Mary Scheier, celebrated American studio ceramicist, died on May 19, 2007, in Green Valley, Arizona, at age 98.
Mary Scheier died on May 19, 2007, in Green Valley, Arizona, at the age of 98, closing out a nearly seven-decade career that established her and her husband Edwin Scheier as pioneers of the American studio pottery movement.
By the time of her death, Scheier had achieved international recognition for her ceramic artistry, with works held in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Everson Museum of Art, and numerous other major museums across the United States. Her intricately incised and decorated pottery, often featuring stylized figures, animals, and folkloric motifs, had influenced generations of American ceramicists.
Her death was widely noted in regional and art-world publications, including a detailed obituary and retrospective published by the Arizona Daily Star/Tucson.com, which celebrated her as a 'world-renowned' ceramist of Green Valley, reflecting the deep local and national respect she had earned. Scheier and her husband had relocated to Arizona later in life after formative decades in New Hampshire, where they taught at the University of New Hampshire and helped build one of the most respected ceramics programs in the country.
Her legacy endures through museum retrospectives, scholarly essays such as those published by the Archives of American Art, and continued market and academic interest in Scheier pottery as exemplary of mid-century American modernist craft.