Product Description
Rozenburg Pottery Holland, W.P. Hartgring Art Nouveau Mantle Clock, 1904

W. P. HARTGRING
ROZENBURG POTTERY The Hague, The Netherlands
Blackbird mantle clock 1904
Handpainted earthenware with exotic foliage and a bird, porcelain face, gilt bronze surround, original clock mechanism.
Marks: H (artist’s monogram) 534, Rozenburg den Haag trademark, date mark symbol for 1904
For more information see: Art et Décoration, vol. 8 (1900) 193, illus. p. 189 (A. Sandier, La ceramique à l’Exposition); Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, vol. 3. (1900) 395, illus. p. 392; Art et Décoration, vol. 9 (1901) 56 Abb. S. 54 (A. Sandier, La Ceramique à l’Exposition II); Der Moderne Stil, Julius Hoffmann, Vol. 3, (1901) Taf. 53.; La Kunstgewerbeblatt Neue Folge, Vol. 12. (1901) p. 95, Abb. S. 82,89; “The International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art at Turin – The Dutch Section,” Enrico Thovez in The Studio, vol. 26 (1902), pp. 204-6; Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, Vol. 7 (1904), p. 568, Abb. S. 574-5, (K. Ruge, Kunst und Kunstgewerbe auf der Weltausstellung zu St. Louis); Art et Décoration, vol. 17 (1905) p.86 Abb. S. 77, 88 (G. Mourey, L’Art Decoratif Hollandais); Sprechsaal, Vol. 38, (1905) p. 517 (W.H. Zimmer, Die Weltausstellung in St. Louis; Rozenburg, Monographie einer Manufaktur 1883-1917, Marjan Boot et al. (Munich: Verlag Künst & Antiquitäten, 1984); Sammlung Bröhan: Kunsthandwerk 1-Jugendstil, Werkbund, Art Deco, Glas, Holz, Keramik, (Berlin: Karl H. Brohan, 1976) p. 367-380.
H: 15″ x W: 10″ x D: 5 1/8″
Rozenburg Pottery Holland, W.P. Hartgring Art Nouveau Mantle Clock, 1904
MARGARET POSTGATE (1879-1953) USA
WAYLANDE GREGORY (1905-1971) USA
ARTHUR BAGGS (1886-1947) (glaze development) USA
COWAN POTTERY STUDIO USA
Cubist Elephant bookends 1929
Ceramic bookends with a black gunmetal glaze
Signed: Cowan studio mark (under glaze) Cowan bookend numbers 840 and 841
For more information and illustration see: Cowan Pottery and the Cleveland School, by Mark Bassett and Victoria Naumann (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1997).
H: 4 1/2″ x W: 5 1/2” x D: 3 3/4”
Margaret J. Postgate was born in Chicago, IL on September 29, 1879 and died at a hospital in the Bronx, NY in 1953. Her family moved to Manhattan around 1910 and then Brooklyn around 1925 and she remained a Brooklyn resident right up until her death. Her parents were both born in England: John W. Postgate and Margaret Postgate nee Derry. She had siblings, a brother George and one or two sisters, Mary and/or Mae. Margaret studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and Cooper Union School of Art in New York. In 1925, 1925, and 1926 she participated in soap sculpture carving competitions, some sponsored by Procter & Gamble Corporation in Cincinnati, Ohio. Pamphlets exist as well as exhibition brochures and others on “how-to” carving penned by Postgate. Margaret Postgate designed for Cowan from 1929-1930 where she adapted a few of the designs she had rendered in soap for ceramic sculptures for the Cowan Pottery. She also executed a few pieces of sculpture that were cast in bronze for the bronze division of the Gorham Manufacturing Company.
WILLEM COENRAAD BROUWER (1877-1933) The Netherlands
POTTERIJ VREDELUST Leiderdorp, The Netherlands
Vase with handles c. 1905
Brown glazed red clay with tan light brown cut out overlaid and sgraffito decoration in a stylized organic motif, two applied looping handles
Marks: Brouwer 139 (incised)
For similar work see: Dutch Decorative Arts 1880-1940, eds. Titus M. Eliëns, Marjan Groot, Frans Leidelmeijer (New York: Battledore Ltd.,1997),p. 56; Leven in een verzameling: Toegepaste kunst 1890-1940 uit de collectie Meentwijck (Laren: Singer Museum, 2000), illus. 76, 77, p. 74.
For more information on Brouwer see: Art Nouveau en Art Deco in Nederland: verzamelobjecten uit de vernieuwingen in de kunstnijverheid van 1890 tot 1940, Frans Leidelmeijer and Daan van der Cingel (city unknown: Meulenhoff/ Landshoff, 1983), pp. 80-82.
H: 6″ x Dia: 5″
ROBERT SCHELLIN (1910 – 1985) USA
“Calligraphy” Floor Vase 1958
Hand thrown earthenware with a light and dark brown glaze with a stylized abstract calligraphic motif encircling the body
Marks: various marks and estate stamps Robert Schellin, Made in 1958, P88, C118 (paper labels)
For more information see: Schellin, A Retrospective (Milwaukee: School of Fine Arts, The University of Wisconsin, 1975); Who Was Who in American Art, (Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1985), p. 547.
H: 23 1/2″ x Dia: 7″
Price: $9,000
Robert Schellin’s life as an artist was consistent, productive, and based on firm philosophical foundations. Regarding his own progress, he had always been aware, as a young art student and later as a mature artist, that deliberately narrowing the focus of his interests to assure a more constant public notice would run the risk of his becoming highly expert, but sterile in expression. From the beginning of art student days Schellin moved from very satisfying periods of drawing and painting to work in three-dimensional
Media, frequently in the medium of ceramics.
Schellin left the W.P.A. in 1937 to teach at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. After a year he moved to East Orange, New Jersey, supervising art in the public schools. It was during this stay in the New York metropolitan area that he studied with Hans Hoffmann at his Eighth Street School and witnessed at first hand the changing art scene and the growing commercialism of the artists market. Robert Schellin later returned back to Milwaukee rejoining the faculty of the University of Wisconsin (UWM). His works have been exhibited for many years in Wisconsin and national shows including the Wisconsin State Fair; the Art Institute of Chicago, 1944; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1946; and the Milwaukee Art Institute numerous times between 1939-1960. He was included in the USIA European Traveling exhibition 1959-61.
GUSTAVO PEREZ Mexico
Stoneware vase 2000
Black, randomly positioned rectangles on a cream / sandy base with a pinned overlap detail
Signed: GP 2000-68
H: 9 1/4″ x D: 6 1/2″
Price: $5,500
Gustavo Pérez makes vessels that are simple, smooth and symmetrical. Their elegance is due to the precision of the incised lines and other markings on the pots. While using the same clay body—sand colored stoneware—throughout his work, the artist achieves a wide range of form and pattern and includes slowly undulating walls beneath the subtly incised surfaces.
Gustavo Pérez works are incessantly experimental. There have been parallel lines, calligraphic traces, geometric cuts into the surface, minimalist vessels, recollections of pre-Hispanic vases and references to other ancient cultures.
The ceramics of Gustavo Pérez are distinguished by eliminating superfluous details, by synthesis of his elements. During the past two decades he has created a visual language that seems closely aligned with music. Pure in form, with a significant structure, completely abstract and without specific associations, his language of line, the bending of forms, and the definition of the vessel mark his work as a distinctive voice. The form is not just a container or a receptacle; it is architecture.