Omnium Gatherum - A Collection of Papers || Grete Marks, Artist Potter

The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present

Grete Marks, Artist PotterAuthor(s): Ursula Hudson-Wiedenmann and Judy RudoeSource: The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 - the Present, No. 26, OmniumGatherum - A Collection of Papers (2002), pp. 100-119Published by: The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the PresentStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41809328 .

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Grete Marks, Artist Potter

Ursula Hudson- Wiedenmann and

Judy Rudoe

Grete Marks, née Heymann (1899-1990), made her name in Germany in the 1920s. Her first husband, Gustav Loebenstein, whom she married in 1923, died in 1928. In 1938, after she had settled in England, she married Harold Marks, an extra-mural teacher at Oxford University. She is known in Britain as Grete Marks, but during her German years she was Grete Loebenstein. This article will use the name Loebenstein for the period 1923-1938, and subsequently the name Marks.

After, studying at the Bauhaus she set up her own ceramic factory, the Haël Werkstätten, in 1923 with her then husband, Gustav Loebenstein, who died in 1928. In a very short time she had achieved international recognition; her pots were exported across Europe and to America. This success was not to last. Grete Loebenstein was a Jew. As a result of Nazi harassment the factory was sold in 1934 and Grete left for England in 1936. On arrival, through contacts already developed with Heals, she found work in Stoke-on-Trent, initially making designs for others, and eventually setting up her own company working with bought-in blanks. But she was never able to re-establish the combined artistic and managerial position that she had held in Germany, as the owner of a ceramic factory overseeing all aspects of production.

This short account re-examines Grete Marks' career, with particular emphasis on the German years. It gives a much fuller picture of her production at Haël than has been done before and offers some further explanation for the difficulties she encountered in Stoke. It incorporates much new research carried out in Germany, including the startling discovery that the Nazis used ceramics for political purposes.1 Entartete Kunst has always been associated with painting alone, but there is now firm evidence that Haël pottery was shown in exhibitions of degenerate art.

There is as yet no monograph on Grete Marks. Previous writing in German has concentrated on her work in Germany in the context of the Bauhaus.2 That in English has concentrated on her work in England.3 Some of these studies have seen her in the context of women designers or women in the pottery industry, and have tended to explain her difficulties in Stoke as those of a woman in a man's world. There is no doubt that it was much more difficult for a woman to be the boss in the potteries, but the gender perspective distorts

Frontispiece: Illustrations to accompany an article on 'Ceramics for the Modern Woman' in Die Schaulade, 1932. Photo courtesy of Heinz Theis, Berlin.

the story for anyone who wishes to understand Marks' difficulties in a historical context, that is, against the background of the differences between the German and English ceramic industry at that time. The view put forward here is that Marks' failure to re-establish her career was not because she was a woman but because her ceramics were so utterly different from and in some cases quite alien to factory production in England at that time.

The reasons for this are due to the particular situation in Germany: firstly, because women were allowed to study at the Bauhaus they took on from the beginning a much wider range of activities than their fellow ceramic artists elsewhere. This meant that women played a very influential role in Germany, even those who had not been to the Bauhaus, as designers of both shape and decoration. The potteries that led the field in German ceramic design at the time almost all had women in charge of design. Secondly, and more significantly, Grete Loebenstein was able to bridge the gap between studio pottery and factory production. This was partly through her Bauhaus training, but it was helped by the fact that Germany had a much longer tradition of making such overlaps: this goes back to the Werkbund which promoted them, and because Germany was historically divided into different countries there was strong regional self-sufficiency. Factories were used to reaching a wide range of small, local interests and combining these with big, international markets.

The gathering of documentary material on Grete Loebenstein-Marks' life and work has proved difficult since the records of the German business are either lost, destroyed or retained by the successor in the business since 1934. The situation on the English side is similar: very little written evidence has been found that relates to her work for the Stoke-on-Trent potteries in the late 1930s. But for both periods there is a significant amount of surviving pottery to be found in various museums and private collections in the UK, Germany, Israel and the USA, together with contemporary articles, photographs, exhibition catalogues, exhibition reports and advertisements, making it possible to put together a picture of the full range of her work.4

Born in Cologne in 1899 as Margarete Heymann, into an assimilated Jewish family with a business in wool textiles, she was well educated, as well as musically and artistically gifted. In her late teens she joined painting classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Cologne and the Düsseldorf Academy, before enrolling on the Bauhaus preliminary course under Johannes Itten in November 1920. This was followed by six months working in the ceramic workshop of the Bauhaus in Dornburg under Gerhard Mareks until the end of 1921. At the Bauhaus ceramic workshop she received basic training in the techniques of ceramic form and decoration, and the

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Fig.l Hand-painted earthenware bowl included in Haël's first catalogue of 1924. Private Collection.

use of modern technology and materials; the emphasis was on practicality and suitability of material and shape for the purpose of the product. On leaving the Bauhaus she worked briefly in a ceramic workshop in Frechen, near Cologne, and gave a pottery course for children at the Cologne Kunstgewerbeschule. She then worked as a designer at the Velten- Vordamm pottery works near Berlin.5

In August 1923 Heymann married the economist Gustav Loebenstein and together they set up the Haël- Werkstätten fur künstlerische Keramik in Marwitz, near Velten, north of Berlin. The name of the new firm derives from their initials: H (pronounced "Ha" in German) for Heymann and L for Loebenstein; the attribute "künstlerisch" (artistic) proved to be crucial for their rapidly expanding product range. Their membership from at least 1925 of the Deutscher Werkbund , an association set up in 1907 to promote high quality commercial work, also committed them to a progressive design and production programme.6 From the very beginning, the Haël- Werkstätten received a tremendously positive press, whenever there was a report on "modern" ceramics, and this is significant. What struck contemporary critics about Haël products was they were genuinely different from what had gone before.

Haël's first trade catalogue of 1924 shows clearly Grete 's attempt to tailor her products to contemporary living. Vases, bowls and lamp-bases were painted with bold brushstrokes to create abstract motifs (fig. 1). A critic writing in Kunst und Kunsthandwerk for 1924 (p. 185-6) noted that the application of freehand large- scale decoration to simple forms recalled the powerful motifs of both ancient and traditional pottery. Such pleasing work, he wrote, was ideal for the country house, holiday home or summer guest house (fig. 2). He went on to praise Haël's introduction of a new type of indoor flower pot, of red clay which, far from being disguised, was decorated in hand-painted matt colours. The clay was unglazed; the matt blue and brown colours were fired in. This was a real opportunity for the flower

Fig. 2 Page from Haël's first catalogue issued in 1924 showing flower pots, vases and jugs with bold painted decoration. Photo courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin

shops, he urged: they could at last dispense with their hideous crape wrappings and improve their window displays no end with these instead.The flower pots were supplied with terracotta under- pays.

Then there were the table wares: plates, covered jars, bottles, and Haël's first range of tea-sets, still in, more or less traditional shapes with strong hand-painted bands of colour (fig. 3 above) or abstract patterns, the latter reminiscent of the rhythmical studies of Johannes Itten in the Bauhaus preliminary course (fig. 3, below). It is impossible not to compare Loebenstein's work at the time with that of Susie Cooper, the only British industrial ceramic artist of the interwar years to have created abstract decoration of comparable quality. Cooper's work in this style dates from the early

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1930s, and so almost a decade later, but it is no less remarkable in the context of British work.7

Over the following years the product range of Haël grew significantly, transforming the Bauhaus principles into highly original and distinctive designs, comprising an astonishing range of idioms. On the one hand there was the dynamic brushwork, which drew on the work of Kandinsky among others. This was especially effective on large dishes (fig. 4), but was used for ornamental and table wares alike; a contemporary photograph of a table setting published in Keramische Rundschau in 1929 (no. 42, p. 721) shows a similar dish with matching plates, sugar bowl and spherical biscuit jar (fig. 5). On the other hand there were the innovative shapes and glazes. A later catalogue of around 1930 includes a wealth of new shapes from vases with asymmetrical handles (fig. 6), to covered dishes and jars (fig. 7), and a range of smoking accessories (fig. 8). The banded tea set from the 1924 catalogue was still there, but to it was added a coffee service with flat lids and hemispherical handles (fig. 9), and a beer set with ovoid jug, the handle of which extends from the line of the slanting rim; this was illustrated in several magazines (fig. 10). New also in the 1930 catalogue were the cacti-containers; these might be in the form of tiered rectangular trays designed to be arranged in groups as the customer desired, or large vessels with three or four pots in one (fig. 11). Many of these pots were square with little feet, and it is likely that Loebenstein was making reference to Chinese carved jade vessels as much as to pottery forms. The unusual pottery shapes were for the most part made in

moulds. But there was also a range of wheel-thrown flower pots with all-over ridges (fig. 12). These remarkable shapes were combined with matt glazes that were highly praised at the time; usually a single-colour glaze, or sprayed glazes, or plain matt black. Often they were enhanced by the use of a different colour on the interior surfaces, for example, a bold turquoise blue exterior might be combined with yellow inside. This was especially effective for lidded containers where the dual colours were chosen to surprise and delight as the lid was removed.

In addition to the painterly brushwork, the exciting new shapes and the matt glazes were the more experimental glazes inspired by Far Eastern ceramics. The early decades of the 20th Century saw a surge of interest in Chinese ceramics across Europe, demonstrated by publications in many languages. In England for instance, a number of distinguished private collections were formed and the Oriental Ceramic Society was founded in 1921. It is clear that Grete had studied Chinese ceramics closely, for she recreated the warm yellows of Chinese Ming bowls of the 16th century, or the mottled red and green glazes of earlier Song wares. When placed side by side with Chinese examples the Haël glazes are deceptively similar. In some instances both glazes and shape were taken directly from Chinese models, such as the shallow bowls with wavy rims set on four feet; these are close copies of Chinese Jun wares of the 12th century.8 There were also bowls and vases with lustre or reduction-fired glazes. These are mostly unmarked and do not appear obviously in

Fig. 3 Page from Haël's 1924 catalogue. Above: a tea-set with bands of hand-painted colour. Below: a déjeuner with abstract rhythmical pattern painted in green, blue and yellow on a shiny yellow ground. Photo courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin

the catalogues or in contemporary illustrations. They were almost certainly glazed by Grete herself; she enjoyed trying out different glazes and was especially fond of the effects of reduced glazes. Some of these pieces were then sold as 'einzelstücke' (one-offs), which may explain why they are unmarked (fig. 13). 9

It would be wrong to suggest that all of Grete Loebenstein's immensely varied work falls into these three categories - the painted wares, the geometric shapes and the oriental-style glazes: they are singled out here to indicate not only her fascination with and absorption of other ceramic traditions, but also to explain her ability to reach different markets. Every year Haël took part in the main national and international exhibitions, with widespread acclaim. Many of these were local Berlin events, such as the exhibition "Neue Märkische

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Kg. 4 Earthenware dish with hand-painted abstract decoration. Diam. 37.2cm. British Museum.

Keramik", at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in 1925. 'Mark' was the pottery-manufacturing area north-east of Berlin, within Mark-Brandenburg.10 So for example, Haël's address is often given as 'Marwitz near Velten, Mark'. Others had a wider scope, such as the New Year's trade fair in Nuremberg in 1930, 11 or the highly influential exhibition, Europäisches Kunstgewerbe, held in Leipzig in 1927. Not only did the various manufacturers participate, so did the Staatliche Hochschule fur Handwerk u. Baukunst, Weimar. This was founded in 1925 when the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau and incorporated the former Bauhaus Pottery Workshop at Dornburg, still directed by Otto Lindig. The pottery all seems to have been shown together. Haëls contribution included a large matt black jug (see fig. 18). Subsequently, in 1929 and in 1930, Haël participated in the annual Leipzig trade fairs; these were national rather than international and were held in two parts: the main trade display in the Mädlerpassage, with a smaller 'art' display in the Grassimuseum; a report of the 1930 fair recommended Haël's display as worth seeing for its unusually stylish installation.12 Quite apart from these regular exhibitions, Haël had distributors across the country.13

In the autumn of 1928 the local ceramic museum (Keramisches Ortsmuseum) in Velten held an exhibition of new work, to celebrate one hundred years of the pottery industry in Velten. Here Haël presented a new

Fig. 5 Publicity photograph of a table setting published in Keramische Rundschau, 1929, showing a dish similar to that in pl. 4 as part of a matching set.

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Fig. 6 Page from Haël's 1930 catalogue showing vases with asymmetrical handles. Photo courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin

Fig. 7 Lidded casserole with matt black glaze, included in the 1930 catalogue. H. 19cm. Keramik Museum, Berlin, photo courtesy of Heinz Theis.

Fig. 8 Publicity photograph by S. Frank of a group of smoking accessories glazed in black and white. It

appeared in Die Weite Welt in March 1933.

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Fig. 9 Coffee service with flat lids and hemispherical handles, c. 1930. Bröhan Museum, Berlin.

coffee set in matt yellow with black rims, the pots and cups on raised stems, with bridge handles rising from the stem and projecting upwards beyond the bridge or cross-bar that holds them at the top (fig. 14). 14 Although the idea recalls oriental, even pre-Columbian forms, there is no obvious model for this extraordinary shape,

which is unlike anything else ever made by Haël or indeed by any other factory in Germany at the time. No examples have come to light; perhaps it proved not to be popular. But the most surprising piece at this exhibition was a gigantic vase, some one a half metres high, with asymmetrical handles and glazed in the matt

Fig. 10 Jug and mugs, with fruit set, from Kunst und Gewerbe, January 1929.

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Fig. 11 Publicity photograph for a cacti container, c. 1930

uranium red so admired by the critics.15 Other factories also displayed outsize vases; clearly they were all specially-made.They were also beautifully installed with asymmetrical flower arrangements and, to add a real Japanesque feel, a fallen spray on the ground. It may have been for exhibitions such as this that the unique decorated pieces were done, for example the large footed vase with painted decoration on a white ground (fig. 15). A vase of identical shape was kept by Grete and brought with her to England. It is quite unlike any of her Haël productions because it is incised with countryside motifs of cows and houses (fig. 16). According to family tradition it was made at the Bauhaus with Gerhard Mareks, who was known for his animal studies. The pale creamy brown glaze certainly resembles glazes used at the Bauhaus and it bears no Haël mark.

The Velten exhibition set out to demonstrate the highest achievements of the Velten industry; in this it was different from most of the others in which Haël participated. These were often in department or furnishing stores, where the aim was to show a range of standard available products, usually with a theme, such as 'Gedeckte Tische' in Grünfelds linen store in Berlin iill 928. Here, the pottery was arranged in table settings.16 In one of these displays a Haël fruit set with sprayed decoration of concentric .circles was placed on a tablecloth with matching sprayed pattern - presumably specially created. One contemporary critic spoke of the

Fig. 12 Photograph of Grete Loebenstein at the factory, c. 1929-30. She is holding one of the ridged flower pots.

exquisite shades of colour obtained by spraying, giving the appearance of patination in a precious material.17 The following year, Friedmann & Weber held an exhibition on the country house and garden. For the living room interior they had obtained original Chinese ceramics from the Tang and Ming periods. This gives a clear indication of the status of Chinese ceramics as appropriate ornaments for a modern interior and helps to explain the taste for the celadon greens and special glaze effects of interwar art pottery. In such a context it is no wonder that Haël's characteristic square fruit bowls with matching plates, with their direct reference to Japanese forms, were so sought after (fig. 17). A 1932 description reads: "In combining both control of form and technical know-how this well-known workshop designs its products so that you really get your moneys worth of good taste".18 The Obstsatz or fruit set was evidently a must for the well-equipped fashionable household in Germany.19 Fruit sets sold as such do not exist in the UK. Whether this reflects different eating habits or simply a marketing ploy is hard to say. Certainly the advertising was seasonal: in

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Fig. 13 Group of vases and bowls with a variety of Chinese-style glazes, including motded reds and greens, and bright yellows. Ht. of double gourd vase: 23 cm. British Museum, given by Harold and Frances Marks.

October that year Die Schaulade published a whole article devoted to fruit bowls and sets, in glass and ceramics. As well as sets for fresh fruits there were also Kompotts or sets for stewed fruit: Haël's comprised shallow bowls with flared sides and a vertical rim; one such bowl is shown in plate 13.20

Haël glazes were enormously influential. It was repeatedly noted in the press that once the matt yellows and the greens had appeared, other firms immediately followed suit. Otto Riedrich, a noted author on ceramics, saw glazes as the feature that lent individuality and character to a particular workshop, but this was only possible when, as in the case of Haël, the workshop itself carried out all the technical groundwork (he mentions the influence of Sung glazes and Japanese tea wares). He makes a further significant point about glazes: many critics think pottery should be round; it should show its genesis on the wheel. That may be so, he says, for wheel-thrown items, but cast wares are different. Haël produce a number of square plates, and triangular jars, in thin-walled earthenware with sharp edges.When people ask whether these are really pottery since they

Fig. 14 Coffee set with bridge handles, detail from a page of the 1930 Haël catalogue. Photo courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin.

Fig. 15 (right) Large vase with hand-painted decoration on a white ground. Ht. 48cm. Keramik Museum, Berlin. Photo courtesy of Heinz Theis.

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Fig. 16 Large vase with incised decoration. Ht. 50cm. British Museum, given by Harold and Frances Marks.

look like metals or wood, my reply, says Riedrich, is that they cannot deceive: the glazes reveal that they are pottery without any doubt.21

In addition to the blacks, yellows, and subtle greens of the matt glazes, there was also a startling orange-red, made with uranium (see fig. 18). In the 1929 Werkbund exhibition in Breslau, on the theme of 'Wohnung und Werkraum', the critics were deeply impressed by Haël's 'ingenious use of uranium red, with subtle darker areas to enhance the form', also described as 'brilliant red with blackish inclusions'. TheV&A has a fine example.22 Grete Loebenbstein's glaze book survives in the possession of her family. It contains recipes for body colours, underglaze and overglaze colours, in matt, gloss or lustre finish. Different glazes were used on different bodies. There were two kinds of uranium red: both used lead oxide and uranium oxide, but the one called chrome red had far more lead oxide. One particularly complicated glaze, noted as being very difficult to produce, was crystalline black; this was done by using shiny brown, for which the ingredients had to be ground for six to eight hours, and painting beneath that a layer of cobalt oxide.

If Haël pottery was widely distributed in Germany, its export trade is more difficult to establish. That there was a thriving market in America is certain for Haël products are frequently to be found there. Grete and Gustav Loebenstein went to the US on a marketing trip in 1927; it appears that Haël worked on commission for various retailers. Imported wares are usually stamped with the Haël monogram, the importer's name and a trade name such as 'Montezuma Ware' or 'Castle Ware'. Others are marked 'For B. Altman', a former department store in New York.23 Export markets also included Belgium, Switzerland, France and the UK. Grete and Gustav made trips to the UK in 1926 and 1927, to France in 1926, and to Switzerland in 1927. 24

Fig. 17 (right) Group of square plates and fruit bowl with matt glazes, c. 1924. The bowl is decorated inside with lines and circles. Width of bowl 22.4cm. British Museum, given by Harold and Frances Marks.

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Fig. 18 Group of large pieces: spherical vase in uranium red glaze, Ht. 26cm; large jug with matt black glaze, Ht. 35cm; dish glazed in matt black with yellow rim, Diam. 37.5cm. British Museum, given by Harold and Frances Marks.

What lay behind this outstanding success ? After the devastation of the First World War, Germany had made a remarkably quick recovery, leading to an economic boom in the years 1919-23. Haël Werkstätten was established in 1923, whether during the boom or after we do not know. Loebenstein and her husband took over a former stove-making factory, the buildings of which date from the late 19th century. The factory had ceased production when they bought it so much had to be done to re-activate it. The capital seems to have come from both the Heymann and the Loebenstein families. It must have been sufficient to enable them to start production very quickly. The first article on Haël appeared already in early 1924 in Kunst und Kunstgewerbe (Jahrgang 4, 1924, p. 185 ff.). The immediate success of their wares must have produced enough profit by 1927 to carry out a huge programme of refurbishment and modernisation of the factory, including the installation of electric lighting, as well as building a new house so that the manager could live on-site. The big change in production of the late 1920s must be due to this modernisation. The business acumen of Gustav Loebenstein and his brother Daniel as financial managers played a significant role in the factory's success, but the decisive factor was Grete Loebenstein's ability to anticipate and adapt to quickly changing tastes, and to produce in a very short time a vast number of designs for high-quality ceramics that matched the life-style of those whose tastes were for the avant-garde as well as those who simply wanted good well-designed

household objects. To take just one example of this flexibility of

approach: the famous conical tea-service with flat lids and disc handles was produced with a variety of glazes and patterns (fig. 19) from around 1929-30. 25 It was later to become the only one of her unusual shapes that was popular in Stoke. But it was also produced in silver and in silvered alpacca, a base metal alloy of copper, tin and zinc (fig. 20). The silver version was made by the silver workshop of Richter-Engel in Saarbrücken, a husband and wife team who practised from 1919 until the early 1930s.26 The manufacturer of the silvered metal version is unknown.27

The Weimar constitution of 1919 guaranteed women the same rights as men. This had a significant impact on women's education, enabling women to play a major role in the culture of the Weimar period. The avant-garde woman was synonymous with the 'new woman'.28 She was young, urban, sporty, and she presented herself as more or less androgynous.29 Grete Loebenstein epitomised this cultural icon (fig. 21). To her mother, who considered herself very upper middle- class, Grete was something of a rebel.

With the death of her husband and her brother-in- law in a car accident in 1928, Grete's responsibilities for the business grew, and in taking them on, the range of her social and public roles widened. According to the Adressbuch der Keram-Industrie for 1930, she employed a specialist sales director, Siegfried Katz, and a technical director, the chemist Gerhard Wolfram. For a brief

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Fig. 19 Tea service of conical form with disc handles, publicity photo of c. 1929. This is Marks most well-known model because it was made both in Germany and in England.

period in 1927, the technical director had been Wolfgang Müller von Baczko, who went on to become director of the Majolika-Manufaktur in Karlsruhe.30 Judging by the increase in products and in Haël's presence in the press between 1928 and 1932/33 she ran the business no less successfully than before, managing up to 120 employees. To give a comparison for the scale of her enterprise, Susie Cooper at this date employed 58 staff, exactly half as many.31 It is no small measure of Haël's success that when economic

crisis struck Germany in the early 1930s, many larger ceramic firms went bankrupt - such as the Velten- Vordamm works in early 1931 - but Haël continued to produce until early 1933. A contemporary announcement in Die Schaulade (1932, Heft 1, p. 47) noted that the factory had lowered its prices in 1932. It was at this time that Haël introduced the "Haël Norma" range, first illustrated in Die Schaulade that year (Heft 1 1/12). A wholesalers publicity leaflet introduced Haël Norma as 'the first mass-produced ceramic service

Fig. 20 Tea-service of conical form in silvered metal, publicity photo of c. 1929.

Ill



with fine body in standardized forms; convenient, attractive, hard-wearing - and with its amazingly low price, unmistakable, and easy to buy. Glazed in matt yellow and white it suits current taste and can be ordered piece by piece, to fit your space; a fruit bowl completes the service. Choose Haël Norma and you'll pick the latest bargain' (fig. 22). The leaflet illustrates the breakfast service, which included a tea warmer, bread basket and eggcups.32

By 1933 the Haël- Werkstätten were suffering from economic difficulties; the export-business was in crisis, and sales revenue figures for the last two years of Haël's existence show#a significant drop in business.33 On top of this were the difficulties caused by the new government's anti-Jewish policies, which were inciting growing hostility towards Jewish citizens, especially those who were business owners, modernist artists, or politically left-of-centre. Loebenstein realised that she could be identified as all of these, saw the character of what was in store for Germany and acted accordingly: she decided that she had to sell her business and look for a way of leaving Germany. The search for an appropriate buyer for the Haël- Werkstätten, however, was affected both by the general economic situation and by the political climate. Symptomatic of this is the

Fig. 21 Grete Loebenstein photographed in the mid- 1920s.

aryanisation in early 1934 of Rosenthal, one of Germany's leading porcelain manufacturers. The founder and director Philipp Rosenthal was made to leave, yet the firm kept its name because it was so well- known outside Germany and brought in capital from exports; only in 1950 was it possible for his son to join the company.

At the beginning of 1934 Loebenstein found herself forced to sell at a price greatly below market value to Heinrich Schild, at that time Secretary General to the Reichsstand des Deutschen Handwerks. The precise circumstances of the final sale agreement are hard to establish, since there is insufficient documentary evidence and a haze of varying accounts and interpretations. But this much is clear: the sale contract between Schild and Grete Loebenstein of 26 April 1934 states that the seller:

sells her property, the Haël Werkstätten for Artistic Pottery Ltd, including the adjoining land, on which stand a factory building and several , storage sheds, and a dwelling and office building, as they are and complete with all the ware in production (half finished and almost finished), and raw materials, together with all the fittings in the factory building, the office equipment and everything which has to do with the commercial undertaking, lists of customers, card indexes and lists of suppliers, together with the furniture in the office and residential building for the agreed price of 45,000 Reichsmark. This sum included the outstanding mortgage on the

site of 20,000, so the actual payment to Grete Leobenstein was 25,000 RM.

Schild's business partner was the young potter, Hedwig Bollhagen. Bollhagen (1907-2001) had trained entirely in ceramics, at the technical school in Höhr- Grenzhausen, Rhineland, among others. From 1927- 31 she worked at the Velten-Vordamm pottery where she directed the decorating department till the factory closed, followed by brief spells at the Karlsruhe Majolika-Manufaktur and at Rosenthal as designer. She was clearly a distinguished decorator in her own right, but like many ceramic artists, seems to have found difficulty getting jobs during the economic crisis. In 1932-33 she had a variety of small jobs, sometimes as shop assistant only. When she and Schild took over the Haël Werkstätten, it was renamed HB-Werkstätten fur Keramik - the initials were simply changed and the word 'künstlerisch' omitted. The significance of this omission becomes clear when looked at in the context of Nazi politics of Gleichschaltung , ie. bringing into line, applied not only to institutions but also to style. The Nazi authorities seized the opportunity provided by the change of ownership: Grete's pottery was deliberately and publicly slandered. In May 1935, a malicious article entitled 'Jüdische Keramik in der Schreckenskammer' (Jewish ceramics in the chamber of horrors) appeared in Goebbels propagandist paper,

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Der Angriff, contrasting photographs of Haël products with HB products. There is a supreme irony here for many of HB s first series were based on former Haël shapes. This is evident from the first HB catalogue of 1934-35. HB Werkstätten exhibited at the Leipzig Fair in the autumn of 1934; as the Leipzig catalogue noted, the exhibits included Several Haël designs, above all the successful Norma service'.34 The factory had after all been taken over with all the moulds and half finished products in situ. Knowing this, the article in der Angriff makes distasteful reading:

At a time when the national socialist revolution has torn down so many crumbling walls, the beams of this 'factory for ceramic products' still stand. The production was directed by Jews. In February 1933 they decided to abandon the works. The workers were penniless and had to go on the dole. The employer paid no attention to their predicament; the factory was left to become desolate Here and there on dusty shelves stood a few pottery vessels, left behind in the hurried flight of the Jewish managers. For 14 months rats and bats made it their home, until the great clean-up began. Since April 1934 a new owner has taken over and in months a new works has been created. Since 1 September almost 40 men and women now work under the symbol of the Deutschen Arbeitsfront with a young woman as director The pottery that had previously

been made was the product of a degenerate and misunderstood functionalism; its fitness for purpose had lost the simple healthy vernacular beauty that belongs to the German country side and the German people. Foreign forces have laid the emphasis on superficial effect We shake our heads when we encounter the products brought by the post-war years. In Marwitz they have been placed in a 'Chamber of Horrors' (Schreckens hammer) .When the onlooker sees the noble forms in the adjacent rooms, one glance in the Schreckenskammer is enough to show him how far we have moved on '35

The 'Schreckenskammer' was by then already established as a measure to 'educate' public taste according to Nazi ideology; these horror cabinets were small exhibitions, held from 1933 onwards, mostly in museums renowned for their modern collections, with the aim of condemning avant-garde art and preparing public opinion for the government's final attack on modernism in the Entartete Kunst Exhibition in Munich in 1937. 36 Its targets were painters, collectors and patrons. The article on Haël pottery provides for the first time evidence that these attacks included artists working in the field of the applied arts. The Haël pieces chosen to make the point comprised four of Loebenstein's most radical teapots, including that from the conical service, the covered casserole shown in fig. 7 and the double-gourd vase with applied curving handle shown in fig. 13. The HB pieces are simple,

Fig. 22 Haël 'Norma', an inexpensive range introduced in the early 1930s. It continued to be produced after Haël had been taken over by Hedwig Bollhagen; this illustration is from the first HB catalogue of around 1934. Photo courtesy of Heinz Theis, Berlin.

traditional, attractive but unexciting forms. The caption reads 'Two races find different forms for the same purpose. Which is more beautiful ?'.

Despite this humiliation, Grete Loebenstein continued to show Haël designs at exhibitions held under the auspices of the 'Jüdischer Kulturbund' in Berlin in 1935 and 1936, while at the same time, products from former Haël designs and moulds were displayed at the national exhibitions by the ideologically approved HB -Werkstätten. Grete Loebenstein's exhibitions at this time took place mostly in her own atelier in Grunewald, a suburb of Berlin, and comprised watercolours and drawings alongside her pottery (fig. 23). A reviewer of one of these exhibitions, struck by the Japanese influence in her watercolours, assumed she had been to Japan, and was surprised to learn she had not, but that she

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Fig. 23 Watercolour head of a woman signed GH for Grete Heymann and dated 1933. 38.5 x 27.5 cm. British Museum, given by Dr Frances Marks.

had studied Japanese woodcuts and painting in the Far Eastern collections in Cologne. The article was illustrated with a striking watercolour of an Abyssinian boy and below it a group of her pots, including the Haël Norma milk jug - one of the shapes produced by HB Werkstätten. Adjacent to her atelier she had installed a 'Kinderstudio' where she taught children aged 6 to 14 to make their own pottery based on stories from fairy tales which she read to them.37 She also taught at the Kaliski school, a reform school for Jewish children no longer allowed to attend German schools. Various articles describe watercolour landscapes made in Palestine (1933), Yugoslavia (1935) and Denmark, countries to which she travelled in these years, while deciding where to emigrate.

In the end, the decision to emigrate to England in late 1936 was made because of existing contacts. The circumstances of Loebenstein's emigration to this country were, in comparison with those of most refugees, extraordinarily fortunate. In the first place, she received vital support from Ambrose Heal and the pottery buyer for the company, Harry Trethowan, who helped her to get to London. Heals' had been her principal outlet in the UK.38 Heal then put her in touch with Gordon Forsyth, Principal of Stoke-on-Trent Art Schools and artistic adviser for the Pottery

Manufacturers Federation. It was Forsyth who gave her the opportunity to create a reputation as a modernist potter by arranging for her to have an immediate large- scale exhibition at the Burslem School of Arts as early as February 1937. Here she exhibited 250 paintings and a similar number of pottery pieces. The difference between her pots and the standard products of the potteries is clear from a report on this exhibition: 'Her pottery might seem a little strange to those who were steeped in Staffordshire traditions and in Staffordshire exemplification of plasticity and ceramic properties, but a good deal could be learned from the adventure which Mrs. Loebenstein had undertaken'.39 She found herself in the midst of the tension between modernism and traditionalism in the Potteries at that time and this was to colour all the work that she did in Stoke. Added to this, coming from a sophisticated big city to a small provincial town, described in 1930 by Reginald Haggar, art director at Minton's and painter of the potteries, as a 'hole', must have been something of a culture shock.

At the time of her arrival in the UK some of the ceramic firms at Stoke had begun, albeit hesitantly, to modernise their products. The impulse for these changes came, as discussed in the pottery trade press, from the need to enlarge their markets and to become more competitive internationally Britain's presence at the Paris exhibition of 1925 had not been impressive. The German critics found the exhibits tasteless and lacking in creativity, expressing surprise that such a well- established and technically proficient industry could have so totally failed to change with the times.40 Even Gordon Forsyth noted that there was 'a real lack of the

Fig. 24 Bone china plate designed by Grete Marks for Minton, 1937-38. Diam. 22cm. British Museum, given by Harold Marks and Dr Frances Marks.

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spirit of adventure on the artists' side - that it was lifeless a little virility in the treatment of clay by our distinguished potters would have added savour to the whole exhibition'.41

In this situation it made sense to employ someone with experience from abroad. Consequently, Loebenstein found work in her own field only a few months after her arrival. Following her exhibition she was immediately offered a one-term teaching contract at the Burslem School of Arts. Her first offer of employment came from Minton; they wanted her to design modern pottery and gave her a specially-created, independent studio, with the intention that she would design shapes and decoration. She was employed from 1 September 1937 for six months. According to the contract, she was to 'act as the Consultant of the Company artistically, technically and commercially'. She was to be 'exclusively employed by the Company and shall devote such time to the business of the Company as shall be required for the smooth and efficient manufacture and sale of her designs and shapes and shall use her best endeavours to promote the interest and welfare of the Company'. Her salary was £300 a year, with a 10% commission on sales of earthenware produced from her designs and shapes during the twelve months up to the value of £5000.42 Things did not work out as intended. When the shapes were returned

from the factory to the studio for decoration, Grete Loebenstein found that the paintresses employed to band and line could not paint flowers or figures and vice versa. German training led to much greater flexibility, instead of this strict division of labour.43 She did manage to recreate some of her Haël shapes, such as the vase with flared neck (see fig. 13), a version of which is in the Marks family gift to the British Museum, but mostly what survives from Minton are plates. Matt glazed and decorated either with pale or mottled bands of blue, gréen, yellow and grey with pale coloured centres, or with asymmetrical rhythmical lines in the centre of the plate, they could be taken for ceramics of the 1960s and are quite unlike anything else produced by Minton at the time (fig. 24). This led to problems in finding buyers, so Grete contacted her old customers such as Heals and new outlets such as Fortnum & Mason, who took her samples. This success antagonised Minton's sales staff, in particular the art director, John Wadsworth, who refused to market her designs alongside other Minton products. Although she was for a short time a member of the Board of Directors at Minton44, her employment was terminated after the initial contract of six months.

Subsequently, she did freelance work on a much smaller scale for other potteries: Ridgway of Shelton and E. Brain & Co.'s Foley China. The work she did for

Fig. 25 Greta Pottery vase and bowls with hand-painted decoration, advertised in the Pottery and Glass Trade Review, February 1940, as 'An individualistic touch in matt-textured ornamentals*.

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these firms was all marked with the name 'Greta Pottery', followed by 'ať and the company's name. For Brain's she designed a series of patterns for bone-china plates from English country life, including picnic and fishing scenes, as well as traditional gold ornament on a pastel grounds. She also designed bone china tableware including a jug recreated from a Haël Norma shape. 45 At Ridgway's she was able to recreate some of her Haël pieces, such as the conical tea set with disc handles. This was the only one of her avant-garde shapes to be produced in England; Ridgway was the only firm that was willing to take the risk of making the moulds. But it was decorated in much paler colours. Fortunate as these collaborations were, none was successful.

Eventually, with the help of her second husband, Harold Marks, and the compensation from Minton's for the termination of the agreement, she set up her own business, the Greta Pottery, in 1938. It was situated in part of the Cleveland Tile Works in Summer Street, Stoke. There, with limited capital and facilities, and a small number of part-time staff whom she trained, she decorated and fired bought-in biscuit ware, some of which was produced according to her shape designs. A group of ornamental pieces with matt glazes and floral motifs advertised in the Pottery and Glass Trade Review for February 1940 indicates the change to which her work had been subjected (fig. 25). The Greta pottery table wares were decorated mainly with simple dots and flower sprays; the square hors d'oeuvres dishes with their flat rims and rounded edges are a far cry from the bold Japanesque fruit bowls from Haël days (fig. 26). In adapting her production to what was acceptable in Stoke, shape and colour were the crucial areas: there was no room for her previous use of bright, deep and intense colours in unusual combinations. The colours are almost always muted, though occasionally a glossy

black glaze appears.The technology was there in Stoke; experimental glazes were by no means the preserve of art potteries such as Pilkington's. Norman Wilson had produced a range of interesting glazes for Wedgwood in the early 1930s, but these were always a limited and expensive range. Producing everyday tablewares in uranium red was a different matter. Even when Marks experimented with former Haël-shapes, she changed their colour and decoration. None of her highly original asymmetrical designs was made in Stoke. In general the shapes were more conservative and the decoration comprised conventional floral designs.

It might be expected that the resounding success she had previously enjoyed with Haël would be repeated, but this was not to be. She had little capital of her own, the trade fairs held in Germany did not exist in the UK so it was much more difficult to work up a customer base. And without a backer she was dependent on others putting her designs into production. But here there was a major hurdle: her shapes were dependent on casting. Thè production of art pottery on the English model was thus not an option that was open to her; she needed a factory context, to combine the technical, financial and marketing side of production. While traditional Staffordshire production tended to have several patterns for the same shape, Marks' shapes each had an appropriate pattern. The economics were completely different. Despite these obstacles, the business was financially sound and buyers of the Greta Pottery were once more to be found among the department stores which led the way in selling modern design such as Heals, John Lewis, Bowman Bros of Camden, P. E. Gane of Bristol and others. The 1940 Pottery and Glass Trade Review , however, notes that there was a UK distributor in London: Mr H.J. Mayer of 10 Hatton Garden, where samples could be inspected. Just

Fig. 26 Greta Pottery table wares, hand decorated on bought-in blanks, c. 1937-40. Contemporary publicity photograph.

as success seemed to be on the way, the Greta Pottery had to close in late 1940 because of England's increasing involvement in the war, as was the case with many other small pottery businesses.

If marketing methods were totally different in England, the working conditions were antiquated in comparison with those she was used to in Germany; the work spaces were dangerous, cramped and inadequately lit. As far as production was concerned, women did the decoration while men worked at the wheel and did the casting, and this was the same at Haël and in Stoke. But Grete Marks had carried out all roles involved in

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successfully running a modern pottery business, from finance to sales. In England these were considered a male domain. Nevertheless, there were some highly successful women with their own businesses in the Potteries, such as Susie Cooper and Clarice Cliff. And the fact that Marks' own Stoke pottery was a successful business, albeit on a small scale and for the very short period of its existence, proves that she was able to find a compromise between her own style and that demanded by the very limited horizons of the Potteries at the end of the 30s.

This is surely the key to the problem. The difference between Marks' work and much of what was then made in Stoke is neither a question of style nor of nationality. What Marks was doing was bringing studio pottery ideas into the factory context; there was simply no market for this in England. As the critic of the 1937 Burslem exhibition had noted, Marks' pottery was adventurous and had great qualities of plasticity. Its sculptural presence and sophisticated glazes had far more to do with what was being produced by the studio potters. In April-May 1937, the same year as the Burslem exhibition, she took part in an exhibition in London at the Brygos Gallery, 73 New Bond Street, a short-lived venture from which the Victoria & Albert Museum purchased much of its studio pottery in the 1930s.46 The catalogue, unpromisingly entitled 'Stoneware and earthenware and beer sets', listed 131 items, of which 50 were exhibited by 'Margaret Loebenstein', almost half. She appears as an exhibitor of stoneware and earthenware, together with Lily and Wilfred Norton, and Constance Dunn. The authors of the beer sets included some of the most distinguished potters of the 1930s - Michael Cardew, Bernard Leach and K. Pleydell-Bouverie - along with John Bew, Vivian Cole, Ursula Darwin, Ruth Duckworth, T. S. Haile, Deborah Harding, and Margaret Rey. Ruth Windmüller Duckworth was also a German emigré; Haile and Rey were pupils of Staite Murray at the Royal College of Art. The following year she participated in an exhibition of twentieth century German art at the New Burlington Galleries in London. A letter from the Galleries to Marks in Stoke dated 21 June 1938 records that one of the paintings and watercolours she brought them had been selected to hang in the exhibition, and that they wished to keep the rest on the chance of selling some during the exhibition.

What happened to other emigré potters ? Lucie Rie, who came as a refugee to England from Vienna in 1938, set up a studio pottery several years after her arrival and remained in urban London. Her one brief encounter with industry was in the late 1950s when she designed some prototypes for Wedgwood, but they were never put into production.47 Marguerite Friedlaender-Wildenhain, who was one of Grete Heymann's fellow potters at the Bauhaus, and had run her own ceramic workshop at Burg-Giebichenstein from 1926-1933, had a brief but successful co-operation

with the Staatliche Porzellanmanufaktur in Berlin from 1929-33. She then left Germany for Holland where she collaborated with De Sphinx in Maastricht from 1937-40. Subsequently she emigrated to the United States and set up her own small workshop, but she never owned or ran a factory.

After the War Marks had a modestly successful studio pottery in London, but the main focus of her later career in England was painting; here also she had to change her style and mode: in order to be successful she found it necessary to change from watercolours, her preferred medium, to painting in oils. She also made mural decorations in pottery mosaic for civic buildings along with smaller wall plaques which were privately sold.48

Writing in 1936, in 20th century ceramics. An International survey of the best work produced by modern craftsmen, artists and manufacturers , Gordon Forsyth bemoaned the fact that

'a wholly artificial gulf has arisen between the studio potter and the large-scale manufacturer progress in industry has been considerably retarded by unbalanced enthusiasts on both sides, and the time has now arrived for co-operation between the individual experimenter and his collaboration with large- scale producers.' Forsyth's solution was to bring artists into industry.

But Grete Marks was already both artist and manufacturer. That was one step too far. Perhaps the final word should rest with the writer of a piece in Die Schaulade in 1932, creating an imaginary exhibition of 'Ceramics for the modern woman'. Cheap mass- produced wares were not what the critic had in mind, but the 'better kind' which could be promoted as exclusive. The illustration was specially chosen to show what was meant (Frontispiece, plOO):

'the practical and unpretentious yet daringly modern forms, the discreet pale matt colours contrasting with strong greens and warm yellows. In between, giving a deeper resonance, were the half-matt or glossy brown and black glazes, the latter with metallic lustre Such bold, dynamic and decisively coloured pots deserve a serious display: a series of still-life arrangements each made up of a small number of objects within niches or hanging boxes could be effectively set against a sympathetic background to let the colours of the pots take precedence. In this way, each box or niche would act as the frame for its own still life - a still life in three dimensions'.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are indebted to Grete Marks' family, who have

provided huge quantities of information, above all her husband, Harold Marks, and we wish to acknowledge here his constant support. We have also relied heavily on the details derived from conversations with Grete Marks in the writing of Cheryl Buckley and Pat Halfpenny. In addition, we have been greatly helped with information and photographs by many. Jennifer Opie at the V&A and Klaus Weber at the Bauhaus- Archiv, Berlin, kindly read and commented on our text. We must also thank Heinz Theis in Berlin, who arranged a visit to the HB Werkstätten and has been a constant source of encouragement, Heidi Manthey at the HB Werkstätten, Sabine Hartmann at the Bauhaus- Archiv, Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk, Sonja Jastram and Ronald Gerhardt at the Bröhan Museum, Werner Kittel in Hamburg, Rüdiger Joppien at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, and Victor Wiener, whose forthcoming book on German ceramics between the wars will also discuss Grete Marks.

Judy Rudoe is an Assistant Keeper at the British Museum, where she is responsible for the collections of 19th and 20th century applied art, among other areas. Her publications include Decorative Arts 1850-1950. A catalogue of the British Museum Collection (1991, revised 1994), Cartier 1900-1939 (British Museum 1997), as well as contributions to the exhibition catalogue, Whitefriars Glass. The Art of James Powell & Sons (Manchester 1996) and the Catalogue of the Gilbert Collection: Micromosaics (London 2000).

Ursula Hudson-Wiedenmann was born in Germany and gained a D.Phil, at Munich University. She has lived and worked in England since 1996, at Cambridge University and as a freelance writer. Her interest in Grete Heymann-Loebenstein-Marks is part of a wider research project on women designers who have emigrated: together with Beate Schmeichel- Falkenberg she is currently editing 'Künstlerinnen im Exil/ Women Artists in Exile' (forthcoming).

NOTES

1 The research in Germany has been carried out largely by Ursula Hudson-Wiedenmann, as part of her study of the impact of emigration on women in exile. 2 K. H. Bröhan (ed.), Sammlung Bröhan. Kunst der 20er und 30er Jahre, Berlin 1985, pp. 201-8; Keramik und Bauhaus, exhibition catalogue, Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin 1989, pp. 206-211 and 234-6; H. Theis (ed.), Märkische Tonkunst, Berlin 1992, pp. 26-34, (essay by K.Weber) 126- 130, 201-2. 3 Cheryl Buckley, Potters and Paintresses. Women Designers in the pottery industry 1870-1955, London 1990, pp. 135-9; Cheryl Buckley, "Women and Modernism: a Case Study of Grete Marks (1899-1990)", in Jill Seddon and Suzette Worden (eds), Women Designing. Redefining Design in Britain between the Wars, Brighton 1994, pp. 104-110; Pat Halfpenny, "Greta Pottery" in Journal of the Northern Ceramic Society, vol 8, 1991, pp. 61-72. 4 In England the British Museum has the largest group of work from her German period; the Victoria & Albert Museum has both English and German material, while the Potteries Museum in Stoke has principally English pieces. In all three institutions the pieces have almost all been presented by Grete Marks and her family. The Potteries Museum has an excellent web site with images of some twenty items (www. stoke. gov. uk/ museums') . In Museums abroad, works from her German period are to be found in the Bauhaus-Archiv, the Bröhan Museum and the Förderverein Keramik-Museum in Berlin, the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York (given by Victor Wiener). 5 Women in Design. Careers and Life Histories since Î900, exhibition catalogue Design Center Stuttgart, 1989, pp. 174-202, 224-5. 6 Haël appears in the Werkbund lists in 1925 and 1928, after which they were not published regularly (information kindly supplied by Frau Rita Wolters, Werkbundarchiv, Berlin, 19.10.2000). 7 For Susie Cooper works inspired by painted decoration of the kind done by Haël, see A. Casey and A. Eatwell, Susie Cooper. A pioneer of Modern Design, Woodbridge 2002, pp. 76 and 88-89. 8 Examples of these shallow footed bowls are to be seen in the Bröhan Museum (Kunst der 20er und 30er Jahre, p. 202). For the Chinese originals, see S. J.Vainker, Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, London, British Museum, 1991, pl. 76. 9 Information from Harold Marks. The gift to the British Museum made by Harold Marks and Dr Frances Marks includes a number of such pieces. 10 The exhibition is mentioned in a Haël advertisement in Die Kunst- Keramik, Jahrgang 4, Heft 9, 15 September 1925. n.The fair was held by the 'Nürnberger Bund' and was called 'Die Gute Stube', see Die Schaulade 1930, Heft 8, p. 506. 12 See Die Schaulade 1929, p. 668 for the 1929 Fair, and 1930, Heft 11/12. 13 Die Schaulade for 1932, Heft 1, p. 47 refers to representatives in Rhineland and Westphalia. 14 Illustrated in Die Schaulade for 1928 (no. 16, p. 827). 15 This vase received special praise from Otto Riedrich, see 'Neue märkische Gebrauchs-und Zierkeramik. III. Die Haël Werkstätten', in Keramische Rundschau, 1 929, no. 42, pp. 7 1 9-2 1 ; he called it 'an astounding achievement'. 16 See Die Schaulade, 1928, Heft 15, p. 787-91. 17 Die Schaulade 1929, Heft 12, p. 643. 18 Die Schaulade 1932, Heft 2, p. 92. 19 See for example, Die Schaulade, Heft 14, 1929, p. 773. 20 Die Schaulade 1932, Heft 7, pp. 336-9. Examples of these compote dishes are in the British Museum. 21 O. Riedrich, Keramishe Rundschau 1929, no. 42, pp. 719-21. 22 Keramische Rundschau und Kunstkeramik, 1929, no. 39, p. 666, and Die Schaulade 1930, Heft 15, p. 1041. The 1930 edition has parallel English text so must have been printed for the foreign market. The V&A piece is a vase, C. 75-1 980, currently shown in the 20th Century Study Gallery.

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23 Information kindly provided by Victor Wiener, New York. Examples with these marks are held by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York. The date of Gretes visit to the US is confirmed by Gustav Loebenstein's passport. 24 The trips are recorded in Gustav Loebenstein's passport. 25 Although it does not appear in the Haël catalogues, it was illustrated in Die Schaulade for 1930 (no. 6, p. 891). 26 How the connection with this workshop was made is unclear. Only one silver version is known to date; it may therefore have been a special commission. See K. H. Bröhan (ed.), Kunst vom Jugendstil zur Moderne (1889-1939). Band IV Metallkunst, Berlin 1990, no. 473. The service is described as 'Sammlung EL' and is no longer in the Bröhan collection. 27 For an example of the service in silvered metal, see H. Wichmann, Neu Donationen und Neu-Erwerbungen 1988/89, Die Neue Sammlung, Munich 1990, p. 80. Another example is in the Grassimuseum in Leipzig. Contemporary photographs in Harold Marks' possession show a range of metal accessories, including an ash-tray. Grete Marks' own example still survives; it is silvered metal and was recently presented to the British Museum by Harold Marks. 28 See A. O. Detlev. J. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik. Krisenjahre der klassischen Moderne, Frankfurt, 1987, pp. 100- 106. 29 M. Meskimmom, We weren't modern enough. Women artists and the limit of German Modernism, London 1999, p. 163. 30 Information kindly supplied by Andreas Heger. 31 A. Casey and A. Eatwell (eds.) p. 228. 32 It may also have been at this time that the range of products was expanded even further to include wall clocks with raised numerals glazed black on a coloured ground (see Theis 1992, no. 267 for an example glazed in uranium red and Weber 1989, p. 210 for a contemporary advertisement). 33 Information kindly supplied by Andreas Heger 10.4.2002, with reference to surviving factory records. Mr Heger is writing a dissertation on the HB Werkstätten and has traced some Haël records, but these are in private hands and neither of the two authors of the present account has seen them. 34 For HB's participation in the Leipzig Messe of 1934, see C. Strieker, 'HB - die Kunstform der Wiederholung', in Keramos, October 2001, p. 83-124, especially p. 124, and ibid, 'Hedwig Bollhagen. Zur Geschichte der HB- Werkstätten in Marwitz bei Velten', Keramos April 1988, pp. 81-96; the reference to the 1934 Messe is on p. 86. 35 See: Der Angriff, 22 May 1935. We owe the discovery of this article to Reto Niggl, who first published it in his review of the exhibition, Märkische Tonkunst, in the Antiquitäten- Zeitung, no. 23/1992, pp. 788- 9. 36 Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau, 'Deutsche Kunst' und 'Entartete Kunst': Die Münchner Ausstellungen 1937, in: Peter-Klaus Schuster (ed.), Die 'Kunststadt' München 1937. Nationalsozialismus und ' Entartete Kunst'. Munich 1987, pp.83-118; Hans-Jürgen Dahms' helpful comments on the relevance of the 'Schreckenskammern' in the years leading up to the Munich exhibition in 1937 are acknowledged here. 37 Jüdisches Gemeindeblatt, 15 December 1935; Blätter des Jüdischen Frauenbundes, February 1936. 38 Information from Harold Marks. There are few documents to go on concerning her contacts with Heals, and nothing in the Heals archive. 39 The Evening Sentinel, Wednesday, January 20, 1937. 40 J. Grell, Die Pariser Kunstgewerbeausteilung 1925. Sonderdruck aus der Keramischen Rundschau, Nr. 38/1925 41 Quoted in H. G. Dowling, A Survey of British Industrial Arts London 1935, p. 47. 42 The contract is in the possession of Harold Marks. The contract also notes that 'for the purpose of assessing this commission the Company shall keep a record of all sales of ware manufactured under the trade name "Grete"'. We have not had an opportunity to search the Minton archive for such records, but it may be possible in due course to identify a greater range of items designed by Grete Marks. 43 Halfpenny 1991, p. 63 44 Buckley 1990, p. 137; see also Nikolaus Pevsner, An Enquiry into Industrial Art in England, Cambridge 1937,'p. 77. 45 Buckley, pl. 75.

46 O.Watson, British Studio Pottery.The Victoria & Albert Museum Collection, London 1990, p. 38. Watson records that the Brygos Gallery closed in 1939. It was certainly active by 1936 and held a number of fascinating exhibitions, of Continental as well as British work. For various exhibition catalogues recorded in the albums of Eric Milner-White see S. Riddick, Pioneer Studio Pottery. The Milner- White Collection, York City Art Gallery, 1990 p. 128. 47 T. Birks, Lucie Rie, London 1987, p. 48-9. 48 The civic buildings were in Bradford, see Industrial Architecture, November/December 1960.

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Documents

Omnium Gatherum - A Collection of Papers || Grete Marks, Artist Potter