Current & Coming |
Questions for the Curators: Ellen Paul Denker and Brian Gallagher
October 21, 2009 | Long before Lenox was known for its tableware, the New Jersey-based firm was responsible for some of the most exquisite handpainted porcelain produced in this country, which is the subject of an exhibition Faces & Flowers: Painting on Lenox China, on view at the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte through January 2010. This rare showing, drawn mostly from private collections, features more than 70 of the little known jewels made by Lenox China and its predecessor, the Ceramic Art Company (1889-1906). The plates, vases, and other wares decorated by European and American artists such as Bruno Geyer, William Morley, and Sturgis Laurence graced the residences of prominent citizens, including the orchid fancier Charles G. Roebling and the Newark industrialist Franklin Murphy, governor of New Jersey from 1902 to 1905. Guest curator and ceramics historian Ellen Denker and the Mint's curator of decorative arts Brian Gallagher explain what is special about this exhibition, its objects, and Walter Scott Lenox's innovative approach. The small but lavishly illustrated catalogue with an informative essay by Denker can be ordered through the University of Richmond Museums, which organized the exhibition (museums@richmond.edu or 804-287-6424). How did the idea for this exhibition come about?
Ellen Denker: I have long wanted to exhibit painting on china as an art form separate from Lenox company history or general art histories of the era. When Richard Waller, executive director of the University of Richmond Museums contacted me about being the consulting curator for an exhibition of a private collection that featured the early china paintings of Lenox I was thrilled. We expanded the contents of the exhibition to include examples from several more private and public collections.
What is your interest in china painting?
Ellen: I'm interested in china painting because it's a forgotten art. Art pottery and studio ceramics, in both practice and aesthetics, eclipsed china painting so completely in the 20th century that the importance of the earlier work and artists in defining the parameters of the new ceramic arts, building an audience/appreciation for clay, and establishing the nature of studio practice has gone unnoticed.
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Current & Coming |
Tradition, Innovation, and Good Design: The Ceramics of David Gil
April 9, 2009 | "'Bennington'" as the Warner Collector's Guide to North American Pottery and Porcelain notes, "refers not to a specific company but a town in Vermont that is well-known for the pottery made by a number of firms." While the authors of the guide had nineteenth-century makers of Rockingham-glazed yellowware and parian in mind, that entry may now be updated to include David Gil, who arrived in 1948, and his Bennington Potters, Inc. (originally named Cooperative Design, Bennington, Vermont), which is still active today.
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Current & Coming |
Tulip Vases and Trivets: Contemporary ceramics by Sanam Emami
March 12, 2009 | Sanam Emami is a studio potter with a distinctive appreciation for the past. Her signature form is the tulip vase, the multi spouted, tin-glazed concoction that dates from the tulip craze that swept much of Western Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In Emami's hands however, the vase becomes contemporary and personal. Her current exhibition, Organic Precisionism, at the Greenwich House Pottery in New York City showcases iterations of a form she has been developing for the past several years. Crisp and precisely decorated, Emami's tulip vases and trivets are on view through March 14.
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Current & Coming |
Earth and Fire at the Alliance Française
February 10, 2009 | Astonishingly, not one but two intriguing offerings of French craftsmanship can be seen in the shoebox gallery of the Alliance Française in Earth and Fire: French Master Artisans, the inaugural exhibition of a biennial series devoted to France's craft heritage. The first comprises a selection of works by six maîtres d'art, a designation that has been bestowed on ninety artists and artisans in the last fifteen years by the French Ministry of Culture.
Like Japan's Living National Treasures, these talented individuals have attained the acme in their respective media. Moreover, they share their skills with the next generation by taking on state-sponsored apprentices. The six master craftsmen-and they are all men, most at mid-career-display works in clay, metal, and glass. As the title implies, these materials come from the earth and are formed by fire, traits shared by the sixty-plus works of pottery also on view.
Sitzmaschine, model #670, Designed by Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), Manufactured by J.& J. Kohn, Austria, ca. 1905.Bent beech wood, steel; height 39
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