Reading Craft: Architectural Pottery

Authors Daniel Chavkin, Jeffrey Head, and Jo Lauria discuss their contributions to their exhibition catalog, Architectural Pottery: Ceramics for a Modern Landscape, the first book to document the history of the groundbreaking company Architectural Pottery, tracing its critical influence on midcentury design and its enduring appeal today.

In 1950, pioneering entrepreneur Rita Lawrence and her husband, Max, founded Architectural Pottery with design partners John Follis and Rex Goode. The cutting-edge ceramic manufacturer received an immediate and enthusiastic reception. Their strikingly minimal ceramics embodied a shift from the ornamental to the essential; the planters became highly coveted in design circles, and appeared in houses by Richard Neutra, John Lautner, and the historic Case Study Houses. Featured in the first of MoMA’s Good Design exhibitions alongside now-iconic designs by Ray and Charles Eames, Alexander Girard, and George Nelson, Architectural Pottery’s refreshingly clean, exceedingly elegant pots and planters were soon ubiquitous in spaces that epitomized modern living.

This talk is presented in conjunction with the American Museum of Ceramic Art exhibition, Architectural Pottery: Ceramics for a Modern Landscape, on view August 17, 2024–March 2, 2025.

Buy the exhibition catalog
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About the Authors

Daniel Chavkin is a photographer, collector, and researcher of all things modernist, and the author of Unseen Midcentury
Desert Modern.

Jeffrey Head is a writer specializing in architecture and design, and is author of several books.

Jo Lauria is a Los Angeles-based curator, writer, and educator, as well as coauthor of Master of the Midcentury: The
Architecture of William F. Cody, also published by Monacelli.

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