Viktor Schreckengost & Cowan Pottery Studio, The New Yorker (Jazz) Bowl, c. 1930
Viktor Schreckengost (American, 1906-2008)
Cowan Pottery Studio (American, 1921-1931)
The New Yorker (Jazz) Bowl, c. 1930
Glazed ceramic with sgraffito design, 11 1/4 x 16 1/4 in. (28.6 x 41.3 cm.)
The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 2000.65
When I first arrived in Cleveland, for some reason I was fascinated by Art Deco. In books on the subject, I kept coming across reproductions of something called The Jazz Bowl, a splendid Egyptian-blue punch bowl, with cubist jazz-age decoration of skyscrapers, musical instruments, and cocktail glasses. At some point, I learned that the person who had made the bowl, Viktor Schreckengost, lived in Cleveland, so on a whim, I called him up and invited him to meet me at the museum. I was so impressed by our conversation that I decided to interview him at length, and the information I collected eventually led to a major show of his work—the first large scale retrospective of his achievement. The Jazz Bowl was clearly the greatest masterpiece of Cleveland Art, and it seemed odd that the museum didn’t own it, so when one came up for auction in Cincinnati, I pushed hard to acquire it.
Bibliography
Henry Adams, What’s American about American Art? A Gallery Tour of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Hudson Hills Press, New York, 2008, pp. 124-125.
Henry Adams, “Viktor Schreckengost, American Design Hero,” Modernism Magazine, Spring 2001, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 34-39.
Henry Adams, “Viktor Schreckengost and 20th-Century Design,” Member’s Magazine, Cleveland Museum of Art, November 2000.
Henry Adams, Viktor Schreckengost and 20th-Century Design (for the occasion of an exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, November 12, 2000–February 2, 2001), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, distributed by the University of Washington Press.