LOT ESSAY:

When I think about Rudolf Staffel, the words of poet Stephen Berg come to mind. "Rudi's pots move from a calm fluid area to a stream of porcelain ... knotted, patched, scored ... from a quick stark delicacy to brutally raw...."

Staffel was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1911 of German descent. Though he studied painting, he was drawn to glass and clay early in his artistic education. He traveled from Texas to Chicago to Mexico, where the romance of clay changed his course, and finally to New Orleans. There he taught pottery at the Arts and Crafts Club from 1936 to 1939. I am certain that he was exposed to the work of George Ohr, who had a position as an apprentice potter in New Orleans when he was twenty-two and whose idiosyncratic command of clay must have had a subliminal influence on Staffel.

A major turning point was his invitation to teach at the Tyler School of Art at Elkins Park (suburban Philadelphia) in 1940. During that period he studied with Hans Hofmann in New York, and his interest in abstraction is evidenced in the "push and pull" manipulation of the clay. In 1959 he was commissioned by Mel Richman, a fervent collector of ceramics, to create a dinner set which was never realized, but it led Rudi to discover the full potential of porcelain and its light-gathering qualities. Rudi's interest in the translucency of porcelain and its ability to transmit light was central to his work for forty years until his death in 2002.

Staffel's works are in major private and public collections throughout the world, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Los Angeles Museum of Art; Designmuseo, Helsinki; Stedlijk Museum, 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands; Tokyo Museum of Art; Museum of Art and Design, New York; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. During the 1990s it was unusual for a living American ceramic artist to have two European retrospectives: one at Museum voor Het Kruithuis, 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands (1990), held simultaneously with a George Ohr exhibition; and another, "Searching for Light," which was held first at the Philadelphia Museum of Art before traveling to the Museum of Applied Arts, Helsinki (1996-97).

June and Perry Ottenberg's passionate support of Rudolf Staffel continued for almost four decades. Their collection of Staffel's works consists of major examples of his pots, including classical forms as well as miniatures and major vessels whose idiosyncratic gestures created a unique body of his work.

Helen W. Drutt English
April 17, 2018

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Lot 26

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