Laura Andreson

American, 1902–1999

Laura Andreson was a ceramic artist and educator in California whose works are sophisticated, subtle and serene. She started the ceramics program at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) where she taught for thirty-six years. She earned her B.A. degree from that university and an M.A. degree in painting from Columbia University, New York. She began teaching ceramics at UCLA in 1930 and continued to 1970 though even after retirement continued to work at the school and did pioneering research with glazes as applied to her own ceramic art full time.

Until 1957 Andreson worked with earthenware and stoneware. Subsequently she innovated unusual glazes in crystalline and luster surfaces on porcelain. Her vessels reflect influences from Scandinavian pottery. Her works are owned by most major museums with ceramic arts in the U.S. and abroad. As an educator, she had a profound influence on more than 5000 students. In 1982, the Mingei International Museum in San Diego held an exhibition of over 400 of her pots, representing a fifty year span of work with a documentary publication, Laura Andreson: A Retrospective in Clay. Beyond being an internationally recognized potter and educator, Andreson was also a collector and connoisseur of art and ceramics that she obtained from cultures worldwide.

Selected solo and group exhibitions in which her works were displayed are listed in a catalogue: Directions in Contemporary American Ceramics, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1984. A significant collection of her work is in the permanent collections of the Utah State University Museum, Logan, Utah.

Courtesy Invaluable

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