Quartermaine Hall

Adventures in Miniature

Jane Graber

Jane Graber. Image from here

The Grabers are a phenomenally productive family. Both of Jane’s parents, three of her sisters, five of her nieces and one of her nephews either write or create art in some form or another. In fact the family sells a wide variety of their books and crafts through one website, Found, run by Jane’s younger sister Ann. There’s also a bricks and mortar shop in Goshen, Indiana. They offer a small selection of Jane’s new work – small, because she is now semi-retired and so doesn’t make as many pots as she used to. That has resulted in soaring demand – and prices – for her work, but we’ve been lucky enough to build up a small but pleasing collection of her work and I hope very much that we can add a few more choice pieces in the future.

Jane works in stoneware and her pieces below are inspired by 18th and 19th-century American folk pottery. I absolutely love the warm biscuit colour of the pottery and the contrast with that gorgeous royal blue decoration. There’s something very charming about the deliberately naïve artwork. I plan to display them ‘downstairs’, beautifully arranged on the shelves in the housekeeper’s pantry or the servants’ hall, complementing the Chinese and Delft porcelain upstairs. Jane also makes redware and Moravian-style pottery, which are beautiful but don’t really fit the feel of Quartermaine Hall. I’ve seen a few Arts and Crafts vases by her too, which have piqued my interest, but so far I haven’t been quick enough to buy any of them.

Here are the works by Jane in the Quartermaine Hall collection so far:

Acquisitions

Butter Dish

This little 2017 dish by Jane Graber will keep the butter nice and cool (2021.150)