Jazz Bowl

c. 1931

The Jazz Bowl was originally designed for Eleanor Roosevelt in celebration of her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s re-election as governor of New York, and it has since become an icon of the Jazz Age and an the Art Deco period. Cowan Pottery liked the design, which captures the architecture, music, and nightlife of New York City as Viktor Schreckengost knew it, and the company decided to put the bowl into production. Using Schreckengost’s template and the sgraffito technique, workers scratched the design into the engobe, or black glaze. Schreckengost then inspected and signed the bowl. The final Egyptian blue glaze was applied to reflect New York at night.

Status: On View, Gallery 161
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Viktor Schreckengost (Designer)
Title: Jazz Bowl
Place: Rocky River (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: c. 1931
Medium: Earthenware, glaze, and engobe
Inscriptions: Inscribed recto, bottom-middle, in engobe: "JA / ZZ". Signed verso, right-bottom edge, in engobe: "VIKTOR SCHRECKEGOST". Stamped bottom, right-middle, under glaze: "COWAN"; stamped bottom, bottom-right, under glaze: [Cowan mark].
Dimensions: 23.5 × 42.6 × 43.2 cm (9 1/4 × 16 3/4 × 17 in.)
Credit Line: Through prior acquisition of the Antiquarian Society; Thorne Rooms Exhibition Fund; bequest of Elizabeth R. Vaughan; and the Winfield Foundation
Reference Number: 2004.1

Judith A. Barter, et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), 89, cat. 77 (ill.).
Judith Barter et al., Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 2013), 132, 229, cat. 93, fig. 27 (ill.).

Art Institute of Chicago, Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine, Nov. 10, 2013–Jan. 27, 2014, cat. 93; Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Feb. 22–May 18, 2014 (Chicago only).

Sold, Treadway Gallery, Inc., and John Toomey, Oak Park, IL, May 15, 1994, lot 593, to a Midwest collector. Sold, Sotheby’s, New York, Dec. 12, 2003, lot 600, to the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Teacher Manual: American Art

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