Transcript
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: A couple of years ago, I was at an antique show in San Francisco, and I stumbled across this booth for a gallery that I had never heard of before.
Speaker: It was a small booth, but it was wildly colorful and eye-catching.
Speaker: And instead of, you know, the dozens or hundreds of pieces you often see at booths at these sorts of fairs, it had a really small focused group of equally colorful and eye-catching ceramic objects.
Speaker: I was really taken by the presentation, especially when I found out that the gallery was brand new and that it was run by a young couple, Bailey Tishner and Michael Assis, who had both studied decorative arts at the Bard Graduate Center here in New York.
Speaker: And it turns out that Bailey and Michael were handling some really interesting material, and they were talking about it in ways that I found incredibly compelling.
Speaker: So the gallery is called Art Historic.
Speaker: That's like art historic, but one word and without the H. And I'm happy to report that they are still going at it and getting their hands on some really great things, including today's Curious Object.
Speaker: So here to tell us all about it is Bailey Titchener.
Speaker: Thanks for joining me.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker: So I want to start with some rapid fire questions.
Speaker: Bailey, zombies are overrunning the earth and you are about to jump onto the escape rocket.
Speaker: What one object are you packing in your suitcase?
Speaker: Is it something I own or something that I would like to own?
Speaker: Anything in the world.
Speaker: This is our last ditch effort to save humanity and you've been chosen.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Honestly, I think I would bring a stuffed animal that I have had since I was a child.
Speaker: I'm not ashamed to say it.
Speaker: What's the stuffed animal?
Speaker: It's like a little lamb.
Speaker: Cute.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, that's a lucky little lamb.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Sorry, Mona Lisa.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: What one book should an amateur read to start to understand historic ceramics?
Speaker: I would say, shameless plug, the Bard Graduate Center has a wonderful history of design textbook.
Speaker: And there's things about ceramics, but just about design in general.
Speaker: And I think it would really, you know, help get a sense of different periods, material culture.
Speaker: It's very encyclopedic.
Speaker: Terrific.
Speaker: Now, what movie has the most interesting depiction of material culture?
Speaker: Well, what's coming to my mind that isn't a movie, but a TV show, um, is the marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which is, um, like fifties and sixties, um, interiors and costumes.
Speaker: Um, just really gorgeous work.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The costumes in particular are really fabulous in that show.
Speaker: What's your favorite museum to visit?
Speaker: I really love the V and A in London, Victoria and Albert museum.
Speaker: Yeah, hard to argue with that.
Speaker: What's one misconception people have about your field that you'd like to fix?
Speaker: Something that I hear a lot is that, oh, my grandma used to have something like this, which maybe is true, but I think it points to a notion that ceramics, you know, China, quote unquote, is, you know,
Speaker: like a granny kind of thing.
Speaker: So I'd really like to, you know, show other sides to the field.
Speaker: Everything like has an interesting story.
Speaker: There's themes that can relate to today, like environmentalism, and female artists kind of like what we'll talk about today a bit.
Speaker: So kind of reconceptualizing notions about ceramics.
Speaker: What is the first object that you remember falling in love with?
Speaker: So when I was probably about 14, I actually used to make jewelry out of antique pieces.
Speaker: And I remember I was at this flea market probably, and there was this little interesting charm
Speaker: pseudo reliquary ask it was Catholic, but I thought it was very cool and decorative.
Speaker: And I'm not Catholic, so I didn't know anything about it.
Speaker: But I just thought it was so cool.
Speaker: And I also remember it was the first piece that I ever, you know, bartered for a dealer.
Speaker: So that really holds a special place in my heart.
Speaker: It wasn't your stuffed lamb, I guess.
Speaker: Well, you know, maybe that too.
Speaker: What was the most recent object or work of art that you saw that gave you shivers?
Speaker: It was more of an assemblage than an individual piece of art.
Speaker: Back in the fall, I went to Staffordshire, England, which is the historical birthplace of English pottery, ceramics.
Speaker: And I went to the major factories, museums there.
Speaker: And to see all of those in one place, the things that I look at every day to learn more about, to maybe acquire, to study, it was just really just amazing to see them all combined together.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just like a really like an homage to English ceramics.
Speaker: Fantastic.
Speaker: Okay, well, we will be back with Bailey Titchener in a moment, but bear with me first, just for a couple of reminders.
Speaker: You've heard me say this week after week, and I know it probably feels repetitive, but it does feel important to me to say thank you for listening.
Speaker: Every week that you tune in, you are helping to make this project worthwhile.
Speaker: Even more so if you've mentioned curious objects to a friend or to your sister or your husband or your weird uncle, and maybe you recommended in an episode that you think they'd enjoy.
Speaker: And even more so if you've left us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or on Spotify.
Speaker: Someone recently posted a review saying, this podcast is a treasure and a delight.
Speaker: Every episode is interesting and thought provoking, which I happened to read on this dismal and rainy day.
Speaker: And honestly, it really turned my whole day around.
Speaker: So thank you very much to the person who wrote that.
Speaker: I really do appreciate those efforts so much.
Speaker: I know you're busy and it's not trivial to take the time and energy to do it, but we absolutely depend on you taking these little actions to help get the word out.
Speaker: So again, thank you so much.
Speaker: And if you'd like to reach out to me directly, I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker: You can reach me on Instagram at Objective Interest or over email at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: You can, of course, see today's Curious Object on Instagram as well or at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast or on Art Historic's Instagram and website.
Speaker: And speaking of today's Curious Object, let's talk about it.
Speaker: And let's start with some context.
Speaker: So, OK, the year is 1909.
Speaker: And a 28-year-old woman named Daisy McCaig Jones has just been hired as an apprentice by a firm in Staffordshire, England.
Speaker: Speaking of Staffordshire, a little firm called Wedgwood.
Speaker: So Bailey, what was the big deal with Wedgwood?
Speaker: Yeah, so Wedgwood is a British ceramics factory, a pottery.
Speaker: It is one of the ceramic giants of England of, you know, ceramics history in general.
Speaker: It was founded in 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood, who was an amazing
Speaker: inventor, entrepreneur, artist, who was really a man of the Enlightenment period, you know, a Renaissance man.
Speaker: And the factory has always been on kind of like the cutting edge of the latest styles and technologies.
Speaker: Ever since then, they continue to produce pieces today that are beautiful.
Speaker: And, you know, you could buy right now if you wanted to.
Speaker: So Daisy McCaig Jones walks in looking for a job.
Speaker: How unusual was it in 1909 for a woman to seek out work in a factory like that at Wedgwood?
Speaker: So it would have been pretty unusual, although at this point in time, we're beginning to see more and more women enter the workforce and wanting to have a profession.
Speaker: And that being said, even in maybe the mid 19th century,
Speaker: female decorators of pottery in these factories was fairly common, called paintresses.
Speaker: So, you know, women did work in the factories, but they were not in any sort of leadership role or
Speaker: um really creating any artwork of their own and of course there are some exceptions but you know the beginning of the 20th century is really when we start to see this uh in daisy's case it is extra you know unusual because at this point she was 28 years old and you know when women would come to be apprentice painters uh they could be you know around 14 years old so all of her peers were much much younger than she was
Speaker: So it would have been probably a challenge for her to fit in there.
Speaker: And I can imagine it would have been a little bit difficult.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, I mean, it must have been a very steep learning curve for her.
Speaker: But she had, do I understand right that she had gotten an introduction from a relative and this is sort of how she managed to get her foot in the door?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So she did go to art school and she knew she wanted to be an artist, which is why she prevailed upon this family friend to introduce her to Cecil Wedgwood, who was obviously the director of Wedgwood at that time.
Speaker: And was she married at that time?
Speaker: She was not married.
Speaker: She never did marry.
Speaker: I don't want to use the phrase married to her work.
Speaker: That's very cliche, but she was, you know, she really, that was her whole life.
Speaker: Cliches are allowed here.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So she got her foot in the door.
Speaker: She got a job working at this great manufacturing.
Speaker: What would an average day at the office look like for Daisy?
Speaker: So I can more speak to that when she became a designer.
Speaker: I'm, you know, if you were just an apprentice, I'm not really sure what the hours were.
Speaker: I'm, you know, it's probably with child labor laws and stuff, things that we would probably not want to know today.
Speaker: 16 hours a day, seven days a week.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: But whenever she became a full designer, which was in 1914, by the way, she had her own studio.
Speaker: And she really, when she got in in the morning, I think she was there basically kind of locked up in there, furiously working on her designs and her drawings.
Speaker: A kind of cute anecdote that I've heard is that she had a miniature kiln in her office.
Speaker: But she used it for making grilled cheese sandwiches instead of, you know, using it to fire ceramics.
Speaker: And she would invite friends over for tea and stuff like that.
Speaker: So she really, like, lived up there, kind of in her own fairyland world, if we can say that.
Speaker: Yeah, well, and listeners will understand shortly why you might want to talk about Fairyland.
Speaker: But now, of course, I want to do a podcast about the history of grilled cheese.
Speaker: So, Wedgewood artisans were not generally allowed to sign their pieces, right?
Speaker: But daisies sometimes did.
Speaker: What was going on with that?
Speaker: Yeah, so only until probably...
Speaker: maybe like the 1930s, did we start to see the designers have their names on Wedgwood pieces?
Speaker: And I'm thinking of specifically Keith Murray was among the first.
Speaker: And
Speaker: This is probably more to do with, I think that Wedgwood wanted to be like a very professional organization.
Speaker: You know, everyone is working together for them.
Speaker: It's not about like the individual artists, right?
Speaker: You are a professional designer, you're designing for Wedgwood and Wedgwood's the mark on the piece.
Speaker: And so it is very rare.
Speaker: Daisy managed to work her signature or her monogram into several pieces.
Speaker: She was very proud of her work and she really recognized it for the work of art that it was.
Speaker: And, you know, she was very tenacious.
Speaker: So sometimes she would just sneak her signature in there, but this is a very rare practice.
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Speaker: We mentioned briefly Christopher Dresser earlier, who did designs for Wedgewood himself.
Speaker: Did his signature ever appear on pieces or do we just attribute those based on the design?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So not not to my knowledge.
Speaker: I think that his like a facsimile of a signature is on.
Speaker: Pottery from a different manufacturing, but at Wedgwood, not to my knowledge, no.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Okay, so back to Daisy, who in 1914, you mentioned this is the year that she becomes a designer, officially takes on that position, that role in the firm.
Speaker: And she debuts this line of ceramics, which is called Ordinary Luster.
Speaker: And there's a lot to talk about here, but let's start with what lusterware is.
Speaker: Sure, so lusterware, actually the beginnings of it even go back to 9th century Iraq and there's different manifestations of it in periods throughout history.
Speaker: But it is a treatment, if you will, of the ceramic where you apply a kind of glaze that has metallic oxides in it.
Speaker: And whenever you fire it in the kiln,
Speaker: the oxides evaporate and you're left with kind of a very iridescent, shimmery surface or a luster.
Speaker: So how does lusterware relate to majolica?
Speaker: So...
Speaker: In the case of Daisy's work, the lusterware in general does not relate to Majolica, but in the case of Daisy's work, she actually combined several different techniques to make her pieces.
Speaker: So they were very new and fresh, different from other periods of lusterwares, right?
Speaker: So she used one of the techniques that Majolica used, Majolica being in the mid to late 19th century,
Speaker: She adapted one of those techniques for her luster wares and then put luster glazing on top of it.
Speaker: Okay, so why, you know, I'm no marketing guy, but if I were coming up with a new product line, my first instinct would not be to call it ordinary.
Speaker: What was this ordinary luster business?
Speaker: Where does that name come from?
Speaker: What does that mean?
Speaker: And what was this?
Speaker: What was so new and interesting about this line that she created?
Speaker: Yeah, it is strange.
Speaker: I think, honestly, that ordinary is maybe a synonym for regular.
Speaker: And then another name that it was called in the factory was China Lusters.
Speaker: But they are called ordinary because they're put in opposition with her later work Fairyland.
Speaker: So when they first came out, they would have been called China lusters because there's nothing to compare them to.
Speaker: But they soon became called ordinary because if you're looking at this ordinary lusterware and then you're comparing it with the fairyland, I mean, it does look different.
Speaker: kind of ordinary compared to that.
Speaker: But it's not really, I don't think it's pejorative.
Speaker: I think it's just meant to like distinguish between the two.
Speaker: Ordinary is just a monochrome glaze, you know, one single color.
Speaker: And then Fairyland is really like a rainbow of colors.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: So let's talk about Fairyland because that's what we're really here to discuss.
Speaker: And Fairyland luster is the product that Daisy is best known for.
Speaker: It's really where her fame originates.
Speaker: And th is is something that she develops and releases with Wedgwood shortly after 1914 when she started with this ordinary, what we now call ordinary luster,
Speaker: So what is this fairyland luster idea?
Speaker: So the fairyland, like I said, they are with multiple colors, but they are covered in these really intricate gilded scenes of fairy tale type scenes, you know, which is where the name came from.
Speaker: The scenes are not princessy fairyland, if I can put it that way.
Speaker: They're a little bit darker.
Speaker: And especially once you get to look at you and you see these kind of grotesque figures, maybe sprites, ghouls, demons possibly.
Speaker: And I kind of would compare it to, you know, it's more Dr. Seuss than Disney.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So tell me about our curious object for today, because you have an example of Fairyland luster in your inventory right now.
Speaker: What does this piece look like?
Speaker: So we have a bowl and it's
Speaker: called a punch bowl.
Speaker: That's the shape and every shape at Wedgwood had a specific name.
Speaker: They're very organized about their production.
Speaker: And it's a very large bowl, 11 inches diameter.
Speaker: It's raised up on a pedestal, so it makes a very monumental statement in the room.
Speaker: Its primary color is black.
Speaker: And on it is a scene, like an outdoor scene with cypress of trees, a bridge, kind of a forest.
Speaker: There's a winding river and a
Speaker: It's just very moody and interesting and just really amazing.
Speaker: And then in the center, it doesn't stop there.
Speaker: I have another very intricate scene.
Speaker: This has a bunch of like elves and there's trees in a forest.
Speaker: um some little like ladybug type figures and then in the very center of it is a really special kind of a medallion type motif showing a mermaid or perhaps like a siren um and she's in like a very like swirling wave sort of environment um
Speaker: And what is very special about this bowl that I kind of have alluded to is that we have her signature or her monogram hidden inside the interior decoration.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So how, I mean, how obvious is that signature?
Speaker: Is it something that a casual observer would pick out or do you have to kind of know what you're looking for?
Speaker: Yeah, it's you definitely have to know what you're looking for.
Speaker: And honestly, when I first acquired it, I did not realize that it had her signature.
Speaker: I only discovered that when I was really deeply cataloging.
Speaker: And of course, it was amazing discovery.
Speaker: But it's hidden in kind of a tree trunk.
Speaker: And on this one, the gilding is a little bit warm, but you can definitely make out it's a M and J sort of overlaid on one another.
Speaker: And I think also the fact that it was hard to find maybe points to that, you know, she maybe shouldn't have put that in there.
Speaker: They wouldn't have liked her to do that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it really might have been completely under the radar that her own employer might not have known that she had done that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just to be crassly commercial for a minute, what kind of effect do you think that signature has on the value of the bull?
Speaker: It definitely makes it a lot more valuable than a standard Fairyland piece, but Fairyland pieces are highly collectible anyway.
Speaker: But to find something that does have a signature is very, very rare once
Speaker: Wedgwood, like, you know, the factory would have found out that there was a signature.
Speaker: They would make her destroy the plates or remove it.
Speaker: So it wouldn't take long for somebody to discover it.
Speaker: So there's very few pieces that could have slipped by.
Speaker: Do you have any psychological sense of why she might have been interested in taking that risk in signing her work?
Speaker: She was very, very independent.
Speaker: From what I've read, it doesn't surprise me at all that she would have done it.
Speaker: It's not that she thought she was above the law, but
Speaker: She had such a meteoric rise in that company.
Speaker: And by this time, when this piece came out specifically, she was a well-known figure.
Speaker: And she also really turned the tides for the company because at this point, when she first came into the pottery in 1911, Wedgwood was kind of struggling a little bit.
Speaker: They didn't have any really innovative pieces.
Speaker: They were doing the same old thing.
Speaker: And her wares were really unlike anything that anyone had ever done before that anyone was doing.
Speaker: And they were very, very popular.
Speaker: I think, you know, there's no way she couldn't have known that.
Speaker: She knew that she had helped them out a lot.
Speaker: So like, of course, she deserved to have her signature on there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, even if company policy and bureaucracy didn't allow it, yeah, she had sort of earned that right.
Speaker: These Fairyland Luster pieces are, you mentioned, highly collectible today, but at the time they were being manufactured, what would that have meant for a buyer?
Speaker: How expensive would a bowl like this one have been when Woodwood was first selling it?
Speaker: Yeah, so...
Speaker: they they would have been very expensive when we're looking at the ordinary lusters versus the fairyland the ordinary actually had more commercial success because they were a little bit more affordable i mean they're still expensive or a luxury item but the fairyland pieces were very very expensive um
Speaker: something like an ordinary punch bowl that would have been nine inches would have been around five pounds four pounds and a similarly sized but fairyland version of that bowl would have been around seven pounds and that's even smaller than this bowl that we have the 11 inch one i see so um
Speaker: They were very expensive.
Speaker: They were expensive to make.
Speaker: For fairyland, you had to fire like five or six times.
Speaker: So all that really went into the cost.
Speaker: And they were definitely a luxury item.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, is there any reasonable way to compare five pounds in 1909 to today's money?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well...
Speaker: Like, for example, if you are a bricklayer, you could be making five pounds a week.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: So that wouldn't even be one week's salary.
Speaker: And then, you know, you look at something like bread was five cents a loaf, beer six cents.
Speaker: A sewing machine would have been five pounds.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So these are truly like something that would be extra, you know, just to decorate your home.
Speaker: Not everyone could have one.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: And do you have a sense for who their primary patrons were?
Speaker: I mean, were these going into sort of aristocratic houses or were they going into industrialists' houses or were they more like, you know, art collector sort of pieces or have any sense of who the market was?
Speaker: It would have been middle to upper middle class households.
Speaker: I don't believe the aristocracy would have had this.
Speaker: It is my personal mission and dream to discover a photograph or some sort of documentation of one of these pieces in a historic interior because they are so unique and I just can't imagine them.
Speaker: in a 1920s interior.
Speaker: And I would love to see how that would have looked, but I have yet to come across that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, listeners, if you have any knowledge about that, you know who to contact.
Speaker: And then how did Daisy's career evolve after the release of this Fairyland line?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: She, like I said, really rose through the ranks and she was a major player in Wedgwood.
Speaker: Um, kind of near the crash of 1929.
Speaker: The whole company obviously faced some hardships and simultaneously the style shifted more towards modernism.
Speaker: And so obviously her pieces really don't fit in with that kind of style.
Speaker: So the style, her pieces sort of ran their course in terms of popularity.
Speaker: You started to see a little bit of a decline there.
Speaker: And she continued to produce these wonderful pieces.
Speaker: This was what she wanted to do.
Speaker: She didn't want to adapt or change into anything else.
Speaker: This was her specialty.
Speaker: And at the same time, she kind of got, people say she was really, she became difficult.
Speaker: She wasn't taking direction very well.
Speaker: I believe that the factory had new ownership.
Speaker: There was a new director that she didn't get along with.
Speaker: And so honestly, she had kind of a hard time near the end of her career there.
Speaker: And they say that she was forced to retire in 1931.
Speaker: I'm not sure the circumstances surrounding that exactly, but it didn't end positively for her there, unfortunately.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yet here we are talking about her now.
Speaker: You've mentioned how collectible her pieces are.
Speaker: She clearly has a lasting legacy.
Speaker: How did that come about?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So I think that
Speaker: Well, her pieces have always been collected by those in the know, either people who are Wedgwood collectors and they know about her involvement there, people specifically collect fairyland wares.
Speaker: And this kind of movement happened in the 70s, 80s, 90s.
Speaker: In 1975, there's a very important publication, and it's really the only publication about her work, by Una de Fontaines, which I highly recommend.
Speaker: if you want to learn more about her.
Speaker: So I think she really brought some light to this artist.
Speaker: But I, like, for example, I had never, ever seen her work, heard of her at all.
Speaker: And I only happened to come across it when I started Art Historic, and I was looking for things to acquire.
Speaker: And it really caught my eye, because I'd never seen it before.
Speaker: So I think that
Speaker: A lot of people probably don't know as much about her or have even heard of her.
Speaker: And I really just, you know, would love to introduce people to her because obviously she has such an interesting story.
Speaker: And I just think it's amazing that, you know, as a woman, she was able to work her way up and have such an impact on the factory there and then create these amazing pieces.
Speaker: Okay, so if I'm wandering around a flea market and looking at punch bowls or other ceramic objects, how can I recognize if I'm looking at a piece of fairyland luster?
Speaker: So first, I would say to anyone who is interested in that scenario, simply just Google Daisy McKay Jones to get a visual of what her pieces look like.
Speaker: And once you see that, you don't even have to click into the images.
Speaker: Once you see that, you will never forget.
Speaker: I have never seen anything like them.
Speaker: I've never really seen...
Speaker: This is not something that there's forgeries of.
Speaker: So you can really spot her style.
Speaker: But if you want to, you know, get into specifics to really make sure you've got something there.
Speaker: Every piece of Wedgwood throughout history, nine times out of 10 is marked.
Speaker: It says Wedgwood.
Speaker: So all of her pieces say Wedgwood on the bottom.
Speaker: There's like, it's called the Portland base.
Speaker: It's like a
Speaker: So that's what the mark looks like.
Speaker: And then if it hasn't rubbed away, if the gilding hasn't rubbed away, there should be a pattern number down there that starts with a Z. Usually there might be, it might start with an X.
Speaker: So, you know, if you have that pattern number, you can look up in the book that I mentioned by Una de Fontaine, you can look up to see what that pattern's called.
Speaker: So, yeah, luckily this is something that is easy to spot if you know what it is.
Speaker: But yeah, you would be very lucky to find something out in the wild.
Speaker: Yeah, well, and so if I do, whether it's out in the wild or whether it's at your shop or somewhere else, what should I be looking for in terms of quality and condition?
Speaker: You will want to make sure that the gilding is in good condition.
Speaker: First of all, that's usually the first thing to go because it's very delicate.
Speaker: And especially when you have...
Speaker: useful wares, bowls that you put stuff in.
Speaker: It can be particularly fragile there.
Speaker: And you want to make sure that there aren't any chips in the piece or hairlines.
Speaker: Usually, since these pieces are so intricate, you can even, even if you're new at this, you could probably tell a restoration because it would just be so hard to conceal because they're so intricate.
Speaker: But one tip, because they're made of bone China, which is a type of porcelain, if you give it like a flick with your fingernail, it should make a really beautiful, nice ring.
Speaker: And then you know that there isn't like a crack somewhere that you can't see or some restoration.
Speaker: Love that tip.
Speaker: Zooming out a little, how does this piece fit into your larger mission or your objectives with Art Historic?
Speaker: So with Art Historic, my goal kind of for founding the gallery is to tell the stories of pieces that maybe...
Speaker: the general population doesn't know about.
Speaker: You know, that if you're not a collector of, for example, Daisy McKay Jones, you wouldn't really know anything about this piece.
Speaker: So I want to be able to tell the history and provide a platform for people to learn about it without even feeling the pressure to acquire it.
Speaker: They can just learn something new and find, you know, oh, maybe I'd like to follow this artist.
Speaker: And then the other thing, which is kind of a new direction for us, actually, I've begun to think about focusing on female makers and designers and telling their stories, because there are, you know, there are those stories there in ceramics history and relatively unknown.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: It's a new direction, actually.
Speaker: Maybe this podcast is my first announcement of this, which is exciting.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, so we're moving in that direction, and her work certainly fits well within that.
Speaker: Well, that's really exciting and a brilliant idea, and I'm excited to see what you turn up in the future.
Speaker: With that, I will say thank you very much, Bailey Titchener, for joining me on Curious Objects.
Speaker: This has been a pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Sarah Bellotta does our social media and web support.
Speaker: Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: And I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: As a raider scavenging a derelict world, you settle into an underground settlement.
Speaker: But now you must return to the surface, where arc machines roam
