Mary Chase Stratton

American, 1867 - 1961

BiographyMary Chase Perry Stratton (March 15, 1867 – April 15, 1961) was an American ceramic artist. She was a co-founder, along with Horace James Caulkins, of Pewabic Pottery, a form of ceramic art used to make architectural tiles.

Stratton was born in Hancock, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula, and later moved with her family to Ann Arbor following the death of her father, and from there to the Detroit area when she was in her early teens. There she attended her first art classes at the Art School of the Detroit Museum of Art. She followed that up with two years of studies at the Art Academy of Cincinnati from 1887 to 1889 where she studied with the regionally important sculptor and educator Louis Rebisso.[1]

Returning to Detroit she founded the Pewabic Pottery, named after an old copper mine (or sometimes, the Indian name of a nearby river) in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, with Caulkins in 1903. In 1907 the enterprise flourished and moved from the Carriage House behind the Ransom Gillis House on John R Street to a new building designed by Detroit architect William Stratton located on Jefferson Avenue, where the business still thrives. In 1918 she married William Stratton.[1]

She died on April 15, 1961

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Chase_Perry_Stratton

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