Viktor Schreckengost, on the Jazz Bowl

Note: The Jazz Bowl was the object of the month for October 2005 at the Cooper-Hewitt. Click here to read more.

It was the bottom of the Depression and the Cowan Pottery Studio where I worked part time for Guy Cowan, my former teacher, received a number of letters requesting specific types of products from various galleries. I remember picking up one request from a gallery in New York City asking a large punch bowl with a New York theme. I thought about it awhile and felt that the City of New York reflected the excitement and energy of jazz music. I listened to a lot of it when I had visited the city. I also felt that the bowl should be blue to mirror the strange blue tinged light that rose over the city at night. I started with plaster, creating a bowl and then went to white porcelain and started to use a rather primitive method of scratching (etching) an image on the surface of the bowl. This was a black and white technique. I then put on the bowl translucent copper and cobalt blue glazes that were then baked on. A week after the bowl was shipped, the gallery called to say that the lady who ordered it was so pleased that she wanted to order two more. She said that her husband Franklin loved it, too. One was to be sent to her house in Hyde Park, New York, and the other was to the White House in Washington. The lady was, of course, Eleanor Roosevelt. So I knew, too, that FDR was running seriously for president....

We did two versions of the bowl. One was the famous bowl. It was expensive--$50, a high price then. The other, we referred to as the 'Poor man’s bowl' and was not etched, but just painted. I’m told that today one of the ‘Poor Man’ versions was recently sold for $60,000, and the more expensive version has sold for $120,000 (now $254,000, Sotheby's, December 2004). And no, I don’t have one. Guy Cowan produced about 50 more after Eleanor Roosevelt’s order.

--Quoted in "Viktor Schreckengost: An American Design Giant," The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles (January 2001), pp 27-29 by Mark Favermann

The New York Times on the Jazz Bowl

(There is nothing) stuffy about the glazed porcelain punch bowl called Jazz….If ever there was a period piece with a period name on it, this is it....This (bowl) does a great job of pretending that there was no such thing as the Depression. Generous enough to call for a big ladle, it features on its side an ocean liner, a starry night filled with the sound of jazz and the words Dance and Follies in huge letters. On shore, New York is shown in terms of unrestricted upward energy, and we cannot believe that on that liner the life jackets will ever be needed. Sophistication could not be more wistfully portrayed.

--From "Cooper-Hewitt Displays More of Its Design Trove," The New York Times. September 6, 1991, page C5 by John Russell

The Harvard Art Museum on the Jazz Bowl

The theme of Viktor Schreckengost’s "Jazz" Punch Bowl is both a paradigm and a paradox. This icon of Jazz Age modernism synthesizes the visual vocabulary of cubism, Futurism, and art deco to capture the excitement of New Year’s Eve in New York City. The syncopated rhythms of jazz are echoed in the dynamic and overlapping images of urban life, while the "Egyptian Blue" glaze evokes the blues as a jazz form and recalls George Gershwin’s most famous composition, Rhapsody in Blue (1924).

Viktor's most famous works have become icons of the Art Deco era. He created the first Jazz Bowl around 1930 as a commissioned piece for a client who wanted something "New York-ish." The client turned out to be Eleanor Roosevelt, and she was so pleased with the result that she ordered two more bowls. These bowls have become highly prized by collectors, and regularly bring six figures at auction. [As of April 2005, the most recent public sale of a Jazz Bowl brought in $254,400 (Sotheby's, December 2004).]

--American Art at Harvard: Cultures and Contexts. Harvard Art Museums Gallery Series, No. 9. Exhibition Catalogue, October 1-December 30, 1994.

The Boston Globe on ancient Egypt and the Jazz Bowl

Viktor Schreckengost's 1931 glazed porcelain punch bowl is an icon of the Jazz Age, automatically identified with the snazziness of Art Deco. But to Harvard curator Timothy Anglin Burgard, the so-called "Jazz Punch Bowl" also looked like Egyptian Revival.

To demonstrate the point, in his reinstallation of the American galleries in the Fogg Art Museum, Burgard has paired the Jazz Bowl with a 3rd-century BC Egyptian faience winged scarab, and gosh darn if the colors and shapes of both scarab and bowl aren't pretty much the same. The blue of the bowl is the rich shade that is a virtual signature of Egyptian art. The jagged, repeating forms of the wings in the Egyptian piece are very like the jagged, repeating forms of Schreckengost's cityscape. The lotus blossom shape of the bowl resembles the capitals of columns in Egyptian temples. And, what do you know, the bowl dates from an era when interest in Egypt was particularly high because of the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb.

--From "Fogg's Matchmaking Recasts Art History," by Christine Temin, The Boston Globe, September 1, 1995, p.101. Reviews exhibition The Persistence of Memory: Change and Continuity in America's Cultures at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jazz Bowl Variations

There are three different styles of Jazz Bowls. The parabolic bowls follow the original design created for Eleanor Roosevelt, although the decoration on each has some variation. The flared bowls were slightly smaller than the parabolic bowls, a second production line that fit better in the kiln and were therefore more easily reproduced. The decorations for both the parabolic and flared bowls were created by sgraffito, or hand-scratching the design through black engobe. It took about a day to scratch the design on each of these bowls. The third style, called the poor-man's bowl, was significantly cheaper to produce because the designs were produced on a mold, in relief form, with the colors applied later.

"No one knows exactly how many Jazz Bowls were made. Viktor estimates that about 50 examples of the first version were produced. This recollection matches early articles on thei piece, which mention that the Brownell-Lambertson Gallery was so pleased with the first specimen that they ordered 50 more. The second version, with the flared rim, seems to be more rare. Viktor estimates that only two or three examples were made. According to Viktor, the final version was made in an edition of at least 20." (From Viktor Schreckengost and 20th-Century Design by Henry Adams. Third printing now available for purchase. )

Recent Sales History (In reverse chronological order):

$192,000, Flared bowl. June 8, 2005, Sotheby’s. Details

$254,400, Parabolic bowl. December 18, 2004, Sotheby's. Details

$153,600, Flared bowl. December 12, 2003, Sotheby's. Details.

$ 47,800, Flared bowl. December 9, 2003. Christie's. Details.

$ 68,000. Flared bowl. December 7, 2001. Christie's.

$ 53,000, Poor-man's bowl. October 22, 2000. Rago.

$121,000, Parabolic bowl. June 3, 2000. Cincinnati Art Galleries ceramics auction. Purchased by the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Click here to read about Viktor's recent re-issue of the Jazz Bowls and Jazz Plates Details.