Edwin Scheier

Mary died in May 2007 at 99. Edwin died less than a year later in April 2008 at the age of 97.

Filmmaker Ken Browne examined the lives and works of the Scheiers in his 2000 documentary, Four Hands, One Heart.

Edwin Scheier's work often employed symbols for life, birth, and rebirth. The figures applied to the thrown vessels often involve people within people, womb-like, or within animals. Scheier often utilized stylistic techniques learned during his time in Oaxaca. His designs were often compared to those of Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee but ultimately, as an artist, they were his own. In 1988, Edward Lebow described Scheier's figure work as showing “the humorous lyrical primitivism of the personal subconscious.”

The Scheiers spent most of the 1960s in Oaxaca. They examined, studied, and learned the techniques of the Zapotec peoples in weaving, painting, sculpture, and pottery. Many of Edwin's themes are enhanced in these mediums by the play of positive and negative space.

During the summer of 1945, the Scheiers were invited to travel to Puerto Rico to train ceramic arts students, for a small pottery that the Puerto Rican government intended to establish. The Scheiers visited briefly, after which an administrator of the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, or PRIDECO, traveled in America with Edwin, learning more about the ceramics industry.

Although never formally trained, Scheier attended free seminars at Cooper Union, and also worked for a silversmith and a ceramicist. He often examined works in the city's museums, and first, and briefly, met his future wife, Mary Goldsmith, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A period as a public puppeteer led him to take a position teaching crafts through the WPA. This led to other positions in the WPA, and it was through one of these roles, as a field supervisor of craft programs, that he again met Mary, who was directing a ceramics studio at the Big Stone Gap Federal Art Gallery in Abingdon, Virginia. They were married on August 19, 1937, eventually resigned their posts with the WPA, and after a period as itinerant puppeteers, established a long-term partnership as fine ceramicists.

Edwin Scheier (November 11, 1910 – April 20, 2008) was an American artist, best known for his ceramic works with his wife, Mary Scheier.