Bottle

Fleeing their native Vienna as the Nazi forces advanced toward Austria in 1938, the husband and wife ceramicist team of Otto and Gertrud Natzler arrived in America with their potter's wheel, their kiln and little else.  The Natzlers' ability to persevere and succeed with little training and few assets fueled what would become a nearly 40-year collaboration that combined Gertrud's elegant and classically formed ceramic vessels with Otto's multifaceted glaze formulations and firing techniques.  With less than a year of training, Otto describes the couple's beginning years in their Vienna studio: "Our lack of knowledge went hand in hand with a lack of inhibitions."  Their continual experimentation with materials and methods led to these wafer-thin vessels that glow from vibrantly hued glazes with both the smoothness of glass and the roughness of volcanic lava.