pottery

Jennifer Lee Ceramic Vase

Jennifer Lee's work is represented in collections worldwide. Lee is known for her unglazed, hand-built pots and distinctive coloring technique. She mixes metallic oxides into the clay before shaping it, developing a unique texture and color in every piece. The simplicity and elegance of her work stands out in contrast to its earthly tones and wabi-sabi aesthetic. This vase's pieces were carefully reassembled, the chips were filled, and the surface was touched up to match. A minimalist approach can often work wonders on pieces like ...

Roseville Futura Vase

American art pottery is one of our owner Michael's very favorite types of object to restore. Each studio had its own distinct style that would evolve throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The molded stoneware, low relief, and incised decoration was a carefully crafted backdrop for glazes that would highlight the form and texture of the pottery. This Roseville vase was manufactured in the late 1920s as part of the Futura pattern. Perhaps it is a more modest example of the Art Deco style, but it ...

Picasso Woman Lamp

This is one of many editions Pablo Picasso created in collaboration with Madoura Pottery. Every piece in the edition, titled Woman Lamp, is hand-painted and unique. A face is depicted on each side with incised lines and a familiar palette of glazes over engobe. Though some of the damage to the piece was new, there was evidence of previous restoration. This isn't unusual when it comes to pottery of this quality. Everything was carefully reassembled, minimizing any evidence of adhesive. Such porous surfaces are ...

Jazz Bowl

This magnificent ceramic bowl is about 20” in diameter. About eighteen of them were made and it is considered one of the iconic pieces of Art Deco ceramics. It portrays symbols of New York night life in the 1930s, hence its name: the Jazz Bowl. Two of them were purchased by Eleanor Roosevelt – one for their private home and one for the White House. One of them, however, seems to have been purchased and forgotten – and it wound ...

Iridescent Painted Vase

There were two small pieces broken from the rim of this vase – in the style of the Wedgwood fairyland pieces from the 1920’s. The challenge here was to recreate the purplish metallic lustre glaze that graded into a gold. We have five different ways to restore gold finishes – from various shades of gold leaf, to 23 karat Japanese gold powder, to shell gold, to finely powdered mica. Each of them is useful in different settings. This type of ...

Handpainted Keepsake Christmas Plate

This plate is valuable to the family that owns it, and did not require expensive invisible repair in order to fix it durably and inconspicuously. The missing part of the rim, as well as smaller chips, was filled with a color-matched optical epoxy, and then touched up to match the decorations. Such repairs are generally visible from closer than two feet, but even at close range they look neat and professional and do not distract the eye from the meaning ...

Wedding Plate

Many of the objects are not “valuable” in a standard way – in fact we see this supposed “value” vary widely over the years – following the fashion of the art market. Value is often defined by the importance of an event – like a wedding or a birth – or by the importance of a person – a grandmother or ancestor. We often do not do expensive, invisible repairs on such pieces, but fix them durably and inconspicuously so that ...