Vase

This blue lusterware vase was created at Mary Chase Perry Stratton’s Pewabic Pottery in Detroit. A skilled ceramicist dedicated to Arts and Crafts principles, Stratton frequently showed work at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts. From the 1910s to the early 1930s, George Booth collected Pewabic ware, including this vase, for his home at Cranbrook, often making his purchases through the DSAC. He counted Mary Chase Perry Stratton among his few close friends and was deeply hurt by a—fortunately short-lived—falling out between them in 1928.

This vase is an example of the Pewabic Pottery’s iridescent ware, ceramics whose glaze contains suspended metallic particles which lend its surface a shimmering glow. Stratton was inspired to produce her iridescent glazes by Asian art collector Charles Lang Freer, who sent her some samples of ancient Rakka lusterware, produced in Syria in the twelfth century. Although lusterware had enjoyed a renaissance in the late nineteenth century, Stratton did not seek to imitate earlier Arts and Crafts ceramists such as William de Morgan, but instead devoted years of experimentation to the development of her own glazes, entirely visually distinct in their effect from earlier productions. On this vase, a deep blue tone is overlaid by a silver-gold tonality, concentrated in thickly dripped bands. This glazing style, which emphasizes the work’s hand-crafted nature, was in vogue in the early twentieth century, when the American Arts and Crafts movement was at its height.

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