Jazz Bowl

Viktor Schreckengost (American, born 1906) Jazz Bowl, 1931 Earthenware Cowan Pottery Museum, Rocky River Public Library, Rocky River, Ohio

Commissioned by Eleanor Roosevelt to celebrate her husbandís re-election as governor of New York, this bowl by Viktor Schreckengost was made at Cowan Pottery in Rocky River, Ohio. Schreckengost, who had supported himself as an art student in the 1920s by playing jazz saxophone and clarinet in Cleveland night clubs, selected an appropriate subject for the occasion. As he recalled: I thought back to a magical night when a friend and I went to see [Cab] Calloway at the Cotton Club. My friend had only just arrived in New York from Vienna and he just flipped; he fell in love with the city, the jazz, the Cotton Clubeverything.... I knew I had to get it all on the bowl. To produce the deep blue reminiscent of the strange light that permeated the night club district, he used an innovative sgraffito technique of scratching through a lustrous black glaze. The gouged-out areas were then glazed with an intense Egyptian blue.