Post War & Contemporary Ceramics 
22 February 2024
Post War & Contemporary Ceramics 
184

JB Blunk

Untitled

USA, c. 1952
partially glazed earthenware 1¼ h × 9½ w × 6¼ d in (3 × 24 × 16 cm)
estimate: $7,000–9,000
result: $5,670
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This work was made by the artist while he was in Japan in the early 1950s, where he apprenticed with Kitaoji Rosanjin and Living National Treasure Toyo Kaneshige.
provenance: The Artist | David Cole Gallery, Inverness, CA | Acquired from the previous by Mary Keesling, SFMOMA Trustee | Gift from the previous to the present owner
exhibited: JB Blunk, 8 October - 7 November 2020, Kasmin Gallery, New York

This work will ship from Los Angeles, California.

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Curator Carin Adams discusses J.B. Blunk


I like to think that the courage and independence J.B. has shown is typically California, or at least Western, with a continent between to be free from categories that are called art. Here the links seem to me more to the open sky and spaces, and the far reaches of time from where come the burled stumps of those great trees.

Isamu Noguchi

JB Blunk 1926–2002

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Born in Kansas, James Blain “JB” Blunk was an artist known for his rustic, organic sculptural works in wood and clay. As a young man, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he first studied physics and then ceramics under the renowned Laura Andreson. When Andreson took her class to see an exhibition of Mingei pottery at Scripps College, Blunk knew he wanted to be an artist. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, Blunk met Isamu Noguchi in Tokyo, where both were visitors in a folk art store. Noguchi helped to arrange apprenticeships for Blunk with Japanese potters Kitaoji Rosanjin and Kaneshige Toyo.

When Blunk returned to the U.S. in 1954, he relocated to San Francisco, where he did odd jobs and carpentry. After working on the roof of painter Gordon Onslow Ford’s home in the Marin County town of Inverness, Ford gifted Blunk an acre where he could build his own house and studio. Blunk constructed his home, described in the New York Times as resembling “a cottage from a midcentury-modern fairy tale,” from salvaged wood and river rocks between 1958 and 1962, and its “campus” comprises a ceramic studio and woodshop. Blunk created his first-ever wooden sculpture as a gift for Ford, a seat crafted from a chunk of cypress he found on the road that is today in the permanent collection of SFMOMA.

While today the Blunk House is celebrated as the artist’s masterpiece, his daughter has noted that he “never wanted it to become a precious place.” Instead, he wanted it to be a hub of activity and creation, and for him it was. Working in a wide range of mediums, Blunk went on to make jewelry, ceramics, paintings, furniture, and sculpture. He showed works beginning in the mid-1950s, notably transcending any rigid categorizations of art, craft, and design. In 1969, he completed The Planet at the Oakland Museum of California, a sculpture carved from a single redwood burl. Today, his works can be found in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian and Stanford University, among others.

Auction Results JB Blunk

JB Blunk

Mage

estimate: $70,000–90,000

result: $189,000

JB Blunk

Important Redwood table

estimate: $30,000–50,000

result: $47,500

JB Blunk

Ceramic plaques (6)

estimate: $4,000–6,000

result: $11,250

JB Blunk

Untitled

estimate: $3,000–5,000

result: $6,930

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