Bidspirit auction | Adelaide Robineau Porcelain Flambe Glaze

Adelaide Robineau Porcelain Flambe Glaze Bowl 1910 - Adelaide Alsop Robineau (1865-1929). Porcelain bowl with an inverted rim and blue flambe glaze, 1910. This bowl was executed during Robineau's time at University City. Marked along the underside: ”18 UC AR 1910.” Lot Essay: Adelaide Alsop Robineau’s interest in art began with china painting, a popular hobby among the women of leisure in mid-19th century New England. However, her interest in art pushed her past simply decorating other people’s ceramics. She dabbled in painting, taking lessons from the noted impressionist William Merritt Chase. By the turn of the 20th century, however, she was fully committed to ceramics. She and her husband, French ceramicist Samuel E. Robineau, launched the ceramics publication Keramic Studio, and moved to Syracuse, New York, where they both continued to make pottery in a studio attached to their house. She taught ceramics at Syracuse University, and continued to prolifically create and decorate her own pottery. She experimented widely with forms and with glazes, creating many innovative approaches to potting and decorating that would influence ceramicists for generations to come. The present work was executed during the period Robineau spent in University City, Missouri, where she taught at the Art Academy of People's University. It was during this same period that she created her magnum opus, the ”Scarab Vase” or ”Apotheosis of a Toiler” (1910), which won the Grand Prize in pottery at the Turin International Exhibition, and has been called the “Mona Lisa of ceramics.” While this bowl is much simpler and smaller in scale than the Scarab Vase, it nevertheless shows Robineau’s finesse and mastery of ceramics. The form is balanced and graceful, and the mesmerizing flambe glaze shows the success of her experiments into glazes. Height: 3 1/4 in x diameter: 6 3/4 in. Condition: There are no large losses. Crazing throughout the glaze. Along the interior, there is a deep rounded, y-shaped line of crazing curving along the center. Some light scratches along the interior. Light wear to the footrim including a small repair.