Harrison McIntosh

Harrison Edward McIntosh (11 September 1914 – 21 January 2016) was an American ceramic artist. He was an exponent of the Mid-century Modern style of ceramics, featuring simple symmetrical forms. His work has been exhibited in venues in the United States including the Smithsonian and internationally including at the Louvre in France.

Biography Early years Harrison Edward McIntosh was born in Vallejo, California to Harrison McIntosh, a ragtime piano player, and Jesusita (née Coronado) McIntosh.

McIntosh grew up in Stockton, California, where his father worked for Sperry Flour Company. At the time, the city of Stockton was building the Haggin Museum, which first inspired McIntosh's interest in the arts and architecture.

In high school, McIntosh and his younger brother, Robert, took informal painting lessons with Arthur Haddock. Both McIntosh brothers continued to pursue art after high school; Robert as a painter and Harrison as sculptor.

Two years after McIntosh graduated in 1933, he became a camp artist at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Yosemite, while his brother Robert received a scholarship to attend Art Center School, now Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. In 1937, after almost two years as a camp artist with the CCC, McIntosh moved down to Los Angeles and took classes at Art Center for six months.

Education McIntosh attended the 1939 World's Fair in San Francisco where he first saw hand-thrown pottery demonstrations in the Japanese Pavilion. This experience inspired him to take classes in the medium with Glen Lukens at the University of Southern California.

After a few classes, McIntosh began to work on a turning wheel meant for carving cast works in his studio, where he would often experiment with layered glazes. These early experimental pieces typically were sold for a few dollars. In 1942, McIntosh married fellow artist Mary Stanfield. The next year, he, his brother, and ceramicist Albert Henry King put together a small gallery space on Sunset Strip called The Californians. With the United States' involvement in World War II, however, these plans came to a halt as he was drafted into the army as a medic in Northern California. During this time, McIntosh's wife became critically ill, and he was discharged to care for her. After six years of marriage, Stanfield died. There, he studied ceramics under Richard Petterson at Scripps College, in addition to attending workshops with Bernard Leach at Mills College, with Shōji Hamada the Japanese ceramicist during his US tour, and with Marguerite Wildenhain at Pond Farm during the summer of 1953. From 1970 to 1980, McIntosh and his wife travelled to Japan during the summers to jointly design dinnerware and glassware collections for Mikasa. On January 21, 2016, at the age of 101, McIntosh died.

Over his more than 60-year career, McIntosh had 43 solo exhibitions. He is represented in over 40 art collections globally.

Style and technique alt=Three hand-thrown ceramic vases with sgraffito designs, made by McIntosh in 1962. McIntosh style remained consistent throughout his career, inspired by Japanese pottery and aesthetics, as well as European modern design. Although many of his contemporaries were known for creating the large emotional works associated with Abstract Expressionism, McIntosh focused on subtlety and deliberation through the modern, functional forms of vessels.

Collections Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Museum, Washington, D.C. Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France The National Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts Mingei International Museum, San Diego, California Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California The Huntington Library, San Marino, California American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, California Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation, Alta Loma, California

Notable exhibitions 1950–1968 Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY Ceramic National Exhibition 1953–1971 Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA California Design 1953–1971 University of Illinois, Urbana, IL American Craftsman 1955 Cannes, France First International Ceramic Festival 1955–1969 Scripps College, Claremont, CA Ceramic Annual 1956 Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, NY Craftsmanship in a Changing World 1958 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Craftsmanship 1959 Ostend, Belgium Second International Ceramic Festival 1964–1965 Philadelphia Museum College of Art, Philadelphia, PA Craftsmanship Defined, 12 American Craftsmen 1969 The Johnson Collection of Contemporary Crafts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC Objects:USA 1969 Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA The Egg and the Eye 1975 Everson Museum and Alfred University, Syracuse and Alfred, NY Masters in Ceramic Art 1979 Tokyo, Kyushu and Nagoya, Japan Ikenobo Exhibition of World Ceramic Art 1979–1987 Louis Newman Galleries, Beverly Hills, CA 1980 Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, Washington DC A Century of Ceramics in The United States, 1878-1978 1980 Nagoya, Tokyo, and Kanazawa, Japan 8th Chunichi International Exhibition of Ceramic Arts 1980 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA Southern California Ceramics: The Post-World War II Renaissance 1940-1960 1986 Mingei International Museum, La Jolla, CA Two Hundred and Ten Years without End, Early American and Contemporary Arts of the People 1990 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Collecting American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, 1971-1991 1992–1993 Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, Washington DC American Crafts: The Nation's Collection 1993 Mingei International Museum, San Diego, CA Heirlooms of the Future, Master Works of the West Coast American Designer/Craftsmen 1993 Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo, Japan 33rd Japan Contemporary Arts and Crafts Exhibition 1996 Tobey Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Four Friends: Rupert Deese, James Hueter, Sam Maloof, & Harrison McIntosh 1996 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Los Angeles, CA California History I: Laura Andreson, Glen Luckens, Harrison McIntosh, Gertrude & Otto Natzler 1997 Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA Function and Narrative: Fifty Years of Southern California Ceramics 2000 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Color and Fire, Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics 1950-2000 2000 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Made in California: Image, and Identity, 1900-2000 2001 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA California Pottery, From Mission to Modernism 2005 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Group Show: Tony Marsh, Karen Thuesen Masaro, Harrison McIntosh 2014 American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, CA HM100

Video and film The Ceramic Art of Harrison McIntosh: A Personal View of the Artist. McIntosh Productions, 1994. Video Interview of Harrison McIntosh. Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012. Harrison McIntosh Exhibit at AMOCA. KCET SoCal Connected, 2014.