Adelaide Alsop Robineau (1865–1929) was an American china painter and potter. She experimented with American clays to create a true high-fire porcelain, and explored forms, decorations, and glazes. She is considered one of the top ceramists of American art pottery in her era. Her most famous work, the Scarab Vase, took over 1000 hours to make. In 2000, Art & Antiquities magazine named it the most important piece of American ceramics of the last hundred years.
From 1899-1919, Adelaide and her husband Samuel E. Robineau published Keramic Studio, a periodical for potters and ceramic artists. For much of this time, Adelaide Robineau was the magazine's sole editor. She established a ceramic studio and taught china painting and pottery at her Four Winds Pottery School in Syracuse, New York. She also taught at Syracuse University (1920–1929) and the Art Academy of People's University.
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Early life and education
Adelaide Alsop was born in 1865 in Middletown, Connecticut. She developed an early interest in both drawing and the then–popular pursuit of china painting. As a young woman, she helped to support her family by teaching drawing at the boarding school where she had formerly been a student. During one summer break, she enrolled in the painter William Merritt Chase's summer school, her only experience of advanced training in painting and drawing. She later studied ceramics with Charles Binns at Alfred University and with Taxile Doat.
In 1899, she married Samuel E. Robineau, a French ceramics expert who was at one time editor of Old China magazine. The couple had three children.