Jonathan Rickard
Jonathan Rickard got his first job in advertising at 19 after his freshman year at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, but continued on to receive a BFA degree in graphic design. After 44 years of changing technology with advertising agencies, culminating with partnerships in two marketing, advertising, and public relation firms as executive creative director, he was crippled by multiple sclerosis and left the field to open an antiques shop in Connecticut.
In a second parallel life, Mr. Rickard collected American folk art and British pottery of the 18th and 19th centuries made for the American market. This led to studying ceramic history at universities in Staffordshire; writing for The Magazine Antiques, Maine Antique Digest, the annual journal Ceramics in America, and other antiques publications; and developing exhibitions as guest curator at Colonial Williamsburg, the Brandywine River Museum, and other venues. He wrote and designed a book on antique abstract pottery, which was published by the University Press of New England in 2006.
After recovering the ability to walk, Mr. Rickard studied writing at Wesleyan University with Anthony Valerio and is a member of a writers’ workshop in Middletown, Connecticut, where he is finishing work on his first novel. He lives in an 18th century house near the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound.
