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conceive and execute original designs. He revised his designs following the friendly advice of some of Chicago’s best-known architects, several of whom sketched new shapes for him. Many were architects who had trained in the offices of Louis Sullivan or William LeBaron Jenney, key figures in the Chicago School of architecture. Their practical approach to design gave Teco a decidedly masculine character that set it apart from most of the art pottery of its day. Gates also asked for design suggestions from fellow members of the Chicago Architectural Club, an organization of draftsmen and architects that sponsored talks, competitions and annual exhibits. Teco ware made its debut as an “exhibit of art pottery” at the club’s 1900 exhibition.

The highly original forms devised by Gates and his friends went into production during 1900 and 1901. Within a year, this group
had designed some 150 shapes and, by 1904, nearly 350. Supplemented by designs for garden pottery, these pieces would constitute a line so heterogeneous that no one item could be called representative of the company’s output. This variety, combined with the pleasant green tones and modest price, drew immediate attention.

In 1903, Gates displayed a selection of vases designed by Chicago Architectural Club members at the club’s annual exhibition. Several were the work of the well-known team of William LeBaron Jenney and William B. Mundie, who ten years earlier had designed an innovative all-terra cotta residence for Gates in suburban Hinsdale. Jenney (celebrated for his pioneering use of skeletal framing in one of Chicago’s first skyscrapers, the Home Insurance Building) contributed a Teco vase featuring a conventionalized floral motif in low relief. Mundie created such a variety of Teco ware that the following year Gates’s exhibit consisted entirely of his work.

Although not a member of the Chicago Architectural Club, Frank Lloyd Wright frequently displayed his work in the club’s exhibitions. An example of Teco pottery designed by Wright in 1902 is an intricate 32-inch high “triplicate vase” whose slender vertical shafts anticipated the skyscraper forms of the following decade. For the Susan Lawrence Dana residence in Springfield, Illinois, Gates potters executed a large Teco stand ornamented with the abstracted sumac design that Wright used as a unifying motif throughout the house. A third sculptural cubic vase, whose form recalled the geometric clerestory piers on the cast concrete exterior of Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, was also made by the pottery around 1906. Only Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125
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