barry L. Thumma, a former New Era photographer, covered four presidents as White House photographer for The Associated Press. In his 20-year career with the AP, he traveled on more than 100 Air Force One flights to photograph presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He also photographed Pope John Paul II, Jerry Falwell, Mikhail Gorbachev, Michael Deaver, Alan Greenspan and Donald Rumsfeld, among other personalities and politicians of his time. He was a member of the White House News Photographers Association. Thumma began his career in 1967 as a part-time photographer for the Lancaster New Era. He joined the Associated Press in 1973 in Cincinnati, where he covered the Reds and the Bengals. After two years as the Ohio photo editor, Thumma moved to Washington, D.C. to cover the White House. He also captured heartbreaking images of the famine in Ethiopia, NASA space flight operations and troop actions in the field.