Ruskin Pottery Crystalline Glaze Inverted Baluster Vase 1932

Art pottery vase from the Ruskin Pottery 1932. Footed inverted baluster form vase. Semi-matt crystalline glaze. Central yellow band running into a blue ground. Evident glaze crystals to the blue glaze producing an attractive mottled pattern. Impressed marks to base for Ruskin and dated 1932. Edward R. Taylor (the first Principal of both the Lincoln School of Art and the Birmingham School of Art) founded Ruskin Pottery in 1898 – placing his son, William Howson Taylor (formally a student at the Birmingham School of Art) as manager. They named the pottery after the artist, writer and social thinker John Ruskin; whose principles about beauty and quality they believed in. The pottery experimented with glazes, producing innovative designs across a range of items, from vases and bowls to jewellery and buttons. Ruskin Pottery was exhibited both in the UK and abroad at international fine art exhibitions – achieving "grand prize" in 1904 at the St Louis International Exhibition, giving them the recognition they needed. Further awards were gained at other international exhibitions, including Milan 1906; Christchurch, New Zealand, 1907; London 1908; Brussels 1910; Turin 1911; and Ghent 1913. When the studio closed in 1935 the formulae for the glazes and all the pottery documentation were deliberately destroyed, so that the unique Ruskin products could never be replicated.