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Charles Loring Elliott (1812-1868) was a prolific portrait painter from Central New York. Born in Scipio, NY, Elliott spent most of his childhood in Syracuse, where his father was an architect and building contractor. Elliott devoted his childhood leisure to sketching and experimenting with oil paint, while occasionally making architectural drawings for his father. Shortly after his high school graduation, Elliott travelled to New York to study painting with John Trumbull, popular painter and president of the New York Academy of Fine Arts. Elliott did not enjoy Trumbull’s teaching style, and so he sought out John Quidor, a figure painter residing in New York, who proceeded to give Elliott the only formal training of his career. Read More

The Mueller Mosaic Company was one of several tile manufacturers located in Trenton, New Jersey in the early twentieth century. Trenton became a center for pottery production beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and by 1900, nearly fifty factories were located in the city. Herman Carl Mueller founded the Mueller Mosaic Company in 1908, taking over a production plant previously owned by the Artistic Porcelain Company. Mueller likely chose to base his company in Trenton because the city was a commercial center, provided easy access to the raw materials used to make ceramic tiles, and was a transportation hub due to multiple canals and railroads that connected the city to locations throughout the northeast. Read More

David Benge (1936-2002) was an American ceramic artist from Los Angeles, California. He began his career in ceramics in 1965, training under fellow artists Carlton Ball and Susan Peterson, and then worked as a potter in Santa Fe, New Mexico for ten years. While in Santa Fe, Benge frequently exhibited his work, participating in exhibitions that focused on ceramics. Benge later returned to California and worked in research and development for various Los Angeles-based ceramic factories. Read More

Carl Walters, a seminal figure in American sculptural ceramics, begun his career as a painter. He first studied at the Minneapolis School of Art in Minnesota from 1905 to 1907 and later trained under Robert Henri at the Chase School in New York City from 1908 to 1911. After marrying in 1912, Walters moved to Portland, Oregon, and worked as a prominent North West painter for the next six years. The course of Walters’ artistic career changed upon his return to New York City in 1919. Read More

Jerry Rothman (1933-2014) began exploring ceramics while studying industrial design at Los Angeles City College and the Los Angeles-based Art Center School in the early 1950s. In 1956, at the invitation of master ceramist Peter Voulkos, Rothman enrolled in the ceramics graduate program at the Otis Art Institute. For the next few years, Rothman and a group of students who would become some of the most famous American ceramists of the century—Ken Price, Billy Al Bengston, Paul Soldner, and John Mason among them—studied under Voulkos and revolutionized American ceramics by questioning the traditional conventions of pottery and using clay as a sculptural medium. Read More