Susan Stuart Frackleton

Susan Stuart Frackelton and George E. Ohr, Health, Wealth and Happiness, 1899

Susan Stuart Goodrich Frackelton (1848–1932) was an American painter, specializing in painting ceramics. She was a leader in the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States and author of Tried by Fire, the "most popular handbook for decorators of chinaware",

She married Richard Frackelton on July 19, 1869. He was born in London, England and immigrated to the United States about 1857. They lived in Milwaukee, where they raised a daughter and three sons. Frackelton sued for divorce from her husband due to his inability to support the family and cruel and inhuman treatment, including engaging in "one series of cursing and swearing at the new woman." By 1899 there were two adult sons, one had died by then, and an eleven-year-old daughter. Richard Frackelton died in 1907. In 1920 Frackelton lived in Chicago, Illinois and went to Haiti for a three-month holiday. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Chicago Woman's Club.

Career Frackelton studied landscape painting in Milwaukee under Henry Vianden. Frackelton designed and patented a home kiln machine.

Frackelton was successful as a 19th-century woman artist, including having been the creator of the Blue and Grey pottery, painter of china and maker of book illuminations: Her innovation in those art forms helped elevate American decorative arts to a standard of excellence and, at the same time, dispelled any myths about women being unable to rise above the rank of an amateur artist. Akin to women of today, she used her talents as an artist and entrepreneur to break through the bonds of traditional gender roles, both in the art world and society... The medals and awards that she won dispelled any notions that a woman could compete on a national and international stage in the ceramic arts.

At the 1893 World's Fair she exhibited her salt-glazed ware

In 1899 she jointly made pottery with ceramic artist George E. Ohr. At the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle she exhibited her delftwares. Her works are among the Wisconsin Historical Society, Milwaukee Public Museum, Milwaukee County Historical Society and Sinsinawa Mound.

In 2005 she posthumously was awarded the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award "due to her ground-breaking work with ceramics, china painting and the art pottery movement of the late 19th century."