Footed Dish, 1932
Henry Varnum Poor
American, 1888-1970
Earthenware with glaze

Henry Varnum Poor began his artistic career with painting and drawing, but then turned to ceramics for his livelihood. He became one of America's leading ceramicists of the 1920s. Poor, a self-taught potter, thought of ceramics as canvases for his compositions, thus aligning his work more with contemporary paintings than ceramics. The abstract sgraffito decoration, a technique by which slip or glaze is incised to reveal the clay body, and the limited color range are characteristic of Poor's ceramics. The artist made the dish in honor of his parents, Alfred J. Poor and Josephine Graham Poor, whose names encircle the outer rim of the dish. The top of the rim reads: "Love and faith and sometimes even clay can be as golden as the purest gold."

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