Marguerite Wildenhain, "Untitled Tile." Glazed stoneware. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Private Donor.

Marguerite Wildenhain, “Untitled Tile.” Glazed stoneware. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Private Donor.

Marguerite Wildenhain (b. 1896 Lyon, France; d. 1985 Guerneville, CA)

Marguerite Wildenhain was a ceramic artist born in Lyon, France in 1896. After studying at various art schools, Wildenhain enrolled at the Bauhaus, the art and design school founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius. She was the first woman to receive the Master Potter certification in Germany in 1925. Wildenhain and her husband ran a ceramics shop in the Netherlands until the imminent Nazi invasion forced her to immigrate to the United States in 1940. From 1949 to 1952 she taught at Pond Farm Workshops in California alongside her husband and BMC-connected artists Trude Guermonprez and Jean Varda, among others. At Black Mountain College, Wildenhain was the “host potter” at an important pottery seminar in October of 1952. In her later years, Wildenhain taught summer classes in her home and traveled the world.

Explore Marguerite Wildenhain’s works in our Permanent Collection