Arequipa Pottery

Arequipa Pottery was established by Dr. Philip King Brown as part of the rehabilitative therapy program at a tuberculosis sanatorium located outside of Fairfax, California.

Brown got his first taste of running a sanatorium when he inherited a large house left to him by a wealthy relative located in Santa Barbara, California.

China painting was an activity considered appropriate for middle and upper-class women during this time and influenced the decision to using ceramics as the choice of craft work to be produced at Arequipa.

In 1909 Henry Bothin, a philanthropist and business magnate who obtained is wealth through real estate, learned about Brown's desire to establish an affordable sanatorium and contacted him about building a clinic on some land he owned in Fairfax, California.

In 1905 Bothin donated land in Fairfax to the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood House, a community center and clinic located in San Francisco.

The property in Fairfax, called Hill Farm, provided a place where mothers and children convalesce from their ill health.

Production was directed by a succession of well-known ceramists: Frederick Hurten Rhead, Albert Solon, and Fred Wilde, who were responsible for the shapes of the ware, thus resulting in dramatic variations in style.

Prior to moving to California, he had worked for Edward Gardner Lewis at University City, Missouri where his activities included running a pottery correspondence course.

In July 1913 Rhead was replaced as director of the pottery by Albert Solon, who implemented cuts in running costs.

[6] In 1915, at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, the Arequipa Tuberculosis Sanatorium exhibited its ceramic works in the fair's Palace of Education, where discharged patients demonstrated pottery-making and sold examples of the product.

The Oakland Museum of California has the largest existing holding of pottery and tiles from Arequipa, with more than 100 pieces in its collections.