Andersen Studio Press Release www.andersenstudio.com

A cup by Ceramic Artist-Designer Weston Neil Andersen of East Boothbay, Maine has been selected out of hundreds of applications to be in the North American Cup Show at Siena Heights University in Adrian Michigan. March 10-21, 2008.

In addition to showing their own work, the Andersen hosted gallery exhibits of other artists. The first production shop, which was later to become Andersen Design, was in a small building attached to the home that the Andersen’s rented in the early 1950’s

 The Andersen’s found that the women formerly employed in the fish packing industry naturally adapted to the hand crafted ceramic production process. Today the Boothbay Peninsula and surrounding area support a community of ceramic studios as well as designer craftsmen working in other mediums

The local community of year round residents and summer visitors were the first to start collecting Andersen work. One of the first Andersen collectors fell in love with the salt and pepper shakers that she had seen in Living magazine and was thrilled to find the work being created and sold in an old barn on her

country road

Weston and his wife, Brenda, were recognized as contemporary young designers of merit in the 1950’s. Weston graduated in Industrial Design at Pratt Institute.  While their urban contemporaries designed for established companies, Weston and Brenda carved out their own path as pioneer designer craftsmen on the Coast of Maine. In 1952 they opened their first exhibition space on Southport Island on The Boothbay Peninsula. They hung a sign on a two hundred year old barn, sitting on a hilltop along the island road. The sign read “Ceramics by Anderson”.

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The Andersen's line consisted of classic, elegant expressions of the fifties urban design movement. The Andersen's philosophy was to create hand made objects affordable to the middle class, during the then golden era, when the American middle class flourished. The natural environs of the Maine Coast worked its effect on the artists and soon they were creating a line of sculpture reflecting the indigenous wildlife that habitated the rocky coast of Maine.

Concurrent lines then developed, the Andersen wildlife sculpture and the Andersen Line of elegant functional forms that combines a clean simple form with the contemporary influence of the Andersen’s Danish background, with the organic feel that only a handcrafted form can achieve. Brenda developed a selection of designs that could be reproduced by other artisans with each adding their own unique “hand” to create the individualized hand crafted product that the cognizant have been collecting for over half a century

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They designed their works in clay or plasteline and then created molds into which the liquid slip was poured. The slip itself is a unique recipe developed by Weston Andersen and to this day Andersen ceramic art begins with raw materials that are combined to make the unique Andersen body. Over the years the body has been adapted to the changing availability of materials, but the classic forms never lose their appeal as new generations discover or inherit a love for the unique creations of this small production studio, which never go out of style, and as a small size studio production has not saturated the market.