Mary Elizabeth Cook
artist 1863-1951 Cook, Mary Elizabeth
Mary Elizabeth Cook, also known as Mae or May Elizabeth Cook, was an American artist primarily known for her sculptural and ceramic works.
Early life
Cook was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, to Anna Sappington Cook and William Alexander Cook. Her father was a financier and bank president, and Cook was encouraged to follow her passion for art and music.
She would often make sketches and sculptures of things and people she found interesting, and spent a lot of time practicing painting and coloring. In addition to her art she became skilled at playing the piano and by the age of 10 she performed duets with her family physician, who played the violin.
Cook's father died when she was 6 years old, and her family moved to Columbus, Ohio.
Career
Artwork
In the early 1900s, Cook taught sculpture at the Columbus Art School. Around the same time, she worked as a lithographer and designer for Roseville Pottery, though no records survive showing which pottery lines she was involved or how long she worked with the company.
In 1910, at age 46, she enrolled at Ohio State University and was the first woman to study in Edward Orton Jr.'s pioneering ceramic engineering course, however she was not awarded a degree due to her gender. Shortly afterwards, she traveled to Paris, France, and studied sculpture under Paul Wayland Bartlett.
“Mary Elizabeth Cook” enters the record as artist 1863-1951 Cook, Mary Elizabeth. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mary, Elizabeth and Cook can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary Elizabeth Cook” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.