Marguerite Friedländer-Wildenhain

France, 1896 – 1985

Place of BirthLyons, France

Place of DeathCalifornia, United States

BiographyThe pottery of Marguerite Wildenhain is a combination of old and new, complex and simple. Although derived from classic utilitarian objects of the past, her ceramics embody meaningful contemporary forms. Born in France, Marguerite Wildenhain was educated in the best classic European tradition. In 1919, after working as designer of porcelain for a factory in Thuringia, she was apprenticed at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, under Max Krehan and the sculptor Gerhard Marcks. After seven years of this disciplined training, she accepted a teaching position at the Municipal School for Arts and Crafts in Halle-Saale. During this period (1927-1933) she also made extensive models for the Royal Berlin Porcelain factory.

With the rise of the Nazis in 1933, she moved to Putten, Holland. In 1940, she was forced to flee again, and came to the United States. She first taught at the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California (1940-1942), then settled in Guerneville where she founded the now famous Pond Farm Pottery, with a workshop and summer school in ceramics. Since 1954 the school has been an experiment in education and living through the crafts, not only for Marguerite Wildenhain, but for hundreds of students from all over the world. The contribution of Marquerite Wildenhain in bringing dignity to the field of clay cannot be overstated.
Education: School of Fine and Applied Arts (Berlin), Bauhaus (Weimar, Germany).
- Objects: USA exhibition catalog, Museum of Arts and Design, 1970.

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Friedlander was a French-born ceramic artist, author, and teacher, and one of the first students to enter the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, apprenticing under master potter Max Krehan and sculptor Gerhard Marcks. Later, she became the head of ceramics at the Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, Germany, where she made prototypes for mass-produced dinnerware for the Royal Berlin porcelain manufacturers (called KPM). When the Nazis came to power in 1933, she was forced to resign because of her Jewish ancestry. With her husband Franz Wildenhain (1905-1980, a former Bauhaus classmate, whom she married in 1929), she moved to Holland, then emigrated to the U.S. In California she settled at Pond Farm, an artists' colony about 75 miles north of San Francisco, near Guerneville. For nearly three decades, as her artistic stature grew, she ran her own summer school, taking in twenty or more students each year. Following Wildenhain's death, the Pond Farm grounds and buildings were preserved, and are now part of the California State Parks system.
-Skinner Auction House (https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2770B/lots/208)