David MacDonald (American, b. 1945), Two Ceramic Goblets

Lot Details & Additional Photographs

Near pair of stoneware goblets with brown metallic glaze and incised line pattern, both with artist's stamp to body.
Proceeds to benefit the General Penland Scholarship.

Tallest 9 3/4 in.

Being sold to benefit Penland School of Craft, Penland, North Carolina

Penland’s scholarship program exists to make their workshops accessible to those who are not able to participate without financial assistance and to create educational opportunities for people who have been underrepresented at Penland and in the craft world. Proceeds from this auction will help fund existing scholarships, with some proceeds designated towards specific scholarships as noted in the listings.

Born in Hackensack, New Jersey, David MacDonald (b. 1945) first experimented with ceramics in the late 1960s at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education. As part of the Art Education curriculum, MacDonald was required to take a ceramics course, and he quickly found that working with clay satisfied a desire to create pieces with dimension, form, and functionality, something he could not do when working in other mediums. After graduating from the Hampton Institute, MacDonald attended graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, receiving his Master of Fine Arts in 1971. Later that year, MacDonald was appointed Professor of Art at Syracuse University, where he taught ceramics for thirty-seven years. MacDonald turned to his African heritage for inspiration early in his artistic career, exploring the patterns and decoration found within African textiles, body ornamentation, and architecture. MacDonald uses utilitarian plates, bowls, cups, jars, and other vessels as his point of departure to create aesthetically beautiful works of art with unique, intricate, and highly refined surface decoration. To create his distinctive line work and geometric patterns, MacDonald uses custom-made tools to carefully carve shallow parallel channels into the leather-hard clay one line at a time.

Bio courtesy of the Everson Museum of Art.

Good estate condition; small nick to underside of one goblet.