A visitor to the blog contacted me this afternoon and sent me this photograph of a very early piece by Mary, which I thought others might enjoy viewing,

This piece is mounted on a 16″ x 32″ piece of 3/4″ walnut-veneer plywood. It dates from 1962 and was purchased from Jordan Marsh, which at the time was located on N.E. 15th St. and Biscayne Boulevard in Miami. I was quite young at the time, so I don’t recall how Mary came to sell her work through Jordan Marsh, but I do remember going to the store with my parents to make deliveries.

What is interesting about this piece is that it shows Mary’s early interest in color. As I wrote in an earlier post, Mary worked with Marianna von Allesch on Miami Beach shortly after moving down here from Fort Wayne in early 1941. Mary made glass Christmas ornaments for Marianna and doubtlessly learned something about ceramics from her, too, but it wasn’t until about 1956 that Mary took a class in ceramics at Redland Fruit and Spice Park and got hooked on the medium as a way to express her artistic talents. This piece, an arrangement of bottles, was an obvious choice for Mary, because bottles come in all kinds of colors and shapes. I can recall other bottle pieces that she did – this is not a unique piece – but this is the only one, so far, that I have a record of.

Mary’s use of color in this piece is rather different from her later pieces. The glazes she used on this piece were not translucent and did not boil to create patterns as did the glazes that she used in later years. Those later glazes were developed by her husband, Tom. At the time this piece was made, Tom was still doing cartoons and Mary Blakley Ceramics had not yet been born. These glazes likely came from recipes published in Ceramics Monthly. Still, Mary’s interest in color and pattern is obvious and this piece is a wonderful example of her early work. My thanks to the photographer and the owner for sharing this piece with the world.