Prototype for Lola coffee pot Prototype

Gulotta studied industrial design under Eva Zeisel at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Upon graduation in 1950, he began working for established industrial designers like Zeisel, Raymond Loewy, and George Nelson. Gulotta returned to Pratt as a teacher, inheriting Zeisel’s ceramics class in 1955; he continued to teach at Pratt for more than 25 years while also maintaining his own design practice. Gulotta was additionally active in international design education. He organized and directed the Industrial Design Workshop ‘74 in Portugal and designed the first foundation curriculum in industrial design for a new school of design at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico in 1976–77. He was a guest lecturer at several art schools in China in 1982, including the College of Arts and Crafts in the ancient pottery manufacturing center of Jingdezhen.
By the early 1970s, Gulotta’s tableware and glassware designs had risen in popularity and developed a devoted following. During this period he began working with the Block China Corporation; the firm’s Portuguese manufactory opened doors to the European market. Gulotta’s work has been featured in many exhibitions, including the 1960 Smithsonian traveling exhibition, Designed for Silver. Gulotta is also the recipient of numerous awards. He was a finalist in the Concurso Internazionale della Ceramica d’Arte, Faenza, Italy, in 1960; he won the Premio Internacional at the 1971 Concurso de Diseño Industrial de Cerámica y Vidrio in Valencia, Spain; in 1980 he claimed first prize at the International Competition for handmade glass, in Lisbon, Portugal.[1] Gulotta's work is held by major collections in the United States, England, and Australia.
In the 1990s, Gulotta invited several American museums, including Cooper-Hewitt, to visit his studio and select examples of his work. At that time, the museum acquired cutlery patterns, glassware, a suite of his Chromatics tableware, and drawings for ceramics. The objects currently proposed for acquisition were selected by curators invited by Gulotta for another visit, which took place a few days before Gulotta shuttered his practice and retired to New Mexico. The prototypes for a ceramic coffee pot and cream pitcher include the pot in an early plaster model, a clay-covered ceramic sample with a simple paper strip inserted on the side to show the desired curve of the handle, several different clay knobs proposed for the lid, and a ceramic version with the chosen D-shaped knob on the lid. The three iterations of the cream pitcher demonstrate Gulotta’s recommendation for widening the mouth and body, resulting in a final prototype with a more efficient and pleasing form.
The models and prototypes under consideration are desirable for the way they tell a story of the industrial design process—from concept and modifications to a final version ready for mass production. According to Gulotta:
“I always begin with thumbnail sketches. When I think an idea is interesting, I begin a model right away….The coffeepot, teapot, cream and sugar are important….They're slip cast and they give the look—the line's real presence as a shape statement and its vertical dimension. I'm not a potter…. [I deal] in the cross section—it's really cross-section designing. The factory gets my drawings and models, and they have to make their own production models….I go to the factory in the beginning stages. The plaster models are always…pristine. Sometimes the translation into ceramics requires modification that you can't control until you make a sample.” [2]
[1] “Premio de diseño de ceramica,” ABC, April 16, 1971, http://hemeroteca.abc.es/nav/Navigate.exe/hemeroteca/madrid/abc/1971/04/16/055.html
[2] Susan Wechsler, “The New American Ceramics,” Industrial Design, May/June 1985, 26.

Prototype for Lola coffee pot Prototype; Designed by Gerald Gulotta (American, 1921 - 2018); Client: Porcelanas de Bidasoa; plaster, clay, paper; Gift of Gerald Gulotta; 2009-16-6