William Ernst Hentschel

William Ernst Hentschel was born in New York on June 16, 1892. He studied art at the Art Students League and Columbia University in New York, the University of Kentucky, where he got his degree, and the Cincinnati Art Academy. In 1913 Hentschel was hired as a designer at Rookwood Pottery where he worked until 1932 and produced over 4000 designs for ceramics. A large body of his work involved incised and molded pieces.

In 1921 he also began teaching at the Cincinnati Art Academy until his retirement in 1957. In early 1928 he developed a printmaking method that involved using an airbrush with multiple stencils. He showed these works at the Closson Gallery in 1929, Roullier’s Gallery in Chicago in 1930 and at the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1932. He also had an exhibit of around 40 prints at the Traxel Galleries in Cincinnati in the early ‘30s. He began to call this technique “Aquatone.” Collector interest in his work is considered to be above average. William Hentschel died in Burlington, Kentucky in June of 1962.