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The Princeton University Art Museum has joined American museums across the country in honoring the potter and industrial designer Viktor Schreckengost on his one-hundredth birthday (June 26, 2006) by putting on view one of his "Jazz Bowls." In 1930, Schreckengost designed approximately fifty parabolic-shaped punch bowls on commission from a New York gallery which requested "a New York theme."

The handmade "Jazz Bowls" vary in their details. Schreckengost has said, "I thought back to a magical night when a friend and I went to see [Cab] Calloway [1907–1994] at the Cotton Club [in Harlem] . . . the city, the jazz, the Cotton Club, everything... I knew I had to get it all on the bowl."

In a later interview, Schreckengost remembered, "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 tinted 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 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 [sic] to the White House in Washington. The lady was, of course, Eleanor Roosevelt. So I knew, too, that FDR was running seriously for president. . . ."

The Princeton University Art Museum, founded in 1882, is one of the finest art museums in America. Its collection features more than 60,000 objects ranging from ancient to contemporary art, and encompassing geographically the Mediterranean regions, Western Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

As a public institution, the museum is committed to presenting innovative and dynamic programming, conducting original research and new scholarship, and maintaining an active loan and exhibition program. By collaborating with faculty, students, and staff, and through direct and sustained access to original works of art, the museum contributes to the development of critical thinking and visual literacy at Princeton University.

The museum is open to the public without charge Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and on Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Highlights tours of the collection are given every Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. The museum is located in the center of the Princeton University campus, next to Prospect House and Gardens. For further information, please call (609) 258-3788, or visit the museum's web site at www.princetonartmuseum.org.