Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

After the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, a tuberculosis epidemic descended on the city given the resulting dust and ash. Women contracted the illness at twice the rate of men because many worked indoors in close quarters. In September 1911, Dr. Philip King Brown opened the Arequipa Sanatorium—after a Peruvian town meaning 'place of rest'—in Marin County, across the bay to the north of San Francisco, to help women heal from tuberculosis while receiving training in pottery making.

Dr. Brown hired renowned English potter, Frederick Hurten Rhead, to direct what would become known as the Arequipa Pottery, where female patients were not required to participate, but, if they wished to, there were limits on how long they could work per day. Inspired by Arts & Crafts ideals, Dr. Brown and Rhead hoped that creating high-quality, handmade ceramics in a peaceful, natural setting would prove restorative and yield objects of lasting artistic value. The women were all compensated for their labor or, in some cases, they had the cost of their stay at Arequipa defrayed. Much of Rhead's work involved obtaining local clay and teaching patients basic pottery techniques.

By the fall of 1912, the women under Rhead's tutelage were producing pottery that dealers in the Bay Area and along the West Coast found impressively executed and attractive. Early in 1913, Dr. Brown's and Rhead's visions for the Arequipa Pottery diverged: Dr. Brown wanted female patients to make all wares, but Rhead expanded the operation and brought in professional potters. Rhead subsequently left Arequipa and another esteemed English potter, Albert Solon, became the new director.