Harrison McIntosh

American
(1914–2016)

Bottle
1975

Stoneware
9.5 x 5.25 x 5.25 in.
Museum Permanent Collection
1984.1436

Harrison McIntosh was member of the first generation of California studio potters. His work helped define the California aesthetic, inspired by both Japanese pottery and European modern design.

Bottle (1975) is an iconic example of McIntosh’s work. He created perfectionist midcentury modern vessels often decorated with his recognizable sgraffito and spotted patterns as on this elegant, narrow-necked example. He often used the Mishima technique, a process in which slip is brushed into thin, incised lines in the designs.

Raised in Stockton, California, McIntosh had an interest in visual arts and attended the Art Center School in Los Angeles in 1938. He went on to study with ceramist Glen Lukens at the University of Southern California in 1940, Richard Petterson at the Claremont Graduate School from 1948 to 1952, and Bernard Leach at a Mills College seminar in 1950. Working with Marguerite Wildenhain during the summer of 1953, he gained his first exposure to the Bauhaus aesthetic and incorporated it into his developing style. Even after teaching with Peter Voulkos, McIntosh chose to build on his foundation in modern design rather than pursue the expressionist approach to clay that became popular in the 1960s. He quietly charted his own course in his Claremont, California, studio with his studio mate of fifty years, Rupert Deese (see Deese’s 1998 Hemisphere Drum Bowl), producing an internationally admired body of work that exemplifies a classical vein of the postwar crafts movement.

Billie Sessions, PhD.

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This object has the following keywords:

• bottles
• circles

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

• Ceramic Case 7: Southern California Connections , 8/17/2012 - 11/4/2013
• Collecting on the Edge - Ceramics California , 9/15/2018 - 5/4/2019
• Unearthed , 8/23/2022 - 5/14/2023

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