Waylande Gregory

Waylande Desantis Gregory (1905 Baxter Springs, Kansas – 1971, New Jersey) was one of the most innovative and prolific American art-deco ceramics sculptors of the early 20th century. His groundbreaking techniques enabled him to create monumental ceramic sculpture, such as the Fountain of the Atoms and Light Dispelling Darkness, which had hitherto not been possible. He also developed revolutionary glazing and processing methods, and was a seminal figure in the studio glass movement.

Waylande Gregory was born in Baxter Springs, Kansas in 1905. His mother was a concert pianist, and his father was a farmer. From an early age he showed precocious artistic talent, beginning with small sculptures of animals in earth, as well as prodigious musical talent, even composing his own pieces. He at one time declared that he would no longer play pieces by Bach, but only original pieces he had written himself.

In 1913, his mother moved to Pittsburg, Kansas in order to gain better educational opportunities for her three sons. At age 11, Gregory enrolled at the laboratory grade school at State Manual Training Normal, a teacher’s college, where he was taught by student teachers who were under supervision (the school would later become Pittsburg State University of Kansas). There, he studied crafts including carpentry and ceramics.

By the age of 14, Gregory had made a bust of the school principal in only six sittings, as well as a ceramic statue called The Spirit of Athletics which was a composite of the best parts of three classmates. While in high school, he won awards for sculpture at the Kansas State Fair.

After high school he moved to Kansas City to attend the Kansas City Art Institute, but immediately began to receive commissions for the sculptural decoration of the administration building at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, a statue of Pan for a Kansas City park, and a plaster relief sculpture for the Masonic Temple Building in Wichita.

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