This stunning high fired ceramic charger was purchased at the Sedona Arts Center in 2006. It is signed by the artist, Firuse Stalcup. The glaze colors include shades of blue and tan. The interior is smooth and the perimeter has a grainy texture that is highly decorated with a sgraffito technique.

Firuse Stalcup (1945-2019) was an extraordinary woman.

A native of Iran, she grew up in a talented, prominent Iranian family, before re-locating to Austria. Fluent in five languages, she received numerous scholarships before obtaining her master’s degree in chemical engineering from the Polytechnic University in Vienna, Austria.

A position with the Atomic Energy Commission ultimately led her to the US and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she met and married a colleague, Marvel Stalcup.

While raising her family of six children in Falmouth for 15 years, Ms. Stalcup founded and operated a nursery school, the Little Red Schoolhouse in East Falmouth, and worked with Harvard educators. Her artistic life blossomed as she began to paint and create ceramics, calling upon her expertise as a chemist to develop unique glazes. Sometimes, she took to the high seas, scuba-diving with her husband on research trips.

The Stalcups lived in a handmade Sedona adobe brick home she and her husband built, with original tile work, sculpture and a huge art studio where she worked in a variety of ceramic forms and became known as The Persian Potter. Always an experimenter and researcher by nature, she could draw and paint in several mediums and won numerous prizes and received notable recognition for her work. She recently turned to fabric fine art, making shirts and dresses with hand-painted designs.

She also loved to dance. An exceptional chef and master gardener, she enjoyed entertaining and shared her culinary skills with many people, often using bountiful produce from her organic gardens.

Well-known in the Sedona community, her ceramic work can be seen in numerous public locations there. In addition she exhibited in galleries on Cape Cod. Her artwork is in private collections in the United States and Europe. A member of the Sedona Visual Artists Coalition, she was active with Gardens for Humanity and with Northern Arizona Watercolor Society as treasurer, newsletter editor and member of several Village of Oak Creek art critique groups.