Jade Snow Wong in shop window
I first learned about Jade Snow Wong at a talk by James Zemaitis at Manitoga,the Russel Wright Design Center. A first generation Chinese American, Jade Snow Wong was extraordinarily accomplished. She wrote both a best selling autobiography and a followup novel. She became an accomplished artist, raised a family, ran a travel agency and traveled on behalf of the State Department.
Having grown up in San Francisco’s China Town in a traditional Chinese household, her first exposure to American culture didn’t occur until she entered college. Working her way through school, pursuing a degree in sociology she took a class with ceramist Carlton Ball, a well respected west coast teacher and artist. The class was literally her first exposure to the decorative arts. Graduating Mills College, Phi Beta Kappa she then took a job at the local ship yard, but in 1944, when her boss left the naval yard, she rightly perceived the limitations to advancement in the U.S. Military for a chinese american woman.
Following her passion for ceramics she pursued becoming an artist as a career. Limited by finances, she found a shop owner on Grant Avenue who, for a commission on her sales, allowed her to set up a pottery wheel in his front window to throw pots. It was an instant success, bringing her customers and publicity and eventually she was able to procure a space of her own out in which to operate her business. A resounding success, her work was included in gallery and museum shows, including at MOMA, and eventually was given a one woman show at the Chicago Art Institute. But when the boxes of ceramics from that one woman show returned, she allowed them to remain unopened for 50 years.
It wasn’t until 2001 that the vases and bowls packed up so many years before, were unpacked for a retrospective at the Chinese Historical Society of America. Her work is now being re-discovered and collected again. Works by Jade Snow Wong are in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, International Ceramic Museum, Faenza Italy, and Oakland Art Museum.
Currently available at Good Design: a set of four enamel on copper plates from the collection of Carol Potter Peckham, produced for the V.C. Morris Gift Shop, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
