Covered jar

Adelaide Alsop Robineau

Jar: ca. 1905–10; lid: 1912 · Porcelain · The American Wing

Adelaide Alsop Robineau was a consummate craftsman and a brilliant designer, who, working on her own, tackled the challenging medium of porcelain in an era when the medium was the domain of large-scale commercial factories. Like many talented women of her era, she began her career as a china painter and teacher, and with her husband, Samuel Robineau, founded the extraordinarily influential periodical Keramic Studio (later Design). She was a pioneer in the field of ceramics, and challenged traditional gender roles in her trail-blazing career, throwing the clay herself, decorating, and glazing her vessels. Her artistic porcelains are today acknowledged to surpass the work of any other American studio potter. This jewel-like vase features a brilliant streaky allover turquoise glaze. Robineau must have thought it significant enough some years later when she made a tiny porcelain cover for it dated 1912. The cover, with its excised decoration and creamy yellow glaze, simulates carved ivory. Through her exceptional work which was exhibited widely both throughout the United States and abroad and both her editorial voice and articles in Keramic Studio, Robineau left an indelible print on the history of American ceramic, and was significant in paving the way for American studio potters that follow in the decades after her death.

Artist

Adelaide Alsop Robineau

Date

Jar: ca. 1905–10; lid: 1912

Medium

Porcelain

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of Martin Eidelberg, 2019