Karen Karnes (1925-2016) American, Excellent Art Pottery Cut-Lid Jar. The lid is intact and covers a perfect example of her classic design aesthetic. Felt strips attached to bottom to keep the jar from breaking. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Size: 11 1/2 x 11 1/2 x 15 in. 

Karen Karnes was born on November 17th, 1925 in New York City, where she attended art schools for children. Her garment worker parents were Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants, and the family lived in the Bronx Coops. Karnes applied for and was accepted to the High School of Music & Art. As a child she was surrounded by urban realities and visual influences, but she claims that her parents’ old-world ideals kept her grounded. At Brooklyn College she majored in design and graduated in 1946. After graduating, she studied abroad in Italy, where she continued to explore ceramics. When she returned from Italy she began a graduate program at Alfred University, but left before completing her degree to work at Black Mountain College, where she had taken a summer class in 1947 with Josef Albers. Albers, along with many other Bauhaus artists from Germany who were forced to flee their homes by Hitler and the Nazis, imparted in her a strong appreciation for folk art and crafts, as well as a fervent interest in anti-fascism. Karnes and her husband David Weinrib moved to North Carolina to become potters-in-residence at Black Mountain College in 1952, where they became acquainted with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, later living with them at the Gate Hill Community in Stony Brook. She became heavily involved with the Southern Highland Craft Guild and worked alongside potters from around the world, including Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, Marguerite Wildenhain, Malcolm Davis, and Mark Shapiro. After moving to Gate Hill in 1954 she built her own studio and kilns and worked alongside M.C. Richards and a local ceramics engineer to develop a flameproof clay body. She and her husband began to disagree as she sought romantic freedom and took a more and more favorable view of Socialism, and in 1959, two years after the birth of their son, they divorced. She began making oven-top casserole dishes and cut-lid jars, designs which became her signature work that she produced for over fifty years. In 1967 Karnes first experimented with salt-firing at a workshop at the Penland School of Crafts. She made many traditionally functional forms with unique contemporary shapes, but she also continued to produce regular casseroles, teapots, cups, and bowls. In the late 1970s Karnes moved to Vermont with her partner Ann Stannard and lived the rest of her life on a farm, working with clay and using old firing practices such as wood and salt firing. She won a gold medal for consummate craftsmanship from The American Craft Council, and in 1976 she was named a Fellow with them as well. In 1998 her house and studio burned to the ground because of a kiln fire, but with the help of donations and a large pottery sale Karnes rebuilt them both. She went on to receive a graduate fellowship from Alfred University but began having difficulty working with her hands in the early 2000s. Karnes died on July 12th, 2016, in Morgan, Vermont, and today her work can be seen in permanent displays at the Asheville Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Commensurate with age.