Historical Foundations: The Indiana Ceramics Story

The Haan collection is organized around the progression of ceramics in Indiana — a story that begins not in a university studio but in one of America’s most celebrated commercial potteries, and unfolds across generations of artists who built on each other’s innovations.

Laura Fry and the Rookwood Pottery Connection (1880s)

The collection begins with Laura Fry, an Indiana-born artist who became a decorator at Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati in the 1880s. Rookwood was the most prestigious art pottery operation in America during this period, and Fry’s work there — including her development of the atomizer technique for applying slip to greenware — placed her at the center of the American art pottery movement. Her presence in the Haan collection connects Indiana to one of the defining chapters in American decorative arts.

The Overbeck Sisters, Cambridge City (c. 1911–1955)

Among the most significant ceramic artists in the collection are the Overbeck Sisters of Cambridge City, Indiana, who established their pottery around 1911. Elizabeth, Hannah, Mary Frances, and Harriet Overbeck worked collaboratively for decades, producing hand-built and wheel-thrown vessels, figurines, and tiles in a distinctive Arts and Crafts-influenced style. Their work is characterized by mat glazes, naturalistic surface decoration, and an aesthetic sensibility that was simultaneously local and nationally recognized. Pieces by the Overbeck Sisters are among the most sought-after in American studio ceramics — and the Haan holds important examples.

Brown County Pottery (1932) and Karl Martz

In 1932, the Brown County Pottery was established in Nashville, Indiana — part of the same creative ferment that had drawn painters to the area for decades. Karl Martz came to work there for two years before establishing the Karl Martz Pottery in Nashville in 1935 alongside his wife, Becky Brown.

Martz then went on to found the ceramics program at Indiana University, and his influence on Indiana ceramic art cannot be overstated. His students, and their students, form a living lineage that continues to shape studio ceramics across Indiana and the country. The Haan collection includes works that trace this lineage directly — from Martz’s own vessels to those of artists shaped by the program he built.

A Wide Range of Firing and Glazing Methods

One of the most distinctive qualities of the Haan ceramics collection is its breadth of technique. Visitors with any interest in the craft of ceramics will find works that illustrate the full spectrum of methods used by Indiana artists — and the dramatically different results each produces.

Wood Firing

Wood-fired ceramics are fired in anagama or other wood-burning kilns over extended periods — sometimes days at a time. Ash from the fire lands on the surface of the work and melts into natural glazes of unpredictable beauty: flashes of amber, iron-red, and celadon appear where no glaze was applied. The results are never identical, and every wood-fired piece in the collection carries the mark of its unique firing.

Raku

Raku firing — borrowed from a Japanese tradition and reinvented by American studio potters in the 1960s — involves removing pieces from the kiln while still glowing hot and placing them in containers with combustible materials. The resulting reduction atmosphere produces dramatic metallic sheens, crackled surfaces, and carbon-blackened clay. George Debikey’s Raku jeweled engobe jar in the collection is a vivid example: a warm golden-brown vessel studded with jewel-like dots of colored engobe in red, blue, and purple — tactile and luminous at once.

Salt Glazing

Salt-glazed work is fired at high temperatures with rock salt thrown into the kiln, where it vaporizes and bonds to the clay surface, creating a distinctive orange-peel texture and a glassy, reactive surface that interacts differently with every shape and clay body it touches.

Gas Reduction, Electric Kiln, Pit Firing, and Saggar Firing

The collection also includes works fired in gas kilns under reduction atmospheres — which starve the fire of oxygen and create rich, varied surfaces — as well as pit-fired ceramics with soft smoke-clouded surfaces, saggar-fired pieces protected from direct flame, and works from the electric kiln, which produces the most controlled and predictable results and allows for precise glaze chemistry.

From Functional to Sculptural: The Range of Forms

The Haan ceramics collection spans the full range of what clay can become — from vessels made to be used, to objects whose forms have left function entirely behind.

The Butler’s Pantry Teapot Collection

One of the most beloved installations in the entire museum is the Butler’s Pantry, where a curated selection from the more than 80 teapots by Indiana ceramic artists in the collection, are displayed together in a setting that is itself a piece of American domestic history. The teapots range from the quietly functional — dark glazed stoneware forms with bamboo handles, like Ginny Marsh’s temmoku-glazed teapot and four cups set — to the playfully inventive and the architecturally strange. As a group, they offer an informal survey of Indiana’s ceramic community over the past half-century, united by a shared form and separated by every conceivable difference in material, method, and intention.

Vessels: Jars, Vases, and Covered Forms

Traditional vessel forms are represented across every era of the collection. Les Miley’s Kriti XXI — a large salt-fired stoneware lidded jar in swirling bluish-green — demonstrates the extraordinary surface richness that high-fire salt glazing can produce. At 15 inches tall and 12 inches wide, it commands presence in any room.

Figurative and Face Vessels

The collection includes a number of face vessels and anthropomorphic forms that connect Indiana studio ceramics to a deep tradition in American folk and art pottery. The Lovett Moon Art Pottery face vessel — a small, rough-surfaced vessel with modeled eyes, nose, and mouth — carries a primal, totemic quality despite its modest scale (5 inches). Works like this demonstrate the range of the collection from the monumental to the intimate.

Reliquaries and Architectural Forms

Among the more conceptually ambitious works in the collection are ceramic reliquaries — lidded boxes designed to hold precious or symbolic objects, their forms referencing altars, temples, and sacred architecture. Richard Tuck’s Horizontal Reliquary #2 is a striking example: a low rectangular form suggesting a miniature basilica, its brick-patterned exterior enclosing a painted panel depicting a Mediterranean building facade in warm ochre, white, and blue under an open sky. It is simultaneously a ceramic object, an architectural model, and a meditation on memory and place.

Abstract and Non-Traditional Forms

Contemporary Indiana ceramic artists in the collection include those who have moved well beyond traditional vessel forms into territory that challenges the boundary between ceramics and sculpture. Non-traditional forms — coiled, slab-built, press-molded — with surfaces that explore texture, pattern, and conceptual content sit alongside historic pieces in the galleries, demonstrating the vitality of the medium today.