Bottle-form vase, early 1960s
Stoneware, incised decoration, color engobe, scrap glaze
Impressed chop mark: HM
10.825" H x 4.825" Dia.
Provenance: Estate of Mrs. Donald M. Jones, Pasadena, CA

Note: Harrison Edward McIntosh was born in Stockton, California on September 11, 1914. The McIntosh family settled in Los Angeles in the late 1930s after brother Robert McIntosh, a fine painter, was accepted at the Art Center. McIntosh enrolled in his first ceramic course in 1940 studying with Glen Lukens, an essential figure in California ceramic art. Soon after in a studio/garage at the family home designed by famed Viennese architect Richard Neutra, McIntosh began his nearly 70-year career in ceramics. Using the G.I. Bill, McIntosh took courses in ceramics at Claremont Graduate School beginning in 1947 with Richard Petterson and a wheel-throwing workshop with Marguerite Wildenhain in Guerneville, California. By 1954, Harrison and friend Rupert Deese set up a pottery workshop on Foothill Boulevard in Claremont, California, establishing firm roots in the post-war art boom flowering in Southern California.

McIntosh’s work, inspired by Japanese forms, European Bauhaus sensibilities, and the California Casual lifestyle were uncomplicatedly elegant. The soft matte glazes (achieved mostly through the use of colored slip called englobe) and delicately incised designs achieved with everyday objects work together with organic forms that perfectly capture the elusive but distinct California spirit. The works included in this collection were most likely completed in the early 1960s after McIntosh began throwing more regularly on the wheel. The delicately incised decoration coupled with carefully applied engobe work together to achieve a deceptively simple design, never giving away the complexity of techniques used in the process.

Overall good condition with very minor scuffs to body. Later-added museum putty to foot.