William Ernst Hentschel was born in New York on June 16, 1892.  He studied art at the Art Students League, Columbia University, University of Kentucky (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, becoming one of the most influential Modernist ceramicists of the early 20th century.

In 1921 he also began teaching at the Cincinnati Art Academy until his retirement in 1957.  In the 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 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”

In 1953 Hentschel developed another innovative technique, again using stencils, but this time utilizing gelatin brayers of different sizes and softness, printing with oil-base ink (later using rubber rollers with water-base inks).  He would cut around 10 stencils to create an image.  Each print is unique with this method.  Hentschel exhibited 15 works at the Closson Gallery in 1956. Hentschel’s first wife was Russian dancer Halina Feodorova, for whom he designed a dance school in Cincinnati.  In 1939 he married his former student, the painter Alza J. Stratton.

William Hentschel died in Burlington, Kentucky in June of 1962.