Individual: ENT.0616
Marguerite Wildenhain
1896 – 1985
Faculty, October 1952
Taught Ceramics
Taught Ceramics
Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985) was a potter, educator and artist who studied at the Bauhaus. She was the first woman to receive the Master Potter certification in Germany in 1925. Wildenhain and her husband ran a ceramics shop in the Netherlands until the imminent Nazi invasion forced her to immigrate, fleeing eventually to California. It was while in Holland that she met the American architect Gordon Herr, who was enthusiastic about forming an artist colony in the farmland he owned in Guerneville, California, which was later to become Pond Farm. Wildenhein joined Herr at the Pond Farm project in 1942.
In 1952, Wildenhein visited Black Mountain College to serve as host potter during an October pottery seminar, where she met and exchanged ideas with the other potters in residence there. Most influential amongst these would be Bernard Leach. Recognizing the way her philosophy towards art differed from his, she was encouraged to write her first publication, "Pottery: Form and Expression" (1959), a response to Leach’s own “A Potter’s Book” (1940). Seeing craft as more than a skill, imbuing it with poetical and spiritual reflections, her work is similarly philosophical in its approach when compared to MC Richard’s “Centering.”
After the dissolution of the colony at Pond Farm in 1953, Wildenhain bought the property and made the place her own personal workshop and school. She was to live there until her death in 1985, having become an inspirational teacher and spiritual guide for many of those who attended her studio. Secluded in Californian farmland, this pottery workshop is today a National Treasure under the conservation of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
In 1952, Wildenhein visited Black Mountain College to serve as host potter during an October pottery seminar, where she met and exchanged ideas with the other potters in residence there. Most influential amongst these would be Bernard Leach. Recognizing the way her philosophy towards art differed from his, she was encouraged to write her first publication, "Pottery: Form and Expression" (1959), a response to Leach’s own “A Potter’s Book” (1940). Seeing craft as more than a skill, imbuing it with poetical and spiritual reflections, her work is similarly philosophical in its approach when compared to MC Richard’s “Centering.”
After the dissolution of the colony at Pond Farm in 1953, Wildenhain bought the property and made the place her own personal workshop and school. She was to live there until her death in 1985, having become an inspirational teacher and spiritual guide for many of those who attended her studio. Secluded in Californian farmland, this pottery workshop is today a National Treasure under the conservation of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
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