This small piece, about 5″ wide by 12″ tall, which is in the collection of a Homestead resident, is very interesting. When I first saw it, I was very puzzled, because the glazed flowers, buds and vase are painted with pink paint. The paint is applied rather crudely and I really didn’t quite know what to make of it. The colors pink and purple were Mary’s favorite colors, so it is possible that she painted it but that seems to be out of character for a ceramic artist. However, Mary could be quite unconventional and it is not out of the realm of possibility that she did it. If so, I’d be most interested to find other pieces that she altered with paint. Later in life, she altered her pieces with paper and ceramic beads and sometimes added wood pieces to them, so painting this piece might be something that she did. In any case, it is a very interesting piece. It is also an early piece, because the glazes are quite muted with minimal boiling and the three leaves at the top of the piece are hand-made – they were not made with a stamp, as her later leaves were. Another indicator of an early date is that it does not have an “mb” button. It may have had a whimsie sticker at one time, but it does not have one now. In addition, it is mounted on a very nice piece of driftwood, which also dates it as an early piece. Later pieces were mounted on less-interesting driftwood, cypress, or were not mounted on wood at all. The large flower pieces that Mary did which were mounted on pecky cypress or multiple boards fastened together are not in the same category as this piece. An example of these pieces is in the Cats, Birds, Suns, Flowers and Other Work gallery. Notice that she used pink glass for the centers of some of the flowers in the piece in the gallery.