An engaging biography about ceramic artist Dean Schwarz. Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1938, Dean Schwarz is best known for his Bauhaus-inspired forms and narrative style of decoration. It is the decorations, actually "paintings," on his pots, that tell the stories of his life and chronicle his many artistic influences. The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art is currently hosting an exhibition (through October, 2014) that features 90 recent works by Dean Schwarz. Storied Pots is a richly illustrated biography that features many of Schwarz's best works in pottery and painting that highlight his long and storied career as one of Iowa's most beloved artists.

Storied Pots : The Life and Art of Dean Schwarz

Brent Johnson

Arts & Photography

South Bear Press

Canopic Yearnings

Dean Schwarz

Such a sensitive study by an artist and admirer of indigenous peoples.

... that we look and see: An admirer looks at the Indians

Wildenhain, Marguerite

A memoir of World War II by Rudolf Trill, a German-born history professor, who grew up in Nazi Germany. While serving in the German Army, he was captured by the U.S. and sent to a POW camp in Iowa, where he remained for the rest of the war. He returned to postwar Germany to live for two decades, and then emigrated to the U.S., where he now lives in retirement in Des Moines, Iowa. This is a candid and detailed account of his life before and during the war.

Adrift in Stormy Times

Rudolf Trill

This is a new, revealing book about the psychological life of a well-known French-born American potter named Marguerite Wildenhain, who was one of the first students at the Weimar Bauhaus. One of the major reasons for the book's significance is that virtually everything in it has not been previously published. As the Nazis came to power, Wildenhain (a French citizen, of Jewish ancestry) was forced to move from Germany to Holland and then, in 1940, to the U.S., but her husband (a German citizen) was denied a visa. As a result, the Wildenhains were physically separated for seven years, and, during the first months of that period, had no contact of any kind. So Marguerite did not know her husband's whereabouts, nor even if he had survived (as it turned out, he had been forced to join the German Army). During part of that time (especially as she traveled slowly across the U.S., en route to California), she made drawings and letter-like entries to Franz in a diary of sorts. This book is the first publication of those pages, with her text translated into English. Throughout, her words are supplemented by wonderfully rich illustrations (vintage drawings and photographs, examples of her pottery, specimens from their rock collection, and a suite of commemorative woodblock prints by Luther's David Kamm). A conspicuous highlight is a stunning sepia photograph of a beautiful and exquisitely dressed Marguerite in 1929. The richness of her diary is largely because of her candor in describing what and who she meets. Artists, designers, art historians, women's studies scholars, and historians in general will find this book of value. In addition, any readers who have been in love, or married to someone from whom they've become separated, for whatever reason, should find themselves drawn into the painful details of the text.

MARGUERITE A Diary to Franz WILDENHAIN

Rear dust jacket notes: "The Bauhaus, the most famous art school in history, began in Germany in 1919. Among its studio areas was ceramic art or pottery, where one of the first students was a smart, young French-born woman named Marguerite Friedlander (1896-1985), now known by her married name of Marguerite Wildenhain. In time, she was designated a Master Potter, married Bauhaus potter Franz Wildenhain, designed award-winning porcelain pieces, and, after her dismissal as a teacher for being Jewish, left Holland in advance of its invasion by the Nazis. She immigrated to the US, where she joined an artists' community called Pond Farm in the hills above the redwood trees in northern California. For much of her remaining life, she ran her own pottery school, taught hundreds of gifted students, and secured her reputation as one of the century's most influential teachers, craftspersons and artists. More than ten years in the making, this monumental anthology is astonishing in its richness. It was painstakingly brought about through the selfless contributions of dozens of international scholars, artists (many of whom were Marguerite Wildenhain's students), schools, museums and other institutions. Conceived of and compiled by Dean and Geraldine Schwarz (founders of South Bear School), this is a vivid, compelling account -- both heartrending and amusing -- not only of the life and work of an extraordinary artist and teacher, but also of the historical roots of the European concept of Handwerk; the role of pottery at the early Bauhaus; the establishment of Pond Farm by the Herr family; and the continuing, prospering legacy of the Bauhaus pottery tradition in such diverse places as (in Germany) Dornburg and Halle, and (in the US) Decorah, iowa (South Bear), Fairbanks, Alaska (North Bear) and Spring Green, Wisconsin (Adamah). This is a phenomenal archive of hundreds of Bauhaus-related images, both historic and contemporary, interwoven with essays..."

Marguerite Wildenhain and the Bauhaus: An Eyewitness Anthology

A book about Bauhaus Clay Paperback Publisher: South Bear Press (2009) ISBN-10: 0976138158 ISBN-13: 978-0976138150 Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces

Centering Bauhaus Clay: A Potter's Perspective

Geraldine Schwarz Dean; Schwarz

Packin' Cats for the Arrr-Meee: Fun on the Farm in the 'Forties

Géraldine Schwarz

John Robert Fromm

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Books by South Bear Press