California Faience Vase
notes: label: Description
content: About the Arts and Crafts Movement:
label: Description
content: Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20^th^ century.
label: Description
content: About California Faience:
label: Description
content: The collaboration of Chauncey R. Thomas and William V. Bragdon that became California Faience was created in 1916 in Berkeley, California, and produced both art pottery and tile. The art wares were mostly cast and simple in form, each with a single matte glaze. Designed mainly to be used by florists, the production was sold mostly on the east coast (Evans 1987:40). Artware production ceased in 1930 because of the Depression.
label: Description
content: (Evans, Paul, 1987. Art Pottery of the United States. New York: Feingold and Lewis Publishing Corp.)
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: California, Berkeley
topic: label: Subject
content: Art Pottery
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.290240
label: catalog number
content: 290240
label: accession number
content: 59606
objectType: label: Object Name
content: vase
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: monochrome, blue (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 7/8 in x 4 1/2 in; 20.0025 cm x 11.43 cm