Glen Lukens Art Pottery Vase, ca. 1950
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APPRAISER:
So you brought an interesting pot. And I'm going to actually start off by looking at the mark on the bottom. Certainly the name Glen Lukens is a very popular Southern California name. There was some question when you first brought it in whether the signature was right or not, but part of the signature is actually under the glaze, so the signature is right as rain. Tell me where you acquired it from.
GUEST:
This was among my mother's things, and I just remember that it has always been around, but it isn't something that would have been in her taste, and she liked finer things. And so it must have been something somebody gave it to her, and she valued it for some reason, but I don't know what that is. I went online and looked up Glen Lukens and found that he had been an instructor at Fullerton College, which is close to where I live, and then he then moved on to the University of Southern California, and I think spent most of his life there. So that's pretty much what I know.
APPRAISER:
Well, he came to the University of Southern California in 1936. He was probably one of the most influential potters in the American studio pottery movement.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
But he was totally a glaze guy, and he would go out to the desert and find all these alkalines, and do experiments with these alkalines to come up with these interesting glazes. And liked the combination of light and dark, and the combination of almost these fluorescent glazes with these light colors that we find down here. As well as he liked almost inferior glazes. He liked defects. And he created these defects with some of the heavy dripping on the glazes and with all this crackling effect that he did. This was totally him. And it was tremendously, tremendously well respected, not only as a Southern California artist, but throughout the country. I would suspect it's made somewhere around 1950.
GUEST:
Really?
APPRAISER:
It could be made a little bit earlier.
GUEST:
Huh, okay.
APPRAISER:
He's very well respected. You'll find his works in a number of museums. He was prolific, and there's certainly a value to the different styles of works. This drip glaze has a different audience than some of his more matte glazed items. In a well-advertised auction of art pottery, I would suspect it would sell in the $4,000 to $6,000 range.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
If you were insuring it, I would insure it for closer to $7,500.
GUEST:
Wow. Oh, great, well, thank you so much.
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