Elizabeth Quackenbush Liz Quackenbush marks

About Elizabeth Quackenbush Liz Quackenbush

Liz Quackenbush’s forms are hand built or made using drape or press molds. Each earthenware piece is decorated using a Majolica glaze technique with the addition of gold luster. She is inspired by Persian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and English folk pottery traditions dating between 1200-1700CE. Her surface patterns combine these classic sources with motifs from the natural environment, for instance, reptile skins and frogs.

Quackenbush’s ceramics manage to bridge the gap between elegant china and functional pottery. She leaves the surfaces irregular referencing pottery made for use and that had been used. She then paints elaborate motifs in both underglaze cobalt blue and over glaze enameled decoration finished with gold luster suggestive of fine china.

Her work combines the elaborately structured patterns of Middle Eastern and Asian pottery with the more casual softness of blue and white English china.