• 20th - 21st Centuries American Ceramics

• Footed Bowl , not dated
• stoneware with sgraffitto decoration
• 4 1/4 in. x 5 1/2 in. x 5 1/2 in. (10.8 cm x 13.97 cm x 13.97 cm)

• Edwin Scheier  (Bronx, NY, 1910 - 4/20/2008, Green Valley, AZ)
• American
• Mary Scheier  (Salem, VA, 1908 - 2007, Tuscon, AZ)
• American

• Gift of Helen and Herbert Whitlock, 2002.8.30

• Not on View

Mary and Edwin Scheier have devoted their lifetimes to creating and teaching ceramics. Edwin, born in New York City, first became interested in art while studying at the New York School of Industrial Arts in 1928. Here he was introduced to the basics of ceramics as well as the possibility of interpreting modernist design through traditional crafts media. After two years at the school, Edwin was hired by the New York State Civilian Conservation Corps to teach crafts to and puppetry to children. In 1935, he was hired by the Federal Art Project to serve as a field supervisor for the Works Progress Administration Crafts Program. As part of this position, Edwin traveled to Virginia where he met Mary Goldsmith, the director of a federal art program there.

Mary Goldsmith (Scheier) was raised in Virginia but studied art in New York and Paris. She too became involved in governmental projects, accepting the position of director of the Big Stone Gap Federal Art Project in Virginia in 1935. The Scheiers married in soon after meeting and eventually settled in Glade Spring, Virginia where they discovered a local red clay. It was on this site that the Scheiers established their first pottery.

Mary’s specialty soon became creating forms while Edwin specialized on developing decorating and glazing techniques. The work that results from this cooperative effort is simple, elegant forms, beautifully thrown, often sgraffitoed with humorous messages. Many of their forms draw upon Appalachian folk pottery and are then personalized with their own bold decorations of human stick figures and sgraffito.

After winning several ceramic awards, the Scheiers moved to Durham, NH where Edwin became an assistant professor of art at the University of New Hampshire while Mary became their craftsman-in-residence. During this time, the couple developed new, nearly transparent glazes that helped to bring a delicacy to their work. They also shifted their decorative focus to sgraffito that depicted biblical scenes. Today the Scheiers have settled in Arizona where Edwin continues to throw pots.