Russel Crook Pottery Marks

Russell Gerry Crook (1869-1955). In 1899 he was elected a Craftsman of the Society of Arts & Crafts Boston and in 1908 promoted to Mastership. Russell Crook was born in San Francisco and later moved to Massachusetts. He was a sculptor, plaster modeler and potter. He attended Sedgewick Institute in Great Barrington, MA and studied at the Art Students League in New York and the Pennsylvania Institute of Art. Crook spent three years in California on the Miller & Lux Ranch as a cowboy. He studied for five years with Augustus St. Gauden and assisted Henry W. Bush on three equestrian statues for Gettysburg. In New York City, he assisted Daniel French in his studio. Crook exhibited in the important 1899, 1907, and 1927 SACB shows. He worked at Grueby Pottery for a time and was commissioned by Thomas Lawson to handle sculptural decorations in his Scituate estate of Dreamwold. Other commissions included a garden sculpture for Helen Osborne Storrow’s home in Lincoln, MA. and a fountain in Center Harbor, NH. Russel Crook had a brick studio behind his home in Lincoln with a large kiln in which he fired his vases as well as pottery tiles and mosaic murals. Repeating animal and fish motifs characterize his work executed in cobalt and black on salt glazed stoneware. These are unusual materials for art potters and are more commonly seen in utilitarian crocks and jugs.