Beatrice Wood / Beato (USA)

Studio Vase Measures 7.5" tall 8" diameter, quite heavy , Signed "Beato", Beatrice Wood one of, if not THE most important potters from America

Signed BEATO Vase stands on four feet.

Does anyone have any more info on her works , maybe when this piece was made , ETC., Ed

she died aged 105 and put her longevity down to
'young men and chocolate'

I have just been looking at the work of Otto Heino,the Californian potter who taught Beatrice, his work is amazing!!

I'm no expert but this is quite an interesting lot

The story on Beatrice Wood is that she was a randy old broad. My friend visited her in her Ojai, California studio several years ago; he was about 67 and she was in her late 90's. He was with his wife, but that didn't stop her from shamelessly flirting with him and giving him the "come-on".
Besides making pottery, she made paintings and drawings, many with erotic content.
Much of the following I will have to preface with the terms "legendary" and "apocryphal", but as the story goes, when she was about 17, her rich parents packed her off to Europe to get an education because she was too much for them to handle. While in Europe, she fell in with a group of artists (notably the Dadaists), became an artists model, and generally behaved in a rather promiscuous manner. It is often repeated that she became the girlfriend of Marcel Duchamp. Some years later she returned to the U.S. (allegedly with a case of syphilis). Once back in America, she began to develop her art career and eventually began working with ceramics. She relocated from the East to California (probably late 1930's or early 40's), eventually settling in Ojai. During her early days in California, she studied ceramics with some of the leading figures of the field at that time, including Glenn Lukens, Gertrude and Otto Natzler, and Vivika and Otto Heino. From what I gather, some of her early ceramic work may have been a bit crude, but she eventually refined an aesthetic, and developed the beautiful volcanic luster glazes she is so well known for. The people I mentioned that she studied with were all highly regarded glaze chemists.
She eventually sold her first Ojai studio (which was supposedly designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) to the Heinos, and then moved a few miles away (still in the Ojai area). Her home/studio has now been turned into a sort of museum/learning center where I believe a collection of her work is housed and ceramics exhibitions are held.
(Sorry Ed, I can't tell you anything about your piece other than it looks like her signature and it's ugly).

so if her early work was 'a bit crude' Ed's pot may well have been pukka!

some of her lustre work is good

I should probably have looked at this first, but for an expanded (and cleaned up) biography and several examples of her work, check out the site linked below.

http://www.beatricewood.com/biography.html

Calusa wrote:I should probably have looked at this first, but for an expanded (and cleaned up) biography and several examples of her work, check out the site linked below.

http://www.beatricewood.com/biography.html

Good, but your's was better Calusa

xx

Loved the two lustre bottles. And I have a real edition of the "three buttocks" in photograph form (a picture of my mum, my aunt and my uncle at their cabin as children, starkers, facing away from the camera. You can see my grandmother with her hand over her mouth through the window of the cabin).

Carolyn

Calusa wrote:I should probably have looked at this first, but for an expanded (and cleaned up) biography and several examples of her work, check out the site linked below.

http://www.beatricewood.com/biography.html

I have just been to the site and had a good read. Fascinating and interesting stuff. Not a natural potter by all accounts but amazing stuff she produced. I love this sort of biography and the happeness of her life. Thanks for posting, i will have to read more on BEATO now.
She has truly caught my imagination.