Beatrice Wood (BEATO)

Not to worry big ed. We are all different. I am sure there is something out there that I would love that you would hate equally as strongly :-) It does take all types.

I am very much a traditionalist!

Carolyn

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

a woman after my own heart.

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

Yes it certainly is, I think he bought property from Beatrice wood as well .

Be careful, there are a number of fakes out there that are signed beato. Just look on ebay right now at item 300353823546. Clearly not her signature and looks like a slip cast production piece.

Item number:

300353823546

Item number:

300353823546

Item number:

300353823546

You are so right , we sold ours and only got £25 for it , paid a whole lot more ,but never advertised as by her even though museum in california was unsure , george ohr fakes and clarice ciff are plentiful as are whitefriars glass , troika etc.

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

Young men / chocolate

xx

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!

all her work was crude IMO

some of her lustre work is good

By crude I don't mean bad , I like crude , yes the lustre stuff was fantastic and the figures

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