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Adelaide Alsop Robineau
Adelaide Robineau working on her scarab vase (cropped).jpg
Robineau at work on Scarab Vase, c. 1910
Born
Adelaide Alsop

1865 (1865)
Middletown, Connecticut, U.S.
Died 1929 (aged 63–64)
Syracuse, New York, U.S.
Nationality American
Known for studio pottery
Notable work
Scarab Vase, 1910
Movement American art pottery
Spouse(s) Samuel E. Robineau

Adelaide Alsop Robineau (1865–1929) was a very talented American artist. She was known for her amazing china painting and pottery. Many people consider her one of the best ceramists (artists who work with clay) in American art history.

Early Life and Learning About Art

Adelaide Alsop was born in 1865 in a town called Middletown, Connecticut. From a young age, she really loved drawing and a popular art form called china painting.

As she grew up, she helped her family by teaching drawing at a boarding school. One summer, she took a special art class with a famous painter named William Merritt Chase. This was her only advanced training in painting and drawing. Later, she learned more about making ceramics from experts like Charles Binns and Taxile Doat.

In 1899, she married Samuel E. Robineau. He was a French expert in ceramics and even edited a magazine about old china. Adelaide and Samuel had three children together.

Creating Amazing Pottery

Bowl MET DT203 (cropped)
A beautiful Porcelain bowl with openwork designs, made in 1924.

In 1899, Adelaide and her husband started a magazine called Keramic Studio. It was for people who loved making pottery and ceramic art. The magazine was printed until 1919, and after a few years, Adelaide became its only editor.

Around the same time, the family moved to Syracuse, New York. Their house was designed by a special architect named Katharine Budd. Adelaide later built her own ceramic studio right next to their home. She taught classes on china painting and pottery at her school, called Four Winds Pottery. She also sold her beautiful painted china, watercolors, and ceramic pieces.

Adelaide started seriously making ceramics around 1901. She was already known for her china painting skills. She believed that painting over the glaze (a common method then) wasn't the best way. So, she began trying new techniques.

She mostly worked with porcelain, which is a very fine type of ceramic. She experimented with American clays to create strong, high-fired porcelain. She also tried many different shapes, decorations, and glazes. Her work often featured colorful, shiny, and iridescent glazes.

Her later work showed influences from Art Nouveau and Japonisme styles. This meant she used fancy, flowing designs inspired by plants and animals. Unlike many artists who painted on pottery made by others, Adelaide did everything herself. She shaped the pots, carved designs into them, and then painted them. Some of her detailed work was so tiny that she even used crochet needles and dental tools to get it just right!

Many of Adelaide's famous pieces are containers, like vases. Her most well-known work is the Scarab Vase. It's a tall, carved porcelain vase that took her over 1,000 hours to make! In the year 2000, Art & Antiquities magazine called it the most important piece of American ceramics from the last hundred years.

Adelaide also taught art at Syracuse University from 1920 to 1929. She also taught at the Art Academy of People's University in Missouri.

Before she passed away in 1929, she designed a special urn (a decorative vase). This urn now holds the ashes of both Adelaide and her husband in Syracuse, New York.

Her amazing artwork can be seen in many famous museums. These include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Everson Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Cranbrook Art Museum.

See also

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