Cut-Lid Ceramic Jar by Karen Karnes, c. 1965

5.5" high x 6.5" diameter

Karen Karnes was an American ceramist, best known for her salt glazed, earth-toned stoneware ceramics. She was born in 1925 in New York City, where she attended art schools for children. Karnes applied for and was accepted to the La Guardia High School. At Brooklyn College she majored in design and graduated in 1946. After graduating, she studied abroad in Italy, where she continued to study ceramics. After returning from Italy, Karnes began a graduate program at Alfred University, but left before completing her degree to work at Black Mountain College. Karnes first encountered Black Mountain College in 1947, where she took a summer design class with Josef Albers. In 1952, she and her husband David Weinrib moved down to North Carolina to become potters-in-residence at the Black Mountain College. While at Black Mountain College, Karnes and Weinrib became acquainted with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and later lived with them at the Gate Hill Community. During the Pottery Seminar held at the College in 1952, Karnes met international potters Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, and Marguerite Wildenhain, as well as local potters Malcom Davis and Mark Shapiro. She was involved with the Southern Highland Craft Guild (then known as the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild) during her stay in North Carolina, selling her work in downtown Asheville. Karnes lived at Gate Hill Cooperative in Stony Point, New York, for twenty-five years. She moved to the community in 1954, leaving Black Mountain College before its closing. At Gate Hill, she built her own studio and kilns, and worked with M.C. Richards and a local ceramics engineer to develop and popularize a flameproof clay body. With this clay, Karnes began making oven-top casserole dishes, a design she produced for over fifty years. This is one of her most well-known forms, the cut-lid jar, a form she first made at a workshop with Paulus Berensohn. Karnes continued to experiment with this form from the late 1960s until she stopped throwing.