Jacomena Maybeck

Dutch/American
(1901–1996)

Untitled
1950

Earthenware
6 in. (15.24 cm)
Gift of Richard A. Harrison
STUDY.1984.2091

Jacomena Maybeck got interested in ceramics when her husband was stationed in Germany during World War Two. At age 46 she started working with clay. After the war, she studied under Edith Heath, then completed a master’s degree in ceramics from the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) in 1952. She studied with Antonio Prieto and Charles Fiske. (Nora Eccles Treadwell was at CCAC during the same period.) Jackie, as she preferred to be called, taught there until 1978. Though she is especially admired for her glazes, the two resting full-bodied birds shown here are not glazed—they are raw, deep-red clay, with iron oxide black stain for the contrasting beak, eyes, wings, and tail details. The thickly glazed small goblet quietly flaunts a deep milky satin glaze.

Born in Surabaya, Java, Jacomena van Huizen moved with her family to Holland, and later to California when was seven. She grew up west of Ukiah, California, in a family of Dutch immigrants, where as a child she met her future husband, Wallen. He was the son of the renowned Bay Area architect, Bernard Maybeck, who designed the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. After high school, Jackie taught in a one-room school, then at UC Berkeley in 1923. After sixteen years of courtship, Wallen and Jackie married in 1927. She raised twin daughters, did a lot of writing and drawing, created award-winning pottery, and taught, while building and preserving an assortment of houses, tarring roofs and splitting logs into her eighties. In the end, she saved many Maybeck homes from destruction, and became very influential in the San Francisco art and architecture community.

Billie Sessions, PhD.

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