Vase

Featuring exaggerated and multiple handles and complex profiles, Viennese ceramic vessels by Gudrun Baudisch and other women potters associated with the Weiner Werstätte of the 1920s are playful in mood, ornamental in surface treatment, and complex in shape. With their tactile surfaces and spontaneous painting, many show an excitement about the process of making a vessel and an expressionist handling of clay and its applied and painted decoration. This approach generally disregarded the usual potter’s concern in Austria at the time for exacting detail and finish. The activity of Baudisch and other Viennese ceramists extended the range of studio pottery from its associations with the rural and rustic towards more sophisticated, urban qualities. Sources were diverse and eclectic, including the spontaneous and accidental effects of Japanese Tea Ceremony ceramic wares; vanguard geometric abstract paintings from Holland, Germany, and Russia; and the historical patterns of eighteenth-century Rococo France and Central Europe.