Nautch Dancer (c. 1930): Art, History and Details

Nautch Dancer (c. 1930) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Waylande Gregory (American, 1905–1971); Cowan Pottery Studio (America, Rocky River, Ohio, 1920–1931).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Gregory sculpted human and animal figures in eclectic styles ranging from realistic to highly stylized, as seen in this ceramic sculpture. It depicts Gilda Gray, a dancer notorious for her “bodyshaking . . . wicked torso movements” performed to jazz or blues music. In the 1925 Ziegfield Follies, Gray added exotic South Seas dances to her repertoire, including the “nautch dance,” named after the nautch—a traditional, East Indian, form-fitting, pleated dress—she wore during the performance. Although Gray refused the sculptor’s request for a personal modeling session, she did provide him with an onstage seat in the wings, from which he carefully studied her movements during several performances in Cleveland.

Object facts

• Title: Nautch Dancer
• Date: c. 1930
• Creator attribution: Waylande Gregory (American, 1905–1971); Cowan Pottery Studio (America, Rocky River, Ohio, 1920–1931)
• Culture: America, Ohio, Cleveland
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 44.2 x 21.3 x 12.1 cm (17 3/8 x 8 3/8 x 4 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1930.118

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Basset, Mark and Naumann, Victoria. Cowan Pottery and the Cleveland School. Atglen: Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 1997. pp. 136-7.
• American Craft Museum. Craft in the Machine Age: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft (1920–1945). New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995. p 16.
• Hawley, Henry. “Cowan Pottery and the Cleveland Museum of Art.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76, no. 7 (September 1989): 238–263.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.