Grete or Margarete Marks, also known as Grete Loebenstein-Heymann, was born August 1899 in Cologne, Germany, and died November 1990 in London, England. She was a highly successful and honourable pottery designer, factory owner, teacher and painter. Her work is part of the collections of many prestigious institutions across the world, including The British Museum, The National Museum of Wales, and The Berlin Jewish Museum.
She began her career studying painting and was one of the first female students to attend the Bauhaus from 1920-21. She wanted to study ceramics, but was told textile design would suit her better, because she was a woman. She left the Bauhaus and got a job at a pottery factory as an artistic designer to gain experience. This gave her the relevant experience to set up her own pottery factory, the Hael-Werkstätten Pottery, in Marwitz, near Berlin, alongside her husband Gustav Loebenstein and his brother.
Under Grete’s direction the pottery was very successful and exported domestic ware to the UK, across Europe and the USA. Her designs were influenced by modernism and the machine aesthetic. She created colourful and optimistic designs, focusing on the strong shape of the pot and on glazes. Sadly, in 1927, her husband and his brother were killed in a car crash, leaving her to run the factory and care for their two young boys by herself.
In the Nazi regime of the 1930s, she was particularly vulnerable, not only as a Jewish woman running her business, but also as a designer creating pottery in a modernist style. She narrowly avoided imprisonment for anti-state sentiments, and her work was included in a Nazi exhibition of ‘degenerate art’ in 1937. This forced her to sell her pottery factory at a loss, like many others, before the Nazis confiscated it. She fled from Germany and finally settled in England in 1936, bringing several paintings and pieces of pottery with her.
In England, she was helped by Harry Trethowan, of Heal’s department store, who had been purchasing and selling her wares for many years. He recommended her to Gordon Forsyth in Stoke-on-Trent, who gave her a position teaching painting at Burslam School of Art. She also used her contacts to start freelance work for potteries in Stoke-on-Trent.
Later, she started work at the Minton factory. They allowed her to set up her own studio within the factory but were opposed to her designs. In 1938, she set up her own pottery in Stoke-on-Trent, Grete Pottery, which was successful. She purchased ‘biscuit ware’ and decorated it with her own designs. The pieces she produced were also simplified for a more conservative England. During the Second World War production of ‘inessential’ pottery was limited, so in 1940, the Grete Pottery closed. Grete did not make any more commercial pottery after this.
In 1938, she married Howard Marks, and they lived in Newcastle-under-Lyme during the war before settling in London. Although she continued with ceramics, making studio pottery and ceramic murals, she mostly focused on painting.
Katie McGown, who curated an exhibition of her work in 2016, comments that for Grete Marks painting was a complimentary process to her ceramics, not a secondary one. She had been painting and drawing all her life. At this time, Grete also continued teaching and exhibited her work frequently. Throughout her life she worked hard to form her own path, facing rejection, but always producing work on her terms.
The pieces within the collection were kindly donated to the university by Grete Marks’ daughter Dr Frances Marks in 2006. Some examples of her work are included in our current exhibition ‘When Two Worlds Collide: Ceramics and the Factory’ at the Ceramic Gallery at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth University, until 14th April.
Charlotte Ashley
Sources:
For more information about Grete Marks’s work in the School of Art Ceramic Collection, please visit: https://ceramics-aberystwyth.com/collection/?st=27925
YouTube – ‘Historic England: Heritage Schools programme. Grete Marks – A Modernist in the Potteries’. The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.
CV of Margrete Marks by her daughter Dr Frances Marks.
Pallant House Gallery – ‘Grete Marks: An Intimate Portrait’. https://pallant.org.uk/whats-on/grete-marks-an-intimate-portrait/
The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society. ‘Grete Marks, Artist Potter’.
Ursula Hudson-Wiedenmann, Judy Rudoe. No. 26, Omnium Gatherum – A Collection of Papers (2002), pp. 100-119.
Katie McGown. ‘After the Break: Grete Marks & Laure Prouvost’. Studio 3 Gallery, University of Kent, Canterbury.
Journal of the Northern Ceramic Society. ‘Greta Pottery’ Pat Halfpenny. Volume 8, 1991. Edited by Eileen and Rodney Hampson.
Aberystwyth University School of Art Museum & Galleries 