Artist Theaster Gates has acquired American manufacturer Pickard China.
The acquisition marks a new chapter for Pickard, which boasts a 130-year history, and reflects Gates’s ongoing commitment to celebrating ceramic legacies and reimagining overlooked and undervalued histories of American industry. Under Gates’s leadership, Pickard will be stewarded as both a manufacturing enterprise and an active cultural asset, creating opportunities to connect its historic expertise with contemporary artists, designers, and communities.
Founded in the 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, Pickard has developed an unmatched reputation for producing fine china and decorated tableware, with its work becoming part of the visual and material history of American diplomacy, cultural currency, and industry, with key clients such as the White House, the State Department, and US embassies.
“Pickard represents something that I value deeply: the knowledge embedded in making,” says Theaster Gates. “There is an extraordinary history in this company, in the hands that made these objects, the people who designed and decorated them, and the communities and institutions that brought them into their lives. I’m interested in what it means to preserve that history while creating the conditions for it to become a laboratory for experimentation.”
The acquisition is also intended to support the continued relevance of domestic manufacturing and skilled craftsmanship at a moment when American production, supply chains, and the preservation of industrial knowledge has become increasingly important cultural and economic questions.
“Pickard is a repository of American design and manufacturing knowledge,” Gates continued. “The opportunity to think expansively about what that knowledge can make possible is explosive.”
Going forward, Gates will work with Pickard’s existing team and partners to preserve the company’s manufacturing expertise while exploring new creative and commercial opportunities. These may include collaborations with artists and designers, limited-edition collections, institutional partnerships, and new approaches to the role of ceramics and tableware within contemporary culture.
The future of Pickard will remain rooted in its expertise in fine tableware and decoration while opening the company to new forms of creative collaboration, including the artistic intelligence and capacity of Gates’ studio. The acquisition establishes a platform through which a historic American manufacturer can participate in contemporary conversations around design, craft, hospitality, collecting, and cultural preservation.
