Subject of history? Anna Wetherill Olmsted and the ceramic national exhibitions in 1930s USA

The article explores the structures, networks and reception of ceramic design in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s focusing in particular on gender. It also develops and enhances Buckley’s work on gender, ceramics and design history begun with PhD research, but developed latterly in relation to the USA with the invitation to contribute to the exhibition and publication in 2000, Women Designers in the USA 1900-2000 Diversity and Difference, ed. Pat Kirkham, USA. This was supported with an AHRC Research Leave Scheme 1999-2000. This output, based on primary research in Syracuse, New York and Washington, develops a strand first identified in the catalogue for the above exhibition (‘Quietly Fine, Quietly Subversive: Women Ceramics Designers in Twentieth-century America’, Yale University Press, 2000). The project is based upon primary research undertaken in the USA that was supported by a British Academy Travel Grant in 2002-3. Buckley has a major research project planned on Ceramics and Gender in the United States during the 20th century of which this is one element. A paper has been commissioned on ‘Ceramic sculpture in the USA in the 1930s’ for a special issue of the Journal of Modern Craft in 2009. The invitation to become Visiting Professor for Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum MA programme is indicative of Buckley’s growing reputation that is reinforced as one of the MA students, Carla Cesare begins a full-time PhD from Sept 2007 at Northumbria University with Buckley on this subject.