White porcelain jar-shaped vase with cover. Body of the vase is divided into three vertical ovoid sections carved overall with daisy motif; separated by gray pate-sur-pate vertical strap-work merging at neck and shoulder and carved with daisies and masks of satyrs. Circular cover also carved with daisies and has a small, carved daisy finial.
This highly ornamented, carved porcelain vase was made by noted American art potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau in 1910. Robineau was astoundingly creative and productive. In addition to her art pottery, she was a china painter and teacher, and the founding editor of Keramic Studio, a long-lived and influential publication aimed at china painters. Although she bore three children between 1900 and 1906, Robineau still managed to find time to learn how to work with clay in 1902. She was so talented and successful that a mere three years later she exhibited examples of her porcelain at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis; Tiffany & Company began selling her porcelain in 1905.
Robineau made this, the "Pastoral" vase, during her 18-month tenure at the University City Pottery in University City, Missouri. The pottery was an adjunct of the Peoples University, founded by University City businessman Edward Gardner Lewis as part of his American Woman's League—a for-profit organization that promoted voting rights, education, and other opportunities for women in the early 1900s.
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