Florence Cary Koehler

Florence Cary Koehler was born in Jackson, Michigan, November 8, 1861, and grew up in Missouri. She moved to Kansas City in 1881 where she married Frederick Koehler. She was Head of the Ceramics Department at Kansas City Art School. She moved with her husband to Chicago, ca. 1893, where she exhibited ceramics in the Colombian Exposition of 1893. She briefly established an interior decorating business in the Marshall Fields building in Chicago.

In December 1895 she was accepted as a china decorator at the Rookwood Pottery, and she remained there until 1897. There does seem to be some confusion about her name, probably because the initials she used as an artist mark "FDK" did not match her actual initials. In the 1930s she moved to Rome, where she died on May 4, 1944. Although difficult to find, collector interest in her work remains below average.