Van Briggle Vase

About the Arts and Crafts Movement:

Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20^th^ century.

About Van Briggle Pottery Company:

Artus Van Briggle was born in Ohio and began his artistic training in 1886 at the short-lived Avon Pottery in Cincinnati. A year later, he joined the Rookwood Pottery, which rapidly recognized his talent. The company sent him to Europe to study pottery, where he was inspired by the Art Nouveau style and by Chinese and Japanese ceramics, especially the “dead” matte glaze. His experiments with matte glaze won attention at the Rookwood exhibit at the Paris Exposition in 1900. Because of persistent childhood tuberculosis, Van Briggle moved to Colorado Springs in 1899. By 1901, he had built his own pottery, with the help of Maria Longworth Nichols Storer of Rookwood. In 1902, he married Anne Gregory, a fellow American artist he had met in Paris. Van Briggle Pottery expanded, and fourteen people were employed. Van Briggle’s work is distinctive in combining sculpture and ceramics, with human forms flowing into a vessel’s shape. Plant and animal motifs also appear, often with an Art Nouveau flowing line. Production was often molded but limited in number, and objects were carefully retouched or painted by hand. Artus Van Briggle died in 1904 at the age of 35, and his wife continued the firm. Its work earned regular art pottery awards. By 1910, the company expanded into tiles, mantels, and other commercial wares, and in 1920 art pottery was discontinued in favor of mass-produced ware. It continued production into the 21st century.

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