vase, Rookwood Pottery; Amelia Browne Sprague

Archive Label 2003: Rookwood, cornerstone of the American Art Pottery Movement, was founded by Maria Longworth Nichols as an amateur pottery club named after her family estate. Under the direction of William Taylor, it evolved into a financially successful company employing over 60 decorators, many of them women. Nichols met Kataro Shirayamadani (1865-1948) in 1886 at an industrial exposition where he was part of a Japanese delegation promoting trade. The next year he joined Rookwood, working there as one of its most influential and recognized painters until his death. Shirayamadani, whose work can be seen in the case in the 19th-Century Gallery, this floor, brought Japanese interest in nature and an exquisite artistic sensibility to Rookwood’s decorating studio. The floral decorations applied to Rookwood vases were typically asymmetrical, a principle of Japanese design assimilated from Shirayamadani. Off-center poppies on the luxuriously rich dark vase above exemplify that principle. Amelia Sprague was an important decorator at Rookwood from 1887 until 1903. Archive Label 2001: Floral decorations applied to Rookwood's vases were typically asymmetrical, a principle their decorators had absorbed from Japanese art. This dark vase painted with off-center poppies is probably from Rookwood's Standard glaze line, or possibly their Iris glaze line, both of which were highly celebrated. An important decorator at Rookwood from 1887 until 1903, Sprague died in Lawrence, Kansas.