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Paula Ahronson, Israeli, born Germany, 1908–1998

Paula Ahronson was born in 1908 in Hamburg, Germany, to a traditional family. She received her first training in art at the School of Applied Arts in Hamburg, where she studied decorative arts with Friedrich Adler. She began studies at the Academy of Arts, Berlin with Otto Douglas-Hill, but after nine months took up ceramics at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design at Halle, where Marguerite Friedlaender and Frans Wildenhain, a pair of ceramic artists who were graduates of the first class of Bauhaus, were teaching. The teaching method at Halle was heavily influenced by the spirit of Bauhaus, creating a synthesis between traditional art and industry.

In 1932 she met Chava Samuel during a visit to the Land of Israel, and when she immigrated two years later she joined Samuel’s arts and crafts studio in Jerusalem. Shortly afterward, they moved to Rishon LeZion, where they founded the ceramic workshop “Kad VeSefel,” which was the first ceramic-producing enterprise in the country. The factory produced both a variety of utilitarian vessels and of decorative pieces, created by a variety of techniques, particularly ceramic mold casting and design and ornamentation of wheel-made pottery. While Ahronson specialized in wheel-made pottery and created various pieces in the spirit of Bauhaus functionalism, Samuel specialized in Oriental-style ornamentation. In 1936 Ahronson moved with her husband to Tel Aviv and gave up her work in the ceramics factory, later to return to her partnership with Samuel in 1951. In the early 1950s she began working with Aharon Kahana, who founded a crafts studio called “The Artist’s House.” After the death of her husband in 1961, she established a ceramics studio in her apartment in Tel Aviv, where she continued to work until her final years.

Education

Ornamentation with Friedrich Adler, School of Applied Art, Hamburg
Commercial school, Hamburg
Studies in Ceramics, Academy of Arts, Hardenberg-Strasse, Berlin
School of Ceramics, Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design, Halle, Germany
1933 Apprenticeship in the plaster department of the Upsala Ekeby pottery factory, Upsala, Sweden
Teacher training, Technion, Haifa

Teaching

1960-1971 WIZO-France High School, Tel Aviv-Yaffo
Technion, Haifa