Charles Krafft

Charles Wing Krafft is a ceramicist in Seattle, Washington who specializes in "Disasterware," ceramic art using traditional ceramic decorative styles to produce pieces commemorating modern disasters. In 1998, he was called "the dark angel of Seattle art" by the art critic of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In early 2013 there was considerable media coverage of his political and historical opinions and their possible relationship to his art.

Charles Krafft was born in Seattle in 1948, and grew up near the Seattle Art Museum, which he frequented, leading to his initial interest in art. In his teenage years, he became interested in the writings of Jack Kerouac and the artwork of Von Dutch, a prominent custom car designer, gunsmith and explosives specialist. He later became fascinated by the art of Morris Graves and the Northwest School. He has named Von Dutch and Graves as his "greatest inspirations." He also spent time with Guy Anderson, also of the Northwest School. He soon moved into a cabin in an artists' commune in Fishtown, near La Conner, Washington, where he lived for 12 years. Initially he went there to attempt to learn to meditate. Although this failed, he first began painting there.

Eventually returning to Seattle, Krafft continued painting until 1991, when he took a class in china painting. Since then he has worked exclusively in ceramics. Seeing the existing designs in ceramics as outdated, he sought to produce designs that would commemorate disastrous events, hence the term Disasterware describes his work. Subjects for his ceramics have included the sinking of the Andrea Doria, Hindu deities, historical murders and the explosion of the Hindenburg, among many others. Krafft's first plates were exhibited at the Davidson Galleries in 1991, and were immediately purchased by collectors. Subsequently, Krafft also began making embroidered ceramic replicas of guns.

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