Two Generations, One Love

The family poses in front of another Jacqueline Warren painting: clockwise from left, Kim, Allie, Bryn, Tom and Ajax.

It all started with a Thomas Hoadley porcelain bowl. Marie Prater brought it into her Springfield, Mo., home 20 years ago with no inkling that she was starting a family tradition.

But at the time her son Tom, following in his father Bill’s footsteps as an ophthalmologist, had his eye on a certain blond radiologist. And when he wanted to give her a present, he asked his mother’s opinion of a Hoadley vessel he’d seen at the Craft Alliance in St. Louis. Marie, who was quickly becoming a serious ceramics collector, advised, “It’s pretty. She’ll like it even if she doesn’t like collecting.”

As it turned out, Kim did like collecting. “I was stunned at Tom’s first gift,” she recalls. So stunned, in fact, that she ended up marrying him. What’s more, Kim’s attraction to sculpture and form balance her husband’s appreciation of color and paint. The couple’s taste for sculptural ceramics has led to a second-generation Prater collection that complements Marie’s ceramics and Bill’s equally sophisticated turned wood.

The complete article “Two Generations, One Love ” can be found in the February 2006 issue of AmericanStyle.