Adelaide Alsop Robineau | |
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Born | Adelaide Alsop 1865 Middletown, Connecticut, U.S. |
Died | 1929 (aged 63–64) Syracuse, New York, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Known for | studio pottery |
Notable work | Scarab Vase, 1910 |
Movement | American art pottery |
Spouse | Samuel E. Robineau |
Adelaide Alsop Robineau (1865–1929) was an American china painter and potter, and is considered one of the top ceramists of American art pottery in her era. [1] [2] [3]
Adelaide Alsop was born in 1865 in Middletown, Connecticut. [4] She developed an early interest in both drawing and the then–popular pursuit of china painting. As a young woman, she helped to support her family by teaching drawing at the boarding school where she had formerly been a student. [5] During one summer break, she enrolled in the painter William Merritt Chase's summer school, her only experience of advanced training in painting and drawing. [5] She later studied ceramics with Charles Binns at Alfred University and with Taxile Doat. [6]
In 1899, she married Samuel E. Robineau, a French ceramics expert who was at one time editor of Old China magazine. [5] [6] The couple had three children. [6]
In 1899, Robineau and her husband launched Keramic Studio, a periodical for potters and ceramic artists that continued in print until 1919. [6] Within a few years, Robineau became the magazine's sole editor. [5] Around the same time, the couple moved to Syracuse, New York, where their house was designed by architect Katharine Budd. Robineau later built a ceramic studio next to the house. She taught china painting and pottery at her Four Winds Pottery School and sold her painted china, watercolors, and ceramics. [5]
Robineau began seriously making ceramics around 1901, by which time she already had a reputation as a china painter. [5] She became convinced that painting over the glaze — then a common technique — was the wrong approach and began to experiment with other procedures. [5] She worked primarily in porcelain, experimenting with American clays to create a true high-fire porcelain. [5] She also experimented with a wide range of forms, decorations, and glazes, with frequent use of multicolored, opalescent, and iridescent glazes. [5] Her mature work shows Art Nouveau and Japonisme influences in the use of stylized botanical and animal elements. [5] At a time when many noted china painters worked with blanks made by other people, she handled all phases of the process herself, from forming the pots to incising and painting them. [6] Some of the detail work on her pieces was so fine that she employed crochet needles and dental tools to get the desired effect. [2]
Many of Robineau's works are containers, including her most famous work, the Scarab Vase, a tall, incised porcelain vase that took over 1000 hours to make. [6] In 2000, Art & Antiquities magazine named it the most important piece of American ceramics of the last hundred years. [1]
Robineau taught at both Syracuse University (1920–1929) and the Art Academy of People's University, an institution founded by Edward Gardner Lewis in Missouri. [6]
Before her death in 1929, she designed a cinerary urn that now holds the ashes of both Robineau and her husband in Syracuse, New York. [2] [7]
Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Everson Museum of Art, [8] Detroit Institute of Arts, [9] Cranbrook Art Museum, [7] and other institutions.
Adelaide Alsop Robineau was arguably the most important single figure in early 20th-century decorative arts. Where most potters and potteries were working in earthenware, she explored the depths and redefined the heights of porcelain.
Born 1865, Middletown, Connecticut; died 1929, Syracuse, New York