The Scarab Vase Turns 100

Her name is not a household word, even among Arts & Crafts collectors, but Adelaid Alsop Robineau was a force to be reckoned with.

Born in 1865, she watched as her father squandered away the family’s finances, vowing never again to rely on anyone but herself. She moved to Syracuse and took up china painting, a popular pastime for many women of leisure and a means of making a living for those less fortunate.

But Adelaid soon grew bored and long for greater challenges – and their inherent rewards. In 1899 she married Samuel Robineau and together they founded Keramic Studio, a journal designed for potters and ceramic artists.

By the time she turned 35, Adelaid Robineau had achieved recognition as a gifted artist, china painter, writer, publisher, editor and university professor – not to mention being a mother of three children.

But it was an article in her own magazine that introduced Adelaid Robineau to the art and craft of porcelain, and motivated her to seek out the man who would become her instructor, Charles Binns.

Producing porcelain is far more difficult and frustrating than producing standard pottery. The potter begins with a careful combination of clays, minerals, glass and ash which is shaped, then bisque-fired to approximately 1000 degrees. The piece is then allowed to cool before being decorated and glazed prior to a second firing as high as 2500 degrees. The mortality rate in the kiln is considered extremely high, as many pieces shatter, crack or explode under the extreme temperatures.

But when it succeeds, the result is a work of art with a translucency that no pottery can equal.

Adelaid Robineau undertook the most challenging of porcelain decorating techniques – that of carving and incising the bisque-hard body with a series of intricate designs. Several hours of work often resulted in just a small pile of clay dust around the base of her porcelain vase.

In 1910 she undertook the creation of a monumental vase in support of a program intended to make “a grand statement in clay.” Although she entitled it “The Apotheosis of the Toiler” in recognition of the Arts & Crafts reform movement, it became known as the Scarab Vase. Robineau’s motif, the scarab beetle, was drawn from the Egyptians, who viewed the scarab beetle as a symbol of the cycle of life.

The vase reportedly required more than 1000 hours of work. When Adelaid removed it from the kiln after its first firing, she was saddened to discover the vase was riddled with cracks. Her instructor pronounced it ruined and suggested that she destroy it.

But Adelaid Robineau could not be so easily discouraged. Using the dust from her carving, she mixed a bisque paste and meticulously filled each crack, completed her incising and glazing, then fired it a second time. Hours later it emerged from the kiln a masterpiece of American ceramics. In 1911 the Scarab Vase took the Grand Prize at the Turin International Exhibition, assuring its place in ceramic history.

That same year the directors of the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse shocked the museum world by declaring that henceforth the museum would only collect American-made art and ceramics. In 1916 Adelaid Robineau approached the directors and convinced them that the museum should purchase from her 32 examples of her porcelain.

But not the Scarab Vase.

Adelaid and her husband kept the cherished Scarab Vase in their home until her death in 1929. Soon after, her husband released it and 47 other examples to the Everson’s permanent collection. Today the Everson Museum is home to the largest collection of Adelaid Robineau’s work.

The museum, in conjunction with the Arts & Crafts Society of Central New York, the Syracuse Ceramic Guild and Strathmore By the Park Home Tours, is hosting a special exhibition built around the Scarab Vase entitled “The Scarab Vase – Celebrating 100 Years.”

The exhibit will remain open until August 29 and offers visitors the opportunity to view and study one of the greatest collections in American ceramics.

For more information, please go to www.everson.org.

- Bruce Johnson