Marianne Cole was born in Holland, coming to Australia at the age of 14, and working as a laboratory technician at the University of Adelaide. On her return from a working trip to America in 1969, she enrolled in a ceramics course at Elizabeth Technical College, attended a summer school at the University of Armidale conducted by Robert Hughan and then set up a small studio at home, holding her first solo exhibition in 1976. In 1979, after working for a time with Dot and Eddie Andrews at Paris Creek, she moved her studio to Crafers in the Adelaide Hills, where she still lives and works. She was a tenant at the Jam Factory in 1982-3, has held positions on the Crafts Council of SA and the Potters' Guild of SA, and has travelled extensively overseas. A trip to Alice Springs in 1983 inspired her to make her well-known Outback range of platters, vases, etc with oxidised glazes in shades of blue and tan. Her more recent work features complex surface decoration on light, thin-walled vessel forms and she has also experimented with salt- and shino-glazing. Her works are signed with an incised or painted 'Marianne' sometimes with an impressed map of Australia.