The Voulkos Clay Sculpture

Although architect Frank Lloyd Wright sited many of the sculptures at Fallingwater, Edgar Kaufmann, jr. positioned this piece, Funiculated Smog, at one end of the guest house pool - its placement described by art critic Kurt Shaw as “a stone perfectly punctuating a Zen garden.”

Pioneering ceramic sculptor Peter Voulkos would often stand on a ladder to get the height he needed for his large wheel thrown forms, then cut them apart, and model them over a clay skeleton, as he did to create this sculpture, also known as Burnt Smog, in the late 1950s. A highly prominent and original figure in ceramics during the second half of the twentieth century, Voulkos succeeded in significant technical innovations in the field, including mastering kiln firing of large-scale works, with some of his sculptures weighing more than half a ton.

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