180: Thor Thoreson on Marguerite Wildenhain’s Pond Farm School

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Thor Thoreson. A student of Marguerite Wildenhain from 1970-73, Thor talks about his time at the Pond Farm School and the influence of Wildenhain’s modernist teachings. He came to Pond Farm at the suggestion of Dean Schwartz, a ceramics teacher at Luther College who sent many students to study with Wildenhain. Schwartz later compiled the comprehensive text on Pond Farm, titled Marguerite Wildenhain and the Bauhaus: An Eyewitness Anthology. In addition to the interview, this episode features an audio tour of the surviving buildings at the Pond Farm School given by Thoreson.

Wildenhain immigrated to the US after studying at Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany. While there she studied with sculptor Gerhard Marcks and potter Max Krehan, later taking this master/student teaching style to Pond Farm. The school was founded in the early 1940’s seventy-five miles north of San Francisco by Gordon and Jane Herr. Pond Farm is now on the national register of historical places and is part of the California State Park system. For more information on visiting Pond Farm please visit the Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods website.

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by AMACO, your one-stop-shop for all your ceramic needs. To find out more visit www.AMACO.com.