POLIA PILLIN BALL VASE

A beautiful hand-painted ball vase featuring a typical motif of animals and a woman on a blue ground by renowned Polish-American ceramicist Polia Pillin. POLIA PILLIN (1909–1992) was a Polish-American painter and potter during the previous century, best known for distinctive, highly crazed, hand-painted ceramics, often produced in collaboration with her husband Bill. She was born Polia Sukonic in Częstochowa, Poland, to a talented family of weavers, potters, and coppersmiths. Sent to live in Chicago at fifteen in 1924—near the tail-end of the mass migration of Eastern European Jews to the US—she worked long hours in the garment industry during the day and took night classes in painting and sculpture at the local Jewish People’s Institute. In 1927 a cousin introduced her to William “Bill” Pillin (1910–1985), a fellow émigré whose family had settled in Chicago after fleeing pogroms in the Ukraine. They were married that year. Bill aspired to become a published poet, and an opportunity ar