sculpture

In 1963, Marquis arrived at the University of California at Berkeley, where he planned to study architecture. In the early 1960s, Berkeley was on the cusp of its golden age of social and cultural revolution. The decorative arts department at the university was a hub of activity, powered by the energy of the emerging Funk art movement. Marquis took ceramics courses taught by the respected ceramists Peter Voulkos and Ron Nagle, but he was even more attracted to glass. His introduction to the material came through Marvin Lipofsky, who had studied with American studio glass founder Harvey Littleton. One afternoon, Marquis saw Lipofsky blowing glass, and Marquis was hooked. He began working for Lipofsky as a teaching assistant and tech, repairing furnaces and performing other tasks while spending as much time as possible in the hot shop, blowing glass. He also built his first studio in Berkeley. Marquis began his explorations of the teapot form in ceramic. The cloth cover was sewn by Jan Vail and Nora Fanshell. The use of stripes and patterns on the teapot echo Marquis’s work in glass.