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has ridden in, drunk from, stored things in, played with, hung on the wall, eaten off, mowed the lawn with, lit the night with, viewed in a museum, cooled their room with, read about, printed with, sat on, placed a call with, enjoyed in a theater, hid their hooch in, collected, been awarded with, seen at a zoo, put their fl owers in, served punch from, fried their chicken in, been delivered milk from, read something printed on, seen at the World’s Fair, detected enemy combatants with, had an arm or leg replaced with, been protected by, or seen at the White House something created by Viktor Schreckengost.

Called an “American da Vinci” by so many that discover him, the breadth and depth of his work is staggering by any measure. A pioneer of modern American industrial design, prolifi c sculptor, painter, and ceramist, his works are sought by and held in major private and public collections across the United States. His New Yorker Jazz Bowl is considered an icon of the Art Deco era. Bicycles, pedal cars, dinnerware, lawn mowers—hundreds of consumer and commercial products—have improved and enriched all of our lives.

In 1931 Schreckengost created the fi rst academic industrial design department in America. For nearly 70 years, he trained generations of leading industrial designers. The impact on the country’s economy far exceeds $200 billion. His impact on the quality of our lives is immeasurable.

Every Adult in America

R. Guy Cowan was a 1908 alumnus of the New York School of Clay-working and Ceramics at Alfred University. By 1913 he had built the network and financial backing necessary to start what would become the Cowan Pottery, initially focusing on tile contracts. After being drafted into a World War I project to develop higher quality charcoal for gas masks, Cowan returned to his pottery with an eye toward mass production of artistic wares. Several factors contributed to his success, including experimentation with glaze and slip methods, innovations in casting and firing, and working in a market larger than a few wealthy patrons. Cowan Pottery produced a variety of figural flower holders, vases, bowls, ash trays, candlesticks, bookends, sculptures, and other art pottery objects that today are highly sought-after pieces.

The 1920s was a period of continuing expansion for Cowan’s pottery, with a move to a new facility in Rocky River and a burgeoning staff that peaked over 40 in 1930, the same time that a new display room was constructed. Also an instructor in ceramics at the Cleveland School of Art, Cowan encouraged his most talented students to spend time on Saturdays at the pottery studying firsthand the workings of an art pottery manufactory. After their graduation, he

hired a few former students to work as full-time designers.

In 1930 Schreckengost was studying ceramics as a post-graduate student in Vienna under Michael Powolny when he accepted an employment offer developed by Guy Cowan: upon returning to the US, he divided his time between working as a staff designer in the Cowan Pottery studio and serving as an instructor at the Cleveland School of Art (now Cleveland Institute of Art).

By the end of the 20s, in addition to producing limited-edition sculptures by artists like A. Drexler Jacobson, F. Luis Mora, Paul Manship, and Margaret Postgate, Cowan had taught and/or collaborated with many of the artists destined to become the “Who’s Who” of Cleveland artists in the early 20th century—including Russell Barnett Aitken, Alexander Blazys, Paul Bogatay, Edris Eckhardt, Thelma Frazier (Winter), Waylande Gregory, Viktor Schreckengost, and Walter Sinz. Though this was a period of intense creative collaboration, it was also Cowan’s darkest hour as the Depression took its toll on small businesses. In December 1930 the studio received a bankruptcy order, and one year later, after focusing in 1930 and 1931 on innovative attempts to repay the firm’s creditors, the pottery closed its doors.

The Cowan Pottery

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It was in the midst of this uncertainty that Schreckengost created his now famous icons of American Art Deco. The fi rst three New Yorker bowls were created in response to requests from Eleanor Roosevelt. They were large—even for punch bowls—at about 17” across and 12” high. Inspired by his trips to Manhattan, Schreckengost scratched them with New York themes: soaring buildings and jazz motifs, ocean liners and café scenes. He fi nished them with a cobalt blue glaze to capture the “funny blue light in New York in 1931 when Cab Calloway’s band was playing.” He originally called them New Year’s Eve in New York, but Cowan retitled them New Yorker. Now known commonly as Jazz Bowls, these were a striking vision of New York City in the Jazz Age.

The response to these fi rst bowls caused Schreckengost to create an entire Jazz Series, a collection of bowls and plates bearing icons that depict the excitement of the jazz culture—dancers, instruments, cigarettes, cocktail glasses, music notes, and bright lights—and fi nished in Egyptian Blue Crackle glaze. The series hit the market boasting at least 11 unique objects. Despite their taboo subject matter in an era of Prohibition, several went into production. Schreckengost would etch the design onto the bowls and plates and supervise the decorators who completed the fi ll work.

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It was in the midst of this uncertainty that Schreckengost created his now famous icons

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Into Obscurity And RediscoveryThe letter suggests that, while Schreckengost had achieved national prominence and recognition, the Jazz Bowls were largely unknown. Schreckengost’s response provides one of the earliest accounts of the commission:

While the Jazz Series had a strong initial reception, over the course of the 1930s it faded from view as Schreckengost’s own career eclipsed his early success. From time to time a bowl or a plate would show with others of Schreckengost’s creations, but by 1940 the series had completely disappeared from the public eye.

On January 4, 1954, a lawyer in New York wrote to Schreckengost, reporting that he had just purchased a large punch bowl inscribed with Schreckengost’s name and the word “jazz” from a decorator shop in Boston.

1 Letter from Homer Kripke to Viktor Schreckengost, January 4, 1954, Viktor Schreckengost Foundation. Kripke’s letter is mistakenly dated 1953, as the subsequent letters between him and Viktor are all dated 1954. Viktor’s reply quoted below, also in the Foundation archives, is dated February 15, 1954.

Schreckengost also describes to Kripke how he made several more of these bowls with variations in subject matter.

I have noted that there are innumerable articles on your work in the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature on the arts, and I have read those which appear to deal with punch bowls or vases but have not found any reference to this one. I should appreciate it if you can tell me whether this is a unique piece or whether you did several like it.1

According to my records you have one of a series of bowls which I made for the Cowan Pottery Co., Rocky River, Ohio in 1930–31. . . A request was received from New York to submit a sketch for a Punch bowl which showed a New York theme. Several sketches of mine were submitted and this one selected. Upon completion, we received a very nice letter stating that the wife of the New York Governor, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, was very well pleased with it.

Into Obscurity And RediscoveryKripke’s query constitutes the only known expression of interest in the Jazz Series for over forty years (see References on page 12). Then in the mid-1980s, with a rediscovery of Art Deco, the Series began to be featured in museum exhibitions. In 1985, it was included in a major show on The Machine Age, organized for the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Because no one knew the bowl’s title, it was nicknamed the Jazz Bowl; the term has since been applied to the entire Series.

Within a decade the New Yorker became widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of the period—perhaps the most important ceramic ever created in America. Museums and collectors alike aggressively compete to acquire them. Since the 1980s, it has roughly doubled in value every fi ve years.

BowlsCocktails and Cigarettes (fl ared)

Cleveland Museum of ArtFirmament

None knownNew Yorker (parabolic)

Cleveland Museum of Art Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Cowan Pottery Museum High Museum of Art Schreckengost Collection 5 privately held

New Yorker (fl ared) Art Institute of Chicago Erie Art Museum Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Princeton University Art Museum 4 privately held

Night Club (fl ared) None known

Poor Man’s Baltimore Museum of Art Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Arts Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art 6 privately held Green glaze—2 privately held Yellow glaze—None known

Rhythm in Blue (parabolic) None known

PlatesCocktails

1 privately heldCocktails and Cigarettes

None knownDanse Moderne

Western Reserve Historical Society Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Arts Schreckengost collection 3 privately held Full-color version—Schreckengost collection

New Yorker 1 privately held

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HoldingsBelow is the current listing of known Jazz Series holdings.

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At least 11 unique combinations of Jazz motifs were created. Because the original parabolic bowls (1) tended to warp in the kiln, Cowan insisted that the New Yorker decoration be applied to a run of more fi re-friendly fl ared rim bowls (2). Interest became so strong that a cheaper, non-sgraffi to version was also produced, duly nicknamed the Poor Man’s punch bowl (3) by the Cowan artists. Owing to the collapse of Cowan’s pottery, only these three bowls, the Danse Moderneplate (8) and the New Yorker plate (9) are believed to have been produced in multiples.

In addition, at least four presumably unique Jazz Bowls were created. The only non-

serial bowl known to exist today, Cocktails and Cigarettes (4), was executed on a fl ared bowl and received an award from the jury at the May Show of the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1931. It was purchased from the show by S. Livingston Mather, ironically a direct descendant of Cotton Mather.

Two additional punch bowl designs, Night Club and Rhythm in Blue, appear in a February 1933 issue of London Studio, along with a Poor Man’s. The caption identifi es them as Schreckengost’s work. Night Club (5) was a fl ared bowl with dancers matching those on the Danse Moderne plate. Rhythm in Blue (6)was parabolic and featured a guitar and other musical instruments. To date, only this photo and two reference cards from Schreckengost’s records attest to the existence of these bowls.

The Jazz Series

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The card Schreckengost kept for Rhythm in Blue states that the bowl was exhibited at a one-man show in Akron in 1931 and then “returned to Cowan Pottery—destiny unknown.” The reference card for Night Clubstates that the bowl was damaged but sold by a gallery in 1937 for a reduced price. The London Studio photo is not an advertisement but a report of “Fine Craftsmanship” and therefore does not mention sales information.

Firmament (7, not shown) is another unique punch bowl recorded in Schreckengost’s fi les as an Egyptian Blue glaze with black. Created in 1938, it was not a Cowan piece and one cannot be certain that it contained a Jazz motif; it was exhibited in the May Show that year and sold through the Cleveland Museum of Art, but no photo exists of it and its present location is unknown. Its title suggests it may have featured a design of planets similar to that found on the interior of several Jazz Bowls.

There is one more bowl of interest to Jazz Bowl connoisseurs—a parabolic shape cast

from Schreckengost’s molds, but the motif is not his. It is a unique Alice in Wonderlandbowl signed by Cowan contemporary, Waylande Gregory, bearing the Egyptian Blue glaze, and executed in the same sgraffi to technique. Alice was a popular theme among Cowan’s potters, so it is no surprise to fi nd her on one of Schreckengost’s bowls. (This bowl is held in a private collection.)

When Schreckengost decorated yet another of his parabolic bowls called The Hunt, (this time instead of sgraffi to work he chose underglaze slip decoration), he painted four accompanying plates and exhibited the fi ve together as a set, now owned by the Smithsonian. This ensemble parallels his practice of designing matching plates to go with his jazz-themed punch bowls.

A promotional fl yer for Cowan Pottery reproduces three of these plates: the New Yorker, Cocktails and Cigarettes, and Danse Moderne. All three carry motifs that pair them with the bowls: the New Yorker and Cocktails and Cigarettes plates with the bowls by the same name, and Danse Moderne with Night Club. While these pieces were featured in advertisements (see page 5), Cowan seems to have folded before some of them were put into production.

Indeed, with the exception of Danse Moderne, these plates have almost entirely disappeared. A Danse Moderne (8) plate is in the collection of the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland; several are in private collections; and the Viktor Schreckengost Foundation owns two—one a full-color version with yellow, red, green, blue and black. A private collector owns the only New Yorker (9) plate known (though photos demonstrate that at least two were made); he bought it on eBay. Cocktails and Cigarettes (10) is known only from photos. A single example of a fourth plate, Cocktails (11), is also known to exist; it contains cocktail glasses such that it could be paired with any of the bowls. Cowan offered these plates for $15 each.

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From the beginning, mastering the sgraffi to technique was viewed as the most critical element of the project’s success. Heather McClellan, the project lead, has worked carefully with Schreckengost, discussing tools, techniques, and prototypes to recapture his depth and detail. Much as Schreckengost did in 1931, McClellan created several pieces herself; then, after careful review with Schreckengost, she moved to the role of artistic director, scratching the designs and carefully training decorators to fi nish the fi ll work.

From mold recreation and underbody composition to glaze reformulation and fi ring details, the process of creating the new production line has encountered most of the challenges Schreckengost did 75 years ago. With his oversight and the advantages of current chemistry and technology, those challenges have been met. Each object continues the Schreckengost tradition of unique and beautiful craftsmanship. Each has also been serial numbered and entered in the Schreckengost database for provenance tracking. These bowls and plates constitute the Centennial Edition Jazz Series—a celebration of Schreckengost’s 100th birthday and the 75th anniversary of the fi rst Jazz Series. There are 100 pieces in each set.

When Schreckengost went to the Cleveland Museum of Art to be photographed prior to his 2000-2001 retrospective, the museum’s New Yorker was being unpacked for display. Schreckengost reached out to touch the bowl but his hand was stopped by a museum staff member who said, “You made the bowl, but you may not touch it.” Schreckengost designed these pieces to be beautiful and useful—not to be cloistered and inaccessible. And yet, ironically, because of their unique contribution to American art, these pieces are locked up behind glass and cannot be touched, not even by his own hand. Collectors also rue this situation.

To resolve this tension and increase accessibility, Schreckengost is once again overseeing a production of the Jazz Series, beginning with the parabolic New Yorker, and continuing with the fl ared bowls and the plates. He has supervised much of the work himself, visiting the studio to fi ne-tune the process and critiquing the scratchwork of individual bowls to ensure they are faithful to his concepts—in some cases varying from any known versions

of the designs.

The Centennial Series

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10 “The best of their age…boldly designed and exquisitely executed.” - John Axelrod

Though Schreckengost’s Jazz Bowl was a career launching piece, placed in the context of his ceramics achievements before and after, it is simply another work from his hand. Growing up in Ohio’s pottery belt, he had modeled his own toys in clay as a child and sold mass produced ceramic wares through Gem Clay Forming Co. as a high school student. Schreckengost’s experience with Cowan and his intense training in Vienna prepared him to make an impact that would change the face of American ceramics in the 20th Century.

At the request of Walter Dorwin Teague, Schreckengost exhibited a series of four sculpted heads in the American Pavilion of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The Elements, each in different colors of clay, consisted of four stylized heads: Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. During World War II, his expertise as a sculptor

The Schreckengost Ceramic Legacy

was sought by the Navy, for whom he worked on emerging radar technology and advances in dimensional aerial map-making.

After WWII, Schreckengost returned to his roots and, in the process, transformed American ceramics. His mid-century slab form sculptures, vessels that were carved instead of thrown or modeled, proved that pottery needn’t be functional but could stand alone as appealing sculptural forms. The slab form sculptures, often taking their inspiration from gourds, shells and other natural shapes, not only introduced a new technique for the potter—that of cutting away clay to form sculpture—but also elevated ceramics from a craft to a fine art form. Using hewn and modeling techniques in the large, Schreckengost created monumental, 32-ton structural terra cotta sculptures that still delight visitors of the Cleveland Zoo.

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Visual Jazz

11“The best of their age…boldly designed and exquisitely executed.” - John Axelrod

Thematically, the Jazz Series belongs within the context of Schreckengost’s life-long interest in jazz music. Schreckengost witnessed the early years and hey day of this American art form first-hand. As a child he listened to some of the earliest jazz recordings on his sister’s phonograph; in high school he performed with the Ken Webb Band playing E-flat alto and B-flat tenor sax and clarinet; and as an art student in Cleveland he regularly visited Manhattan, where he listened to Cab Calloway. Though seriously considered, Schreckengost decided against music as a career because the hours were not to his liking.

It is no surprise, then, that jazz (along with its musical relatives rock and gospel) appear repeatedly as themes in Schreckengost’s other work. About the same time he created the Jazz Series, for example, he painted

a series of watercolors using what one might term a jazz style—free spirited, improvisational, and punctuated with “jazz licks” of color. These portray a collection of performers, including several jazz musicians, dancers and singers. Throughout his life, Schreckengost created paintings and watercolors of musical instruments, such as Big City Jazz, Rock Jazz Bass, Rhapsody (In the Mood), Reeds, and Baritone in Brass. Schreckengost also manifested his musical passion through sculpture, including Rhythm of the Soil and Oh Lord. He portrayed biblical characters as black to evoke a southern gospel feeling as in Shadrach, Meshach, Abed-Nego. His pedal cars, bicycles, and other early design work were adorned with the design elements (like speed whiskers) that were utilized extensively during the Art Deco/Jazz era.

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The following is a list of prominent citations of objects within Schreckengost’s Jazz Series.

Crockery and Glass Journal, December 1930Cowan Pottery, Catalogue, 1931 (illustrates Cocktails and Cigarettes punch bowl)“Statement of the Jury,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, no. 5, May 1931, not paginated. Jurors were Henry E.

Schnakenberg, Gertrude Herdle, and John Sloan“Youthful Designer Inherited His Taste for Art,” Cleveland News, November 2, 1931“Art Alliance Dinner for Cleveland Artist,” The Youngstown Vindicator, Youngstown, Ohio, Sunday, December 4, 1932“Fine Craftsmanship,” London Studio, February 1933, p. 131“Viktor Schreckengost of Ohio” (a transcribed conversation). The Studio Potter 2:1 (December 1982), p. 74–79 .Eva Weber, Art Deco in America, Exeter Books, New York, 1985Richard Guy Wilson and Dianne H. Pilgrim, The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941, The Brooklyn Museum in association with

Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1988Elaine Levin, The History of American Ceramics, 1607 to the Present: From Pipkins and Bean Pots to Contemporary Forms, Harry

N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1988Cara Greenberg, “Metro,” Metropolitan Home, November 1989 (Poor Man’s Bowl illustrated in color)Sharon Pinzone, “Rocky River’s Lost Colony of Artists,” Avenues (Cleveland), December 1989John Russell, “The Cooper-Hewitt Displays More of its Design Trove,” The New York Times, Friday, September 6, 1991, The Living

Arts, B1Derek Ostergard, Art Deco Masterpieces, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1991 (one of only two American works

included)Jonathan Fairbanks, et. al., Collecting American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, 1971–1991, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1991Postcard, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1991Henry Hawley, “Cleveland’s Cowan Pottery,” Western Reserve Antiques Show, 1993Christina Corsiglia, “Viktor Schreckengost: Evolution of a Cleveland Ceramist,” Cleveland as a Center of Regional American Art.

Proceedings of Symposium of the Cleveland Artists’ Foundation, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, Nov 13–14, 1993, p. 100–112.

Leslie Pina, Pottery, Modern Wares 1900–1960, Schiffer Publishing, Ltd. Atglen, Pennsylvania, 1994American Art at Harvard: Cultures and Contexts. Harvard Art Museums Gallery Series, No. 9. Exhibition Catalogue, October

1–December 30, 1994Tim and Jamie Saloff, The Collector’s Encyclopedia of Cowan Pottery, Identification and Values, Collector Books, A Division of

Schroeder Publishing Co., Inc. Paducah, Kentucky, 1994Karen Lucic, “Seeing Through Surfaces: American Craft as Material Culture,” in Craft in the Machine Age, 1920–1945, edited by

Janet Kardon, New York Abrams and the American Craft Museum, 1995Christine Temin, “Fogg’s Matchmaking Recasts Art History,” The Boston Globe, September 1, 1995, p.101. Reviews exhibition

The Persistence of Memory: Change and Continuity in America’s Cultures at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Laura E. Bronson, “Cross Country,” Country Living, November 1995Dennis W. Griffith, Curator, The Spirit of Cleveland: Visual Arts Recipients of the Cleveland Arts Prize, 1961–1995Karen McCready and Garth Clark, Art Deco and Modernist Ceramics, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, 199520th Century Sale, February 12, 1995, Treadway Gallery, Inc., Cincinnati, OhioWilliam Robinson and David Steinberg, Transformations in Cleveland Art, 1796–1946, The Cleveland Museum of Art, distributed

by Ohio University Press, 1996Michael Tambini, The Look of the Century, DK Publishing, New York, 1996 (reproduced twice).Mark Bassett and Victoria Naumann, Cowan Pottery and the Cleveland School, Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., Atglen, Pennsylvania,

1997William Daley, “In Conversation: Viktor Schreckengost/William Daley,” American Craft, June–July 1997“Reflections on Art and Culture: A Series of Lectures and Gallery Talks” (mailer), The High Museum of Art, February 1998Judith Miller, ed, Miller’s Antiques Encyclopedia, Reed Consumer Books, Ltd, London, 1998Henry Adams, Viktor Schreckengost and 20th-Century Design, The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999Henry Adams, “Cocktails and Cigarettes,” member’s magazine, Cleveland Museum of Art, December 2000Barbara Haskell, The American Century: Art & Culture 1900–1950, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in association

with W. W. Norton & Company; New York, London 1999 (the only ceramic included)Mark Favermann, “Viktor Schreckengost: An American Design Giant,” The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles (January 2001), p.

27–29Paul Makovsky, “Pedal to the Metal,” excerpt from “Nine over Ninety,” Metropolis Magazine, special issue, January 2001, p. 80–83Steven Harrison, “The New Yorker Jazz Bowl.” The High Museum of Art: Selected works from the collection, edited by Lori

Cavagnaro, 2005, p. 77. Henry Adams, “Viktor Schreckengost at 99,” Modernism Magazine, vol. 8, no. 3, Fall 2005, p. 72–83.

References