CERAMICS BY NORMAN ARSENAULT
1900-1984

Little has been written about where and how Norman Arsenault learned his craft, but by 1939 he had established the ceramics division of the Museum School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where he taught until 1974 when he retired to a studio in Wells, Maine. He also lectured at Tufts University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his tenure at the Boston museum he went to Japan to study with noted potter Hamada Shoji (1894-1978) among others.

Arsenault mastered all aspects of the art of ceramics. He worked in stoneware and porcelain, which he built by hand as well as turned on the potter’s wheel. He decorated his wares with scrafitto, underglaze painting and glazes. Many of his glazes were the result of his own recipes and countless experiments. As several pieces in this offering suggest, Arsenault may have influenced the work of now renowned potters Mary and Edwin Scheier whose early work he judged at the Annual Ceramics National Exhibition that was held by the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts.

Most of the pottery now available to collectors came from Arsenault’s Maine studio. It began to appear at auction in large lots in the late 1990s. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston owns examples of his work.

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Stoneware plate: 13.5 inches in diameter

Stoneware bowl with “Pumpkin” glaze: 6.25 inches in diameter

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X x	Stoneware bowl: 12.5 inches wide by 10.25 inches
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Porcelain bowl, 6.25” in diameter, 2” high, original fitted box X