Mary Wondrausch OBE (17 December 1923 – 26 December 2016)[1] was an English artist, potter, historian and writer, born in Chelsea.[2] She trained as a potter at Farnham School of Art, latterly West Surrey College of Art and Design.
She was an honorary fellow of the Craft Potters Association and has work in the V&A Museum collection. She was awarded the OBE for services to the Arts in 2000.[3] Her primary interest is continental peasant art. Originally training as a watercolor artist, she later became interested in ceramics and opened her own pottery workshop in 1974. Inspired by 17th-century English slipware and Eastern European designs, such influences have informed her own work. She is known for lettering and exuberant use of colour. [citation needed]
Her Brickfields pottery is in Compton, near Guildford, Surrey,[4] where she moved in 1955 and subsequently raised three children.[5]
Mary Wondrausch agreed to sit for Jon Edgar for a portrait work using clay quarried from the foundations of her house at Brickfields. This forms part of the Compton Triptych[6] unveiled at the Human Clay exhibition, University of Surrey in November 2011.
Wondrausch and her house in Surrey, including the artist's hand-stencilled walls, hand-painted furniture, and ceramics collection, were photographed by Liesa Siegelman for World of Interiors in May 1988[5] to accompany an autobiographic piece by Wandrausch. That article was reprinted by the magazine in 2018.
Dead Magpie (1956) mixed media on board. Collection of Surrey County Council[7]