description: Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985) was a French-born ceramic artist, author and teacher, and one of the first students to enter the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, the most influential art school of the 20th century. Later, she became the head of ceramics at the Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, Germany, where she made proto-types for mass-produced dinnerware for the Royal Berlin porcelain manufacturers (called KPM). When the Nazis came to power in 1933, she was forced to resign because of her Jewish ancestry. With her husband Franz Wildenhain (1905-80) (a former Bauhaus classmate, whom she married in 1929), she moved to Holland, then later emigrated to the U.S. Moving to California, she settled at Pond Farm, an artists' colony about 75 miles north of San Francisco, near Geurneville. For nearly three decades, as her artistic stature grew, she ran her own summer school, taking in twenty or more students each year. This is a candid memoir, written by one of those students, about his experiences in 1964 (at age 17) while studying at Pond Farm for a summer. It is illustrated by photographs taken that year by the author. Following Wildenhain's death, the Pond Farm grounds and buildings were preserved, and are now part of the California State Parks system. AN EXCERPT FROM THE While making her rounds of the two studios, Marguerite often shared stories about her own experiences at Dornburg (the Weimar Bauhaus pottery shop), where she worked with folk potter Max Krehan, her crafts 'When my master saw my board of [newly made] pots,' she told us, 'if they were too widely spaced, he would take off his shoe and place it between the pots. For a while I didn't understand why he did that but you see there is too much room between them-huh?' She also taught us to remain seated and to more or less sit upright while we were reaching out to make pots (or 'throw pots,' as we potters say)."
language: English
title: Recalling Pond Farm: My Memory Shards of a Summer With Bauhaus Potter Marguerite Wildenhain
titlecomplete: Recalling Pond Farm: My Memory Shards of a Summer With Bauhaus Potter Marguerite Wildenhain
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Bobolink Books