South Bear Press about us
 
South Bear Press is a small Midwestern publishing firm that began in 1979 with the production of its first book, …that We Look and See: An Admirer Looks at the Indians by Bauhaus Master Potter Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985). In the years since, it has published a small number of other titles, including two additional books on the extraordinary life and accomplishments of Marguerite Wildenhain (Marguerite A Diary to Franz Wildenhain and Marguerite Wildenhain and the Bauhaus), a French-born studio potter, who became one of the century’s most influential teachers, craftspersons and artists. Most recently, it has published Our Natural Treasure: Genevieve Kroshus by Geraldine Schwarz (see dust jacket below), a book about life and tradition in a rural Norwegian-American community, Highlandville, Iowa, as told through conversations with one of the town’s life-long residents. When first established, South Bear Press was to large extent an off-shoot of South Bear School, an innovative school of the arts (pottery, painting, poetry and so on), established in 1970, in a fourteen-room former “hospital house” in the tiny Highlandville (population 30), adjacent to a trout stream called South Bear Creek. After six productive summers, South Bear School had outgrown its Highlandville setting, and in 1976, it was moved to nearby Decorah, Iowa, the home of Luther College. The school was reestablished on wooded property a few miles outside of Decorah in a vacant 65-room former nursing home. As with Highlandville, this land is also bisected by Björnebekk (Norwegian for Bear Creek), so the school and the site are fittingly known as South Bear School or South Bear.
Contact South Bear Press, 2248 South Bear Road, Decorah, Iowa 52101 USA. Email <dschwarz50@hotmail.com>mailto:dschwarz50@hotmail.comshapeimage_7_link_0
Book jacket design by Jorunn Musil Ceramic jar by Dean Schwarz. South Bear Press Click here to go to Schwarz stamp booklet • About South Bear Press • Marguerite Wildenhain and the Bauhaus • Other Wildenhain books • Our Natural Treasure: Genevieve Kroshus • Packin’ Cats for the Arrr-meee • About South Bear School