Vase

This rare vase by Pauline Pottery was a gift to Elizabeth Morse, Charles Hosmer Morse’s daughter, on the occasion of her 1905 wedding. Pauline Pottery was founded by china painter Pauline Jacobus (c. 1860–c. 1930) as the first art pottery in Chicago. An early leader in the art pottery industry, Pauline Pottery had two periods of production: from 1883 to 1893 when head designer Jacobus operated the business with her husband, Oscar, in Chicago and from 1902 to 1911 when then-widowed Jacobus produced the pottery as an individual artist out of her home in Wisconsin, where high-quality white clay was more readily available. Her pottery was sold through high-end retailers such as Marshall Field & Co. in Chicago, Kimball’s in Boston, and Tiffany & Co. in New York. Pauline Pottery embodied the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement in its union of design and craft in a community of friends, in its elevation of art for everyday life, and in its enthusiastic use of local materials.