Gertrud Natzler

Otto Natzler and his late wife, Gertrud, worked as a team to design and produce elegant and sophisticated ceramics for nearly four decades. Austrian emigres, they settled in Los Angeles, where they became pioneers of the post-World War II craft movement in this country. Gertrud had received formal training as a ceramist in Vienna, and it was she who created the clay forms on the potter's wheel. Otto experimented with glaze formulas and firing techniques to produce a wide range of colors and textures, such as the "earth crater" glaze on this vase from the 1950s.

Considering the Natzlers' impact on subsequent generations of studio potters, this recent gift of three pieces represents a major expansion of RISD's 20th-century ceramics collection, which begins with the Arts and Crafts movement in Europe and America and now continues into the 21st century.