Vase ca. 1885–89 Chelsea Keramic Art Works Steeped in ceramics from birth, Hugh C. Robertson pursued his craft with fierce devotion and a passion for experimentation. From a family of trained English ceramists, he honed his skills in New Jersey before settling in Massachusetts as one of the founders of Chelsea Keramic Art Works and later, Dedham Pottery. Robertson’s lifelong explorations in glazes, particularly their color and texture, make him one of the key figures of American art pottery at the turn of the twentieth the 1880s Robertson increasingly turned his attention to dev

Vase ca. 1885–89 Chelsea Keramic Art Works Steeped in ceramics from birth, Hugh C. Robertson pursued his craft with fierce devotion and a passion for experimentation. From a family of trained English ceramists, he honed his skills in New Jersey before settling in Massachusetts as one of the founders of Chelsea Keramic Art Works and later, Dedham Pottery. Robertson’s lifelong explorations in glazes, particularly their color and texture, make him one of the key figures of American art pottery at the turn of the twentieth the 1880s Robertson increasingly turned his attention to developing new glaze formulas and clay bodies. In the middle of the decade he became obsessed with the highly coveted yet elusive sang-de-boeuf, or oxblood, glaze, a quest that became the hallmark of his later career. In April 1885 Robertson became the first American to successfully replicate the oxblood glaze, showcasing his new oxblood glazes on the same Chinese-inspired shapes that he used for his monochrome glazes. In 1887 Robertson observed that in his "struggle to master the Blood," he "met a number of variations that are very pleasing in effect and intirely [sic] new as far as I know." The extraordinary holdings of Chelsea sang-de-boeuf vessels in the Ellison Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art include many modulations of color, varying from crimson to fiery orange reds, tones of bright raspberry, and dark, sonorous reds with a purplish preferred some of his copper-red glazes over others. In an 1889 letter to Allan Marquand, a distinguished Princeton professor who had a special interest in ceramics, Robertson singled out his "Orange peel Blood as far superior to the smooth," commenting that it was "not so common" and "gives a richer and more varied effect." The richness that Robertson observed is seen on this vase with a subtly pitted texture that indeed resembles the skin of an orange, a characteristic of some Chinese glazes. This vase is from t

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