CHARLES BROWNING, “BOUCK” WHITE (1874 - 1951)
RED AND PINK GLAZED WITHOUT FIRING AMERICAN FOLK ART POTTERY VASE
NEW YORK, CIRCA 1930
A large example of the unfired handbuilt art pottery created by American folk artist “Bouck” White in the Hedelberg Mountains of eastern New York, in the 1930’s. The amphora-form vase rises from a narrow foot to a wider body capped with high shoulders which support short curved handles. The vase is decorated in characteristic “Bouckware” fashion, featuring heavy handbuilding, and a distinctive crackled pin and red pigmented surface. The interior and base feature pigmented yellow surfaces, showing hand marks of the potter.
14 in. (35.5 cm.) tall
Charles Browning, “Bouck” White was a Christian minister, an American Socialist, an author, and potter. An accomplished author, he wrote six novels. His eccentric tendencies and strongly held religious and socialist political beliefs alienated him to many of the communities he traveled among, and led him to pursue a reclusive life in the Hedelberg Mountains of eastern New York, where he built a number of stone Gothic-inspired buildings. He spent the last decades of his life focused on his pottery, and innovated a personal technique for glazing vessels without firing them.