Marguerite Friedlaender Wildenhain
Portrait of Marguerite Friedlaender Wildenhain at the wheel, decorating a bowl with a slip trailer, Het Kruikje (The Little Pot) pottery in Putten, Holland, mid 1930s
Born: Marguerite Friedlaender, October 11, 1896, Lyon, France
Died: February 24, 1985, Guerneville, California, USA
Matriculated: 1919
Locations: France, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, USA, Central and South America
Through her work and teaching in Germany, Holland, and the United States of America, Marguerite Friedlaender Wildenhain was a leader in creating a Bauhaus approach to ceramics—durable, practical, and elegantly simple—and disseminating these ideas to new generations. Born in France to a German father and English mother, she was always a citizen of the world. She was raised trilingually and attended high schools in Lyons, Berlin, and the British Folkestone School for Girls. In 1914, she returned to Berlin to study at the College of Applied Arts (Hochschule für angewandte Kunst) and, in 1916, she did porcelain decor design for a manufacturer in Rudolstadt. After completing the Bauhaus preliminary course (Vorkurs) in spring 1920, Friedlaender became one of the first ceramics students. As Lydia Driesch-Foucar later recalled, the “workshop” was a sad little room in a furnace factory with a single potter’s wheel and a clay crate. Friedlander led a troop of five students to a skilled potter in nearby Dornburg, Max Krehan, who agreed to take them on. Gropius also agreed, and the ceramics workshop was founded. Krehan demanded long days to learn their craft properly; Friedlaender was forever grateful for his high standards and excellent teaching. Krehan died in 1924, and only the 2007 publication of Friedlaender’s journal of letters written to him posthumously revealed that the two had been lovers. Sculptor Gerhard Marcks, the workshop’s master of form, was also a strong influence on Friedlaender and became her lifelong friend. Few of her works from this period survive, but a stoneware jug with slip-trailed decoration, Cow and Steer, shows her early mastery of earthy expressionism. She was completely dedicated to her studies at Dornburg and in July 1922, she passed her journeyman’s examination (Gesellenprüfung). But when the Weimar Bauhaus closed in 1924, the ceramics workshop shut for good.
“Porzellan für die neue Wohnung” (Porcelain for the New Dwelling), advertisement in the journal Die Schaulade 6 (1930)
Another progressive school, Burg Giebichenstein School of Art and Design (Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule) in Halle, hired Friedlaender at the suggestion of Gerhard Marcks, who also worked there. In 1926 she passed her master craftsman exam (Meisterprüfung) and became the head of the ceramics department (Leiterin der Keramikabteilung), a first for a woman in Germany. In 1929, she began to achieve the Bauhaus goal of mass-manufactured ceramics, first by having a test kiln for porcelain constructed in the workshop and then through cooperation with Berlin’s Royal Porcelain Manufacture (Königliche Porzellanmanufaktur, KPM), which produced her Hallesche Form service that year. An advertisement for the set calls it “porcelain for the new dwelling,” a catchphrase of the era that, as in Hans Richter’s film, likewise titled Die neue Wohnung, highlighted the pressing need for affordable modern housing with functional interior design. Friedlaender’s unornamented finish evokes the functional and highlights the beauty of the set’s forms. Its timelessness may account for the fact that, despite Friedlaender’s Jewish heritage, KPM continued to produce it during the Nazi period, albeit without Friedlaender’s name attached. She also developed innovative designs for use in the emerging airline industry.
Friedlaender married Franz Wildenhain in 1930, a former Bauhäusler and, in Halle, her student and assistant. In 1933, Marguerite Wildenhain lost her position at Burg Giebichenstein. She traveled to her parents’ home, now in Switzerland, and, on their advice, decided to move to Holland, where she and Franz set up the Het Kruikje (The Little Pot) ceramics workshop in Putten. Their wares sold well, including to Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. In 1937 Marguerite Wildenhain again partnered with industry; together with De Sphinx in Maastricht she created the “Five O’Clock” tea set commissioned by the Dutch government for Paris’s Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exhibition of Art and Technology in Modern Life), where it was awarded a silver medal. But with the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, Marguerite Wildenhain was on the move again. She fled to the USA, a process facilitated by her French citizenship. A German national, Franz was unable to accompany her. They would be reunited only in 1947 and divorce in 1950.
Marguerite Wildenhain moved to California, where she taught first at Oakland’s California College of Arts and Crafts, and then at the artists’ colony of Pond Farm. She was awarded numerous prizes for her work as “outstanding west-coast potter of the year” in 1954 and 1963 and awarded an honorary doctorate at Luther College. She wrote books on her life and studies, and traveled to Black Mountain College in 1952, and annually to Central and South America. Until 1980, every summer she taught young ceramicists how to master wheel-thrown pottery at Pond Farm, where she felt truly at home and lived out her days.