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Lot 81
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Maija Grotell, Finnish / American (1899-1973), footed bowl ca. 1951, studio pottery, cranberry gloss drip with silver metallic trim glaze, 2 3/8"H x 5 3/4"Diam.
Maija Grotell, Finnish / American (1899-1973), footed bowl ca. 1951, studio pottery, cranberry gloss drip with silver metallic trim glaze, 2 3/8"H x 5 3/4"Diam.
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Description:

Maija Grotell
Finnish / American, (1899-1973)
footed bowl ca. 1951
studio pottery, cranberry gloss drip with silver metallic trim glaze
signed under base.

From AskArt: Maija Grotell became a ceramist who immigrated from Finland to America in 1927. At that time, there were minimal ceramic facilities in the United States, and ceramics were considered either an industry or a hobby. But the effort of Grotell including her pioneer teaching helped to change those attitudes. She and those she influenced demanded mastery of the kick wheel, the upgrading of firing facilities, and the continuous experimental production of test glazes so that a common working knowledge could be built.

Grotell was born August 19, 1899 in Helsingfors, and there she studied at The Ateneum, the Central School of Industrial Art, and completed six years of graduate work in ceramics while supporting herself drawing for the National Museum and working as a textile designer. Her training included painting, sculpture and design, but her interest lay with ceramics. However, there was minimal opportunity for innovation, teaching or marketing ceramics, so she came to America.

Maija's first summer in America was spent at the State College of Ceramics at Alfred, New York, where she met, among others, the founder of the school, Charles F. Binns, and Arthur Baggs of Ohio State University, leaders in the establishment of university-level ceramics programs where the art of clay was offered as adjunct to established engineering curricula. Maija had already found work at the Inwood Studios in Manhattan and went on to teach at Union Settlement and then at the Henry Street Settlement, while exhibiting and selling her own ceramics. From 1936 to 1938 she was also the first art instructor at the School of Ceramic Engineering at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

A Diploma from the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition and a Silver Medal at the Paris International in 1937 were among the first of twenty-five major exhibition awards she was to receive over the next thirty years, including six from the Syracuse Ceramic National Exhibitions and the Charles Fergus Binns Medal from Alfred University in 196I.

In the fall of 1938 she was invited to enter a very different creative environment when she joined architect Eliel Saarinen, sculptor Carl Milles, weaver Marianne Strengell and later designer Charles Eames on the faculty of Cranbrook Academy of Art, outside Detroit, Michigan. It was while teaching at Cranbrook that she achieved her finest series of works. Her work was purchased for twenty-one museum collections, including the American Craft Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Everson in Syracuse, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum. Her extensive glaze research enabled Eliel and Eero Saarinen to use huge exterior walls of brilliantly colored glazed brick in the architecture of the General Motors Technical Center. She died in 1973.

  • Dimensions: 2 3/8"H x 5 3/4"Diam.
  • Medium: studio pottery, cranberry gloss drip with silver metallic trim glaze

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April 30, 2022 11:00 AM EDT
Indianapolis, IN, US

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