©1999-2015
Wisconsin Pottery Association
P.O. Box 705
Madison WI 53701-0705
The following article appeared in WPA Press, Vol. 7, January 2001
Remember Dave Auclair
In October of 2000 the Wisconsin Pottery Association lost a founding member and a good friend. Several members of the club agreed to share their memories of Dave - we thank them for their insights into his life and love of pottery.
Tim Holthaus & Jim Petzold
Jim Riordan
Barb Reed
Betty & Dave Knutzen
Nicol Knappen
From Tim Holthaus and Jim Petzold, reprinted with permission from the CAS Collector newsletter, October 2000:
It is with much sadness that we report the passing of a person whom many of our members have known over their years of collecting. Dave Auclair passed away on October 13, 2000 in a Marshfield, Wisconsin hospital at the age of 59, following a long battle with cancer. Dave came to Madison from Detroit as a young man to attend college, and, like so many current Madisonians, decided to stay here and make it his home. His primary career, spanning thirty-five years, was a teacher of adolescents at the Mendota Mental Health Institute, a state institution.
But everyone who knew Dave realized immediately that the main interest in his life was collecting pottery. He owned one of the largest and highest caliber Roseville Pottery collections in the nation and was recognized by his peers among that group as an expert in the field. His knowledge didn't begin and end with Roseville, however; he, in fact, knew something about almost every type of pottery ever made. His was a phenomenal intellect and his ability to remember details and history of thousands of pieces was truly amazing. He was the driving force in bringing the Wisconsin Pottery Association into being. He began it with simple gettogethers of a few people who had this common interest and from there, it bloomed into what it is today.
But collectors in our own association will remember Dave as having bought and sold some of the finest pieces in the Ceramics Art Studio inventory, including many one of a kind lunch hour pieces and a few from Betty Harrington's cache of originals. He had a vast knowledge of the Studio and the people who worked there and we often consulted with him for his recollections on details. His knowledge base was constructed over many years of setting up at flea markets and shows and talking to, literally, everyone who came by. That is, in fact, how we met him when he sold us our very first piece of literature from the Studio, the 1954 Catalog. Along with it, he gave us a few stories about the local scene around the time the Studio was in operation, information he had gleaned probably from these very workers or their families who would speak to him as they looked over his wares. His was a gift of not only talking but also of listening. He obviously recognized that much was to be learned and his was a highly developed art in this regard. We all owe Dave a tremendous debt of gratitude for pointing us in this direction. He'll be missed most acutely in and around town and, we suspect, also in places that most of us have never heard of.
From Jim Riordan and Barb Reed:
One of my favorite remembrances was when Barb and I first went over to Dave's house to see his collection. This was maybe 8 years ago or so. Dave was always so enthusiastic about his collection, and generous about sharing his wealth of information, especially about Roseville. We went there with Chris Swart on two different occasions. Dave had five dogs then that he was very attached to. But beyond the dogs, the house seemed to be nothing but Roseville, oozing from any conceivable place, in every room that you entered, more Roseville. It was great! We were budding Roseville collectors then, and were just awestruck by what we saw. The visit whetted our appetite to learn more about Roseville and art pottery in general. Dave could tell you a story about any piece you asked him about, where he obtained it, how much he paid or bartered for it, he had amazing recall. He was very proud of his collection and rightfully so! We felt very privileged to have been invited to Dave's, a memory we will always cherish.
One of Barb's favorite anecdotes involving Dave:
Dave gave me a ride home from an estate sale and I invited him inside our house to see our art pottery. He looked around at our collection asked "What gives with all the Apples?" referring to a collec tion of Hull apple cookie jars that I had collected, then saw our collection of Roseville Clematis vases and said, "Nice cluster of Clematis", something that I thought we had quite a bit of so I felt a little slighted (keep in mind we hadn't visited Dave's house at this time). I then apologized for not having dusted recently, and Dave laughed heartily and said, "You haven't lived."
Our stories about Dave are from his yearly pilgrimage to Zanesville, Ohio, his mecca. This was his annual July pilgrimage for at least 25 years. He saved his money all year for this event. He would take out a load of pottery to sell but bring back more as this was his annual Roseville buying frenzy of those pieces he still needed for his collection. He was in seventh heaven sitting beside his table of pots for sale outside his room at Clarabel's motel and pottery store; he talked pottery to every person who stopped to look at his wares. Then after sitting in the hot sun, he would dine with friends at his favorite pizza place. He claimed it had the best pizza in town. All evening and well into the night he would make the rounds of the other dealers set up in the motels talking Roseville and filling in his collection. On Friday he would spend all day at the big pottery show talking and buying. He never seemed to tire of looking at and talking about Roseville. He knew the pattern, shape number and the page it was on in the Roseville book for all the Roseville lines.
On Saturday he had the job of packing all his pottery for the return trip home. One year, rather than trust his old van, he borrowed his mother's car. We helped him stuff his big purchase that year, a huge jardiniere and pedestal, into an already overloaded car. There was barely room for Dave to sit for the 12 hour drive. But he was very happy - he had enjoyed another great Zanesville experience.
Zanesville and the Pottery Lover's Convention will miss Dave's presence and will never be the same without his enthusiasm. That was Dave during his big week of the year.
I first met Dave Auclair at the monthly antique show that used to be held on the first Sunday of the month at the Dane County Forum. Dave was always set up in a corner booth where it took him a long time to unpack because he was continually involved in conversations with people. His tables were jammed with ceramics, everything from garagesale quality up to the finest Roseville and beyond. Everything was helter-skelter. Display was of little interest to him: it was the pottery that mattered.
Back in the early 90s, as editor of the Journal of the American Art Pottery Association, I used to make the rounds of local antique shows to pass out extra copies to dealers I thought might potentially become members. Dave didn't join right away (if at all), but he did read the issues I provided with great interest. In one issue I editorialized a need for regional pottery clubs. Although I didn't say it in print, I'd found the disorganization of the AAPA's national convention depressing, and realized this was because everybody who was active in the organization lived in a different state. Regional clubs, I thought, could do a better job of hosting national events.
Local clubs could also, I reasoned, share information and research local pottery history, which was fast becoming lost. This must have made an impression on Dave, particularly as a Ceramic Arts fan, for shortly after I wrote this, Dave mentioned to me that he knew a number of people in the area who were interested in pottery. He suggested we get together sometime and I thought this was an excellent idea. Sure enough, he became the prime mover in asking people to meet one evening at Dave and Betty Knutzen's house to talk about starting a group. After the first couple of such meetings when we formally organized as a club, it was a natural that Dave become our first president.
At the reception held after Dave's funeral, I was lucky enough to sit at a table with a fellow who told me that he sold Dave his first two pieces of Roseville, some 20 or more years ago. He said that at that time Dave told him that he didn't know anything about Roseville, and that Dave had said, "I'll have to look into it."
Look into it he did, becoming one of the country's top authorities on Roseville pottery. His collection was truly astounding huge, of course, but more importantly it reflected his unerring sense of connoiseurship. He continually upgraded his collection, replacing specific pieces of lesser quality with better examples in terms of glaze or mold. The pride of his collection was his Roseville "experimentals," the rarest of rare for Roseville collectors. I don't remember exactly how many he had when he died (the number was always changing), but it was probably more than anyone else in the country. Certainly he knew more about the experimentals than almost anyone else.
Dave was not just the founder of our institution, he was an institution himself. The way he held forth on pottery and the wheeling and dealing of same was well-celebrated. He was so much a fixture of our world that it's almost inconceivable that we won't run into him at meetings or shows. Never again will we hear his opinions on one piece or another, or hear about who bought what or who sold what and why they should or shouldn't have done it.
Why, some of us are asking, didn't we just keep a video camera handy whenever he was around? Those of us who knew him know it will be hard for future generations to understand just exactly what we've lost with Dave's passing.