Vase

This green-glazed vase was first displayed in Cranbrook House between 1933 and 1937. At the time, it was only the latest of many works by the ceramicist Charles Fergus Binns that George Gough Booth had purchased through the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts (DSAC).

Charles Fergus Binns was a regular exhibitor at the DSAC and an influential figure in the early years of American Arts and Crafts pottery. He trained under his father at the Royal Worcester Porcelain Works in England, where he worked for two decades before emigrating to America in 1897. Binns subsequently taught for many years at the New York State School of Clay-Working and Ceramics, where his students included Adelaide Alsop Robineau and Mary Chase Perry, the co-founder of Pewabic Pottery in Detroit. Binns threw, fired, and glazed his own ceramics, a practice that reflected his belief that artistic expression in the medium could only be achieved through engagement in every stage of the process.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
March 2024