On View in West Bend

A ceramic artist and entrepreneur, Susan Stuart Goodrich Frackelton (1848–1932) is today regarded as a pioneer of the American Pottery Movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like many American decorative artists of the period, Frackelton chose to reject the increasing industrialization in favor of creating “purely personal” work that did not “slavishly follow any school or trend.” 

Born and educated in Milwaukee, Frackelton first studied painting in New York and then later in Milwaukee with Henry Vianden, a German émigré known for a classical style of landscape painting. After marrying her husband, an importer of glass, crockery, and dishware, Frackelton began her professional career in the mid-1870s painting scenes from nature on unadorned dinnerware blanks. Her precise, brilliantly colored works garnered popular acclaim; birds, butterflies, and lake scenes were among her favorite subjects. 

By the time she turned thirty, Frackelton’s oeuvre had expanded to include hand-thrown, salt-glazed vessels made from Milwaukee’s cream-colored clay and decorated with a cobalt blue glaze, usually with motifs drawn from nature. Her ceramics were featured in numerous national and international exhibitions including the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where she received multiple awards. 

A tireless advocate for the decorative arts, Frackelton ran her own studio and shop, lectured widely, taught ceramics classes, and frequented other pottery centers to promote a uniquely American style of pottery. To facilitate other women entering the field, she published china painting manuals and invented a portable gas kiln for home-firing. As a potter and business woman in a male-dominated field, Frackelton stands out as a leader of the American Pottery Movement. 

This exhibition celebrates a recent gift from the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa of two porcelain dinnerware sets that beautifully exemplify Frackelton’s early china painting.