Esoteric Survey

Lot 158 Tony Hill Lamp Tony Hill, Wilmer James and Doyle Lane were all black ceramicists in Los Angeles during the mid-century. They also all studied under Glen Lukens. Tony happened upon a night class Glen Lukens was teaching to “housewives and war workers” at the Pueblo at the Del Rio housing project ( Paul Revere Williams and Richard Neutra helped design the layout of Pueblo Del Rio). Tony was instantly inspired by the potential ceramics had to offer and was the first black student enrolled in ceramics classes at USC under Lukens. It was Lukens who encouraged Hill to start his lamp business.  The lamp can be seen here with a shade, to the right of Tony himself. He was in California Design 7 (1961) Photo: Jet, 1957 Tony Hill and Wilmer James  In 1944 Tony co-founded a studio in Los Angeles on South Arlington Ave with Wilmer James. According to a 1946 Ebony article, Tony tried to rent a store and “Security First National Bank wouldn't rent to a Negro”. A white friend rented t...

  Ceramic lamp by Tony Hill The lamp can be seen here with a shade, to the right of Tony himself. Photo: Jet, 1957 Tony Hill (1908-1975) grew up in St. Joseph, Kansas. His parents were Mr. and Mrs. William A. Hill. His father was the head waiter at a local hotel, along with being the editor and publisher of a newspaper called The Protest. Tony received a degree in social work from the University of Kansas at Lawrence and the Graduate School at University of Chicago. He worked as a case worker at United Charities. He took a four month trip to Europe, visited galleries and studied craft and art in Sweden. He returned to the US and worked as a social worker in Albany. In 1940, he married actress Frances Williams. After moving up the ranks as a social worker, he abruptly quit after being passed up for a promotion because the U.S. Social Security Board board “didn't think the country was ready for a Negro representative in a branch office.” His wife Frances wanted to move to Los Angeles...

  George Nelson for Herman Miller Cart, Earthgender Lantern Edmond Spence tables, Martz lamp and a  Wood block map of Traditional Rural Potteries in Present-day Japan by Serizawa Keisuke Val Robbins photographs and a Navajo rug David Gilhooly donut Glen Lukens and a ceramic piece from Guanajuato, Mexico

This weekend I bought a crackle glaze ceramic bowl. With a 20" diameter, the scale is impressive. The first thing I thought of was Glen Lukens. The glaze and shallow bowl form seem so related. The clay looks right. Upon turning it over, I see it's signed Goldberg. It's a great signature too.   The obvious next step is to look for a Goldberg who studied under Lukens.  A lot of well-known ceramicists were taught by Lukens. This includes Doyle Lane, Beatrice Wood, Myrton Purkiss and  F. Carlton Ball.  Someone considerably more famous than all of them, but not as a ceramist, also took his ceramics class. That was a 19 year old Frank Gehry. Source: “Making Better Mud Pies”: A Conversation with Frank Gehry More about the Luken's Soriano house, which I visited a couple years ago, is  here .  So I obviously knew about the link between Gehry and Lukens, but what I didn't know is... " Frank Goldberg" changed his name to "Frank Gehry" in 1954, the same y...

1937 college humor magazine from USC. The cover drawing is by Maurice Martines, who later changed his name to  Maurice Martiné . There has been a bit of mystery on whether or not his name was Martinez, with a "Z" or not. Some speculated he changed it to avoid discrimination of having a hispanic name. It actually turned out to be that he thought Martiné had panache and was more suitable for a designer. During his studies at USC, Martiné studied under Glen Lukens.  And last month at Bonhams  a Lukens bowl from the Martiné estate came up for sale. His Eames lounge chair and ottoman were also up for grabs.

The Glen Lukens house by Raphael Soriano (1940) is up for sale. Listed at nearly $2 million, it has been fully restored by Barry Milofsky of M2A Architects. It's on a huge beautifully-landscaped lot in the historic West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles. It's an important house beyond the architecture. T here is no way to overstate the importance of Glen Lukens (1887-1967) in the world of California ceramics.  It was commissioned when Lukens was teaching ceramics and metalwork at USC. Soriano had graduated from USC in 1934 and later returned as a lecturer in the architecture program, where Lukens was teaching metalwork.  Lukens lived in the house from 1940 to 1959. In addition to his innovative glaze work, while at USC he led the ceramics department where Laura Andreson, Susan Peterson, Carlton Ball, Harrison McIntosh, Beatrice Wood, Doyle Lane and Vivika and Otto Heino were all a part of.  Frank Gehry also took a Lukens ceramics class at U...