Pillin, Polia Surockin
Painter and watercolorist Polia Surockin Pillin (1909 to 1992) turned to ceramics in the early 1940′s when she completed a six-week course in pottery making at Chicago’s famed Hull House. By 1948, she and her devoted husband William had established a pottery studio in their garage in Los Angeles. Her creative work became the couple’s sole source of income. Pillin vases and ceramic tiles are often decorated with colorful, wispy modernist human and animal figures in colored slip under a transparent glaze. Some of her figures derive from the folk and religious iconography she encountered as a young girl in her native Poland. Her work is boldly signed Pillin or W+P Pillin.
A few Pillin pieces are covered in a volcanic glaze. Contemporary potter Paul Katrich said recently that he did not know how to duplicate that pockmarked surface. “It’s a challenge,” said Katrich.
At the 2006 Arts and Crafts Conference, pottery dealer Arnie Small of Barbara Gerr Antiques called Pillin’s work, “the hottest thing on the market.” Prices, he said, had “doubled in the last four years.”
Biographical note by p4A.com Contributing Editor Pete Prunkl.