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Marguerite Friedlaender Wildenhain

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Marguerite Friedlaender Wildenhain

American, (1896–1985)
Marguerite Wildenhain was an internationally renowned studio potter who influenced generations of ceramicists. Born in Lyons, France, of English, German, and Jewish descent, she briefly studied drawing and sculpture at the Berlin School of Fine and Applied Arts. Dissatisfied with school, Wildenhain left and designed ceramic wares for a porcelain company in Rudolstadt, Germany, where she was fascinated by the factory’s potters. In 1919, Wildenhain enrolled in the inaugural year of instruction at the legendary Bauhaus in nearby Weimar. She studied sculpture under master potters Gerhard Marcks (1889–1981) and Max Krehan (1875–1925), and after a seven-year apprenticeship-in-residence, she became the first woman in Germany to achieve master potter status.

In 1933, Marguerite and her husband Frans Wildenhain moved to Putten in the Netherlands and opened a pottery they named Het Kruikje, or The Little Jug. When the German army invaded the Netherlands in 1940, she immigrated to the United States and taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts) in Oakland. Two years later, she was the first resident at Pond Farm, an art colony and refuge for European artists near Guerneville in the Russian River Valley of Northern California. While other émigré artists including metalworker Victor Ries (1907–2011) and weaver Trude Guermonprez (1910–76) joined Wildenhain, the collaborative dissolved during the 1950s. Marguerite Wildenhain continued at Pond Farm, where she made studio ceramics and held annual summer workshops, teaching select students to master wheel-thrown pottery.


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