www.ou.edu/fjjma
Oklahoma Clay: Frankoma Pottery
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art University of Oklahoma 555 Elm Avenue Norman, Oklahoma 73019
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
Oklahoma Clay: Frankoma Pottery
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art • University of Oklahoma
University of Oklahoma
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Oklahoma Clay: Frankoma Pottery
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Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
Oklahoma Clay: Frankoma Pottery
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Oklahoma Clay: Frankoma Pottery viii
Foreword Ghisl ain d’Humières
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Preface and Acknowledgments Jane Ford Aebersold
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Chapter 1 From Chicago to Oklahoma: The Creative Odyssey of John Frank Jane Ford Aebersold
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Chapter 2 The Business of Frankoma Pottery: A Merging of Beauty and Utility m e ly n d a s e at o n
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Chapter 3 A Colorful History: Frankoma Dinnerware and American Culture mark andre w white
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Catalogue of the Exhibition
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Notes
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Bibliography
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List of Contributors
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Publication Notes
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About the Venue
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Foreword
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Prior to moving to Oklahoma, I had been unaware of Frankoma Pottery. I first learned about Frankoma, and about its founder, John Frank, while working on the exhibition Bruce Goff: A Creative Mind, organized by the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in fall 2010. Goff and Frank enjoyed an exceptional collaboration, resulting in the building of the John Frank House in Sapulpa, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In learning about the creation of the Frank House, I also came to appreciate the high quality and extraordinary creativity of Frankoma Pottery. Frankoma sculptures, dinnerware, and other signature pieces are now a part of many private collections around the country and are highly valued in the field of American Decorative Art History. I would first like to thank First Lady Molly Shi Boren for her enthusiastic support of our Frankoma exhibition. I am also grateful to Jane Ford Aebersold, Curator of Ceramics Emeritus, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, who has led this project with great expertise. Jane’s collaboration with the Chief Curator at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Mark Andrew White; the museum’s Deputy Director/Curator of Collections, Gail Kana Anderson; and the Director of the Charles M. Russell Center, B. Byron Price, has made this catalogue possible. I will allow Jane to express her appreciation of our staff in greater detail. I hope you will all enjoy this exquisite presentation of artistic craftsmanship and beauty. Ghislain d’Humières Bill and Wylodean Saxon Director Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
John Frank (U.S., 1905–1973) Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May–Old Time Is Still A-Flying See Plate 15 (p. 48)
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Preface and Acknowledgments
When John Frank came to the University of Oklahoma in 1927, he brought with him a strong background in pottery design and creation. Even as a young man, he had deep moral and spiritual convictions, and he passionately committed himself to working hard and serving his community. He channeled those attributes into his teaching and into the founding of a pottery business, Frankoma Pottery. The name affirmed his intent to create a true Oklahoma pottery, made only from Oklahoma clay and featuring iconic southwestern and Great Plains colors and symbolic designs. This exhibition is a celebration of the vision of John Frank and his wife, Grace Lee, of Frankoma Pottery and of the talented designers, artisans, and engineers who were part of the larger Frankoma family. We are indebted to University of Oklahoma First Lady Molly Shi Boren, who first suggested that we explore the idea of an exhibition of Frankoma Pottery. Her interest was inspired by the Frankoma Wagon Wheel dinnerware used for many years at the Methodist Church in Stratford, Oklahoma, where she grew up. John and Grace Lee’s daughters, Joniece and Donna Frank, were extraordinarily helpful as we traced the roots of Frankoma Pottery and talked anecdotally about family and friends of Frankoma. Paula Walker and Ken Wickham provided valuable insight and instruction regarding Frankoma products. Lita Blue shared information about the Nan Sheets luncheon set. I thank my colleagues Mark Andrew White and Melynda Seaton for their research and excellent contributions to this catalogue. We could not have produced the exhibition and catalogue without Gail Kana Anderson, Deputy Director/Curator of Collections at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Chief Preparator Brad Stevens, and Head Registrar Miranda Callander and their staffs. Thanks are due also to B. Byron Price, director of the Charles M. Russell Center, for his guidance; Mathew Stock, Fine and Applied Arts Librarian, University Libraries; and the staff of the Western History Collections at the University of Oklahoma for assistance with research. Our thanks are extended to Alice K. Stanton for editing, Todd Stewart for photography, and Eric H. Anderson for designing this catalogue. Jane Ford Aebersold Curator of Ceramics, Emeritus Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
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From Chicago to Oklahoma: The Creative Odyssey of John Frank Jane Ford Aebersold
Born in 1905, John Frank grew up in the burly, brawling Chicago of the 1910s and 1920s. The Frank family—mother, father, and four children—lived in a small three-room apartment in one of Chicago’s poorer neighborhoods. As the family grew, it moved on to other neighborhoods, but there is no evidence that the family fortunes improved.1 One of the fascinating questions about Frank is, simply, how did he manage to acquire the basic knowledge and training to emerge from an impoverished childhood to achieve acclaim in business and the arts? Chicago, from the mid-1800s through the 1920s, was a powerful center of commerce. Manufacturing, transportation, and agricultural enterprise were components that in combination established Chicago as the industrial capital of the United States. At the same time the city became the retail and wholesale trade
center of the nation’s great midwestern expansion. The accompanying economic dynamic fueled a rapid increase in population and engendered even more job growth.2 Intertwined with commercial activity was a rise in cultural awareness and a shared commitment among business, social, and civic leaders to the development of the arts. This same network of leaders supported the robust and transformative activity in the settlement houses. Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House, Chicago’s first settlement house, in 1889. By 1900 there were more than fifteen settlement houses in Chicago, structured to lend stability to the city’s poor neighborhoods and to provide education, training, and social activity for their inhabitants. Some houses incorporated arts and crafts, music, and drama into the educational curriculum.3 It seems plausible that the Frank family took advantage of the opportunities available in the settlement neighborhoods in which
John Frank (U.S., 1905–1973) Olinka Hrdy Vase, 1928 See Plate 10 (p. 43)
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they lived and that John’s artistic gift likely benefited from the association. It is not too large a leap of imagination to suggest that the shellfish and seahorse that children learned to make in the Hull House Art School4 re-emerged many years later as the modernist Fish Flower Frog and Seahorse bookends of early Frankoma Pottery. Of primary importance in Chicago’s development were public and private school systems. Schools expanded rapidly as the city experienced its surge in population. As the schools attempted to set standards and integrate comprehensive curricular reforms, “a deep and bitter conflict over the relationship of schooling to the workplace revealed the conflicting class interests that were threatening to rend the city’s social fabric.”5 Jane Addams and her Hull House colleagues led a progressive group that espoused a humanitarian approach to education; this approach was abetted by John Dewey’s idea that the new curriculum should not provide specific job training but rather the ability to respond thoughtfully to new and unanticipated responsibilities. “The children who attended progressive schools learned in informal settings. These schools enlisted the spontaneous interests of the pupils and adapted the curriculum to the interests and needs of each child. The authoritarian approach was replaced by a more democratic mode and the ultimate goal, in Dewey’s terms, was for the classroom to be an ‘embryonic community’ that would provide a model for a more democratic larger society.”6 A rival progressive approach, championed by business leaders seeking to train workers, led to a rigorous vocational curriculum, intended to train future factory and office workers.7 John Frank chose to drop out of high school after his first year, compelled by a sense of obligation to his family. He worked for a year or more as a common laborer with the telephone company. At his mother’s urging, and probably motivated by the monotony of his uninteresting job, he returned to high school. His new high school offered specialized art instruction, and there he learned to paint with oils, watercolors, and also to model clay.8 It seems that it was his good luck to enter a school modeled on Deweyan principles. The Chicago Academy of Design was founded in 1866 when a group of artists joined together and began to offer classes and hold exhibitions. In 1879 it was reorganized as the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1882 it was renamed the Art Institute of Chicago, an organization housing both a museum and a school. In 1924 John Frank applied for admission to the Institute and was accepted. To pay his tuition and support himself, he worked at any job the Institute would give him and in odd jobs in the surrounding neighborhood.9 The next few years were to be an exhilarating time of learning, working, and expanding his artistic vision while also developing the technical and creative skills needed to accomplish his goals.
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The Business of Frankoma Pottery: A Merging of Beauty and Utility Melynda Seaton
Frankoma Pottery was a small business with a big dream, and it succeeded on many levels, despite adversity and obstacles. As a young man, John Frank envisioned a small production pottery company that would make inexpensive utilitarian and decorative items “for those who like nice things.”1 Founded in Norman,
Oklahoma, in 1933, and later moved to Sapulpa, Oklahoma, in 1938, Frankoma Pottery became the first fullscale manufacturer of its kind in the state. There is no doubt that John Frank’s creative and entrepreneurial spirit helped the company persevere through the difficult and trying times that followed. Frank was also instrumental in every step of the production process, from prospecting for and digging clay to developing designs and glazes to fabricating products ready for use. As Frank recounted, “Frankoma from its very conceptions in 1933 set out to make an everyday workingman’s table service. Working people understand ‘pottery,’ not ‘china.’ We knew if we could make a good earthenware, we would have enormous market.”2 Frank’s professional career in pottery began in 1927, immediately following his graduation from the Art Institute of Chicago. Appointed professor of ceramics at the University of Oklahoma, Frank was charged with developing a new program from the ground up. After teaching at the university for eight years, Frank resigned his faculty position in 1936 to focus full-time on developing a commercial pottery business that expanded on a part-time home studio project he had begun in 1933.At first, the company was simply called “Frank Potteries.” In 1934, following a less than successful inaugural year, Frank’s wife, Grace Lee, suggested that the company might benefit from a name with a ring to it. The couple decided on “Frankoma Potteries,” a name that combined their surname with “Oklahoma,” and since theirs was the only pottery business in the state, the association seemed appropriate.3 However, it soon became apparent that more than a novel brand name would be necessary to keep the business afloat. Frank concluded that Norman might not be the most suitable location for his manufacturing endeavor “I lacked five essential things,” he later recalled, “money, the right materials, management experience, trained men and markets.”4 Frank received little encouragement from Norman’s Chamber of Commerce; therefore, in 1938, as part of a reorganization plan, Frank began his search to find a more fitting location for the business.5
Detail of Plate 32 (p. 64) Frankoma Pottery Round Vase with Silver Overlay, c. 1942
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Frank’s mission led him across the state of Oklahoma. As his daughter Donna describes in her account of Frankoma, Clay in the Master’s Hands, Frank’s search for a new business location ended with an act of “divine intervention,” when the engine of his car overheated as he was traveling through the town of Sapulpa. According to Frankoma legend, while waiting for his car to cool down, Frank passed the time with a cup of coffee at the St. James Hotel Coffee Shop. Spying a Frankoma water pitcher used by the small diner, Frank commented in jest on how ugly he thought it was. The waiter argued that the pitcher was in fact quite beautiful, and eventually Frank conceded that it was he who had made it and that he was just pulling the man’s leg. As the exchange continued, Frank revealed his quest for a location to build his pottery factory. A fan of Frankoma already, the waiter, Nick Douvos, hustled out of the shop, returning just a few minutes later with the president of the Sapulpa Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Cowden, in tow. According to Donna Frank, Cowden urged her father to build in Sapulpa, implying that the Chamber of Commerce would provide funding assistance for the start-up.6 Whether or not the story is fact or folklore, Frank did decide to locate the Frankoma factory in Sapulpa. He explained the reasoning behind his decision in a story published in 1938 in the Sapulpa Herald: We liked the enthusiasm exhibited by the Chamber of Commerce. There were the advantages of being able to use several slogans in presenting our products, such as being at the “cross-roads of America,” and near Tulsa as the “oil capital of the world,” not to exclude the Indian expositions held there. The highway location, with a long show front and road-side sales advantage . . . reasonable fuel and power supply costs, as well as the Sapulpa-Tulsa road being the best traveled route from in and out of state traffic, were all reasons for choosing Sapulpa for our permanent home and expansion commercially.7 Indeed, Sapulpa proved an ideal location for Frankoma. The factory was built alongside historic and welltraveled Route 66, and Frank found indispensable support from Sapulpa community members, who wished the company to succeed as much as Frank himself did. In mid-February 1938, work began on the first unit of the production facility, costing an estimated $50,000. While the plant was under construction, Frank exhibited samples of his ceramics line at the St. James Hotel in Sapulpa. More than six hundred visitors attended the various presentations, which were aimed not only at advertising the pottery company’s wares but also at rousing the interest of potential stockholders in his company.
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A Colorful History: Frankhoma Dinnerware and American Culture Mark Andrew White
For many Oklahomans, Frankoma Pottery helped define the cultural landscape of the state during the midtwentieth century. Frankoma colored dinnerware and decorative ceramics could be found in numerous homes throughout Oklahoma and the surrounding region. Founder John Frank, with the help of his family and designers, successfully tapped the cultural mythology of both the state and the American West, and the designs responded to and informed the identity of westerners. When Frank began diversifying his line with dinnerware patterns such as Wagon Wheel, Mayan-Aztec, and Oklahoma Plainsman, he not only borrowed
from modern art and popular design styles, but he also evoked the history of pioneers and westward expansion, cowboy life, American Indian history and culture, and Pre-Columbian civilization. Frankoma attempted to capture the regional and, arguably, national zeitgeist of the American West at mid-century. Frank first began his pottery business in 1933, but his desire to associate his pottery with the state of Oklahoma became evident in 1934 when he and his wife, Grace Lee, developed their brand name by fusing their surname with the last two syllables of “Oklahoma.” The resulting portmanteau, Frankoma, aptly expressed their intent. Frank furthered Frankoma’s association with the state through the company’s use of native clays, dug first from Ada and then Sapulpa, and also through the development of rutile glazes that reflected the local colors of Oklahoma. As Frank’s daughter Donna recalls, the glazes Frankoma designers developed represented the diverse terrain of the state but also emphasized its distinctive character: “The colors they produced already represented Oklahoma textures and terrains with Prairie Green, Desert Gold, White Sand, Onyx Black. But the design, as well, had to say, ‘This is Oklahoma.’” The designers resolved to create a line of “casual dinnerware with wide appeal,” leading to the creation of their most enduring pattern, Wagon Wheel, in the early 1940s.1 The wheel with its radial spokes and pronounced hub served as the primary design for the entire service. Because Frank’s objective had been the development of “an everyday workingman’s table service,” Wagon Wheel found a ready market.2 Donna noted that “Soon Wagon Wheels was the rage. And Frankoma came to be recognized as the pioneer in colored dinnerware.”3 It is no accident that Donna employed the term “pioneer” to describe the company’s success in marketing colored dinnerware. Whether Frankoma was the first to develop such a line remains uncertain, but it seems to have been the first to use the wagon wheel as a dinnerware pattern. The use of the wagon wheel and the pioneer mythos it symbolized was equally important to the popularity of the pattern. By the Frankoma Pottery Wagon Wheel Dinnerware, introduced in 1948 John Frank, designer (U.S., 1905–1973) See Plates 59 and 60 (pp. 86–87)
1940s, pioneers had become synonymous with the American character, due in no small part to the artists, historians, writers, and many others that had attempted to preserve the cultural legacy of westward expansion. Historian Richard Slotkin has identified the years 1939–1941 as the period in which artists, writers, and filmmakers rediscovered the history of American West as a fertile ground “for the making of
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public myths and for the symbolization of public ideology.”4 Although Slotkin restricts much of his analysis
“Frankoma Wagon Wheel Table Setting.” Frankoma promotional postcard.
to Westerns such as John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), he acknowledges that a similar interest in the West
Courtesy Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries
could be found in the paintings of Regionalists such as Thomas Hart Benton, in the ballads of Woody Guthrie, and in the publications of the Federal Writers’ Project. Frankoma also participated in this mythmaking by evoking both the early pioneers and the cattle ranchers of lore in their marketing of Wagon Wheel. According to one catalogue description, “The romance of the west lives on with our Wagon Wheel Set . . . A most colorful part of the history of the southwest is the cattle industry, and the rancher’s ‘coat of arms’ is his ‘cattlebrand.’ The covered wagon, ‘wagon wheels,’ horses, the cowboys, cattle, the ‘little doggie,’ and above all, the ‘cattle-brand’ are symbols of this natural industry. . . . We are proud to take this opportunity to eulogize these pioneers of the southwest, and include a number of these brands in decorating some of the pieces of our Wagon Wheel Set.”5 Frankoma was not alone in finding meaning in pioneer history. The cultural history of the American pioneer and the identification of this archetype with the national character began before World War I with the publication of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! in 1913. The popularity of Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma! (1943), coinciding roughly in time with Frank’s release of the Wagon Wheel pattern, proved that pioneers and their cowboy brethren still inspired the American imagination.”6 Most Oklahomans, as well as many westerners, were no more than one generation removed from the pioneers, and the wagon wheel offered an accessible, cogent symbol of the westward trek that brought pioneer families to their new homes. During the Oklahoma land runs of 1889 and 1893, settlers carried most of their possessions across unfamiliar terrain via the wagon. Settlement of other territories in the American West had been accomplished using the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails, and wheel ruts were still visible along portions of the trails in the late 1930s. Preservation efforts for the trails began with Elizabeth Butler Gentry’s 1911 publication The Old Trails Road, The National Highway, which she intended as both a memorial to the pioneers and an argument for a national highway planned along the routes of the old trails.7 Important and well-received histories of the trails followed, including Stanley Vestal’s The Old Santa Fe Trail (1939). Vestal observed that “today we think of the Santa Fe Trail in terms of wagons: wagons creaking up long prairie slopes; wagons rolling down hills; wagons grinding through heavy sand, sucking through sticky mud, swishing through tall grass.” He hoped to expand Americans’ understanding of that history and “to recapture the feelings, the sensations, the hopes and fears and humors which [the pioneers] knew,” giving the trail life again.8 The Federal Writers’ Project, an agency under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), gave a similar treatment to the Oregon Trail that same year, drawing its narrative from the writings of explorers, traders, and pioneers who traveled its distance.9
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Oklahoma Clay: Frankoma Pottery
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Plate 1 Frankoma Pottery Pacing Puma (Pacing Leopard), c. 1950–1954 Joe Taylor, designer (U.S., 1907–2000) Ceramic, Ada Clay, Prairie Green Glaze, L.: 15 in. The Frank Family Collection
Plate 2 John Frank (U.S. 1905–1973) Pacing Puma, 1934 Ceramic, Ada Clay, Onyx Black Glaze, L.: 29 in. The Frank Family Collection
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Plate 3 (above, left) Frankoma Pottery Pacing Puma, Dealer Sign # 1, c. 1936–1938 John Frank, designer (U.S., 1905–1973) Ceramic, Ada Clay, Prairie Green Glaze, H.: 4½ in.
Plate 5 (above, center) Frankoma Pottery Indian Tepee, Dealer Sign # 2, c. 1940s John Frank, designer (U.S., 1905–1973) Ceramic, Ada Clay, Prairie Green Glaze, H.: 6½ in.
Private Collection
Private Collection
Plate 4 (below, left) Frankoma Pottery Dealer Sign # 4, c. 1960s–1990s Joniece Frank, designer (U.S., b. 1938) Ceramic, Sapulpa Clay, Robin Egg Blue Glaze, H.: 2¼ in.
Plate 6 (below, right) Frankoma Pottery Dealer Sign # 3, c. 1950–1960s John Frank, designer (U.S., 1905–1973) Ceramic, Sapulpa Clay, Peach Glow Glaze, H.: 3 in.
Private Collection
Private Collection
A Note on the Plates
In the captions for the following plates, Frank Potteries and Frankoma Pottery items are identified by deduction from historical record, by clay and glaze type, and, if relevant, by mark. This catalogue also includes reproductions of individual studio pieces by John Frank. For these works, he is identified as the artist (John Frank, U.S., 1905–1973) rather than as the designer. From 1927 until 1933, during Frank’s tenure at the University of Oklahoma, the OU Tepee was used to mark the pottery made at the OU ceramics studio. Frank’s personal pieces were inscribed with his initials, often in combination with a personal inscription and/or the OU Tepee. From 1933 to 1934, pots were marked with one of three versions of a Frank Potteries ink stamp: “Frank Potteries Norman Oklahoma,” “Frank Potteries Norman Okla,” or “Frank Potteries.” From 1934 until the 1938 fire, Frankoma used first a “Frankoma” ink stamp, then changed to an impressed mark, either “Frankoma” with a round O or a version of the “Pot and Puma” logo, known as Catmark or Broken Catmark. From 1938 through the 1940s, another impressed mark, “Frankoma” with an oval 0, was used. In the 1950s the use of stamps to individually mark ware was discontinued; instead “Frankoma” was impressed into the mold itself, sometimes with the addition of the mold number. Throughout the history of the company many pieces were not marked, neither with a stamp nor an impressed mold mark. Frank sometimes inscribed a personal note or the name of a client or friend on his individual studio pieces and on Frank Potteries or Frankoma line items. Some designs were in the production line for only a few years. Some were in the line from inception until the close of the factory. The dates in this catalogue may be specific to the piece shown, or they may be more general to the production line. Many Frankoma records were lost in fires, with the result that background information sometimes differs from source to source. Several pieces and some glazes are known by different names in various source materials. We have made every effort to develop a narrative record authentic to Frankoma Pottery.
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Plate 7 John Frank (U.S., 1905–1973) Vase, 1929 Ceramic, Ada Clay, Matte Gold Glaze, H.: 8 in. JNF, OU Tepee, 29 Private Collection
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Plate 8 John Frank (U.S., 1905–1973) Vase, 1929 Ceramic, Ada Clay, Red Glaze, H.: 7½ in. OU Tepee, 1929, “[to] Mother and Papa, [from] John” Private Collection
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Plate 9 (facing page) John Frank (U.S., 1905–1973) Vase, 1928 Ceramic, Ada Clay, Glossy Black Glaze, H.: 11 in. J.F. 28, OU Tepee
Plate 10 John Frank (U.S., 1905–1973) Olinka Hrdy Vase, 1928 Ceramic, Ada Clay, Red Glaze, H.: 8½ in. J.F. 28, OU Tepee, “Olinka Hrdy from John Frank”
Gift of Professor Emeritus Spencer Norton, 1986
The Frank Family Collection
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M&D Collectors, 2004.
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About the Venue
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Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Unversity of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
Ghislain d’Humières
The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr.
After studying history and art history at the
Museum of Art is one of the finest university
Sorbonne in Paris, Ghislain d’Humières became
art museums in the United States. Strengths of
a specialist in eighteenth-century furniture for
the nearly 16,000-object permanent collection
Sotheby’s London, and then transferred to New
(including the approximately 3,300-object Adkins
York. He became the director of the jewelry
Collection and the more than 3,500-object James
department at Christie’s of Los Angeles and then
T. Bialac Native American Art Collection) are the
transferred to Christie’s in Geneva, where he was
Weitzenhoffer Collection of French Impressionism,
in charge of international clients from Europe and
twentieth-century American painting and sculpture,
South America. In 2004, the Fine Arts Museum
traditional and contemporary Native American
of San Francisco hired him as assistant director
art, art of the Southwest, ceramics, photography,
in charge of the opening of the new de Young
contemporary art, Asian art, and graphics from the
Museum. Following that appointment, d’Humières
sixteenth century to the present.
joined the University of Oklahoma as the Bill and Wylodean Saxon Director of the Fred Jones Jr.
Photograph by Eric H. Anderson
“Mr. Frank on the Potter’s Wheel.” (see p. 18)
Museum of Art.
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