Hanging wall cupboard attributed to Jacob Spitler (1774–1837), Shenandoah, now Page, County, Va., circa 1800–01. Yellow pine, brass hinges, replaced brass knobs, original painted decoration, overall 35 by 18½ by 12 inches. This is the first recorded example of a hanging wall cupboard with decoration attributed to Johannes Spitler. A Spitler decorated tall clock is in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg. Spitler furniture was unknown to scholars prior to the early 1970s. This cupboard was discovered in August 2004 and subsequently sold by Green Valley Auctions of Mount Crawford, Va., in 2004.
"Hand and Heart: Collecting, Curating and Creating American Folk Art," Yale's annual Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque Memorial Lecture and Symposium on March 30–31 will offer a keynote address by Steven Mintz followed by presentations by Erin Eisenbarth, Catherine Kelly, Sumpter Priddy III, Stacy Hollander, Stuart Frank, Elizabeth Stillinger, Paul D'Ambrosio and Jane Katcher.
Extravagantly produced but understated in its account of Katcher's journey from novice to connoisseur, Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence arrays 203 objects, each exquisite in its own way. About half of the pieces are published for the first time. Detailed entries feature a bibliography and extensive provenance, mapping the movement of objects from families through the trade.
"One of the most important things Jane did was for dealers," says Camden, Maine, ceramics specialist Rufus Foshee, who advised Katcher on her large collection of English pottery. "To my knowledge, there is no other book that honors dealers in this way."
One of the book's most lasting contributions may be as a record of the collaboration between Katcher and her chief advisors, David Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles, Schorsch's business partner since 1995.
Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence provides a window onto the field. In its general conception and design, the book resembles American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to The American Folk Art Museum, no coincidence, perhaps, given that Schorsch played a significant role in building that collection as well.
The dealer credits his mother, Peggy Schorsch, now retired and living in Texas, as his first and finest teacher. He lists other great tastemakers: Mary Allis, Roger Bacon, Robert Bishop, Robert Carlen, Henry Coger, Barry Cohen, Robert E. Crawford, Ralph Esmerian, Austin Fine, Avis and Rockwell Gardiner, Theodore Kapnek, Robert Kinnaman, Joel and Kate Kopp, Judy Lenett, Alistair B. Martin, David Pottinger, Marguerite Riordan, Albert Sack, Harold Sack, G.W. Samaha, Bert and Gail Savage, Stephen Score, George Schoellkopf, Peter Tillou and Don Walters.
Indian weathervane, Pennsylvania, probably Dauphin County, circa 1780–1820. Iron, copper, traces of original red paint and verdigris; 76 by 35½ inches. A related though smaller sheet-metal Indian weathervane with a long history of ownership in Lancaster, Penn., is in the collection of the Heritage Center of Lancaster.
Katcher, Schorsch and Smiles spent three years working on
Expressions of Innocence and Experience, recruiting a talented team to the project. Gavin Ashworth's photography is flawless. The book was artfully conceived by John Hubbard, who also designed
American Radiance.
Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence began with the casual suggestion that Katcher write a magazine article. It grew into a complex, interdisciplinary study of aesthetics and material culture. Edited by Ruth Wolfe, the book features essays by Jean M. Burks and Robert Shaw of the Shelburne Museum; Paul D'Ambrosio of the New York State Historical Association; Erin Eisenbarth, Robin Jaffee Frank and Patricia Kane of Yale University Art Gallery; Richard Miller of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum at Colonial Williamsburg; Charles Santore, author of The Windsor Style in America; and Philip Zea of Historic Deerfield.
Given stacks of transparencies, contributors were invited to write about what interested them. As a result, the essays are a series of scholarly impressions, observations and insights that speak to the subjective, inherently personal, experience of looking at art.
"This book is not about me. It's about the objects, chosen and dearly loved by me," Katcher, an elegant, meticulous woman, said emphatically over a recent breakfast in Manhattan. If Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence has a single theme, it is love: the love of parents and children in early America; Katcher's love of refined, nuanced art that acutely records universal but transitory human emotion; the artist's love for his craft; and Schorsch's prodigious, and perhaps equal, love for art and the business of art, a profession he embarked on at age 14.
Lift top chest with drawer, attributed to Robert Crossman (1707–1799), Taunton, Mass., 1731. White pine, iron cotter pin hinges, cast brass pulls and escutcheons with bright-cut engravings; 32 by 35½ by 17¼ inches. Twenty-one Taunton chests are known. This one was auctioned in 2001 by Independent Appraisers and Auctioneers of Bronxville, N.Y.
Katcher identifies intellectual and spiritual growth as the most compelling rewards of collecting. She was in her teens when she made her first purchases, a pair of watercolors, on a Greenwich Village street. Originally a New Yorker, she spent weekends in the city's great museums, admiring Gauguin, Rousseau and Picasso. She completed her medical studies in Chicago before beginning her career in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s.
On weekend rambles in the country, she bought pottery, textiles and small folk art objects. The 1984 Museum of Modern Art exhibition "Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art" opened Katcher's eyes to the "power and majesty" of African art, which she began to seriously collect along with Northwest Coast and other tribal art in the 1980s. Her interest in contemporary art, which she also collects, abated as she learned more about untutored, unselfconscious works made for personal use.
"I never set out to build a collection," notes Katcher, who describes her growth as the unexpected consequence of many hours spent talking to experts. Raymond Wielgus, a fellow collector of African art, taught Katcher "the basics of how one evaluates any object. These lessons have proven invaluable, and I perpetually hear Raymond's voice reminding me of the tough and discriminating rules of connoisseurship by which I must play."
Deed box or trunk, Pennsylvania, probably Philadelphia, circa 1825–1850. This piece is tin-plated sheet iron with cast brass handle and the original decoration. It measures 5 by 8 by 4 inches.
Beginning in 1987, Katcher started acquiring handmade and hand painted American love tokens, remembrances and valentines, many of them from Carlson & Stevenson in Manchester Center, Vt.
"Her genius," says Tim Stevenson, "was in completely focusing on schoolgirl art, not only for its aesthetic beauty but also for its importance in women's history in this country. She wanted material that was in outstanding condition and contained written verse and the artist's original information."
The Katchers enjoyed long weekends in New York as often as their busy schedules allowed. Around 1990, Jane Katcher visited David Schorsch for the first time. The first important piece she bought from the dealer, now in Woodbury, Conn., was a dramatic spatterware teapot from the Deyerle collection. A schoolgirl-decorated worktable with a rare scenic view of Mount Vernon was the turning point in her relationship with Schorsch and Smiles.
"Eileen said unhesitatingly that we should offer the table to Jane. She bought it and that was really the beginning," says Schorsch.
"It got to a point where it didn't make sense to go elsewhere. David represented me so well. He has a remarkable and brilliant mind," says Katcher.
Bucket bench-cupboard, Pennsylvania, circa 1800–1830. Poplar, original painted decoration; 77½ by 44 by 15½ inches. Ex-collection of Fruitlands Museum and G.W. Samaha, this bench was sold in 1986 as part of the Don and Faye Walters collection. Sumpter Priddy III included it in the 2004 traveling exhibition, "American Fancy: Exuberance in The Arts, 1790–1840.”
Katcher uses the words nobility, economy of means, power, grace, spirit and unique vision to describe the art she finds compelling. Decorated with hypnotic swirls of paint, an otherwise crisply tailored bucket bench fits her criteria. The bench was a highlight of the Don and Faye Walters Sale in 1986. Similarly bold in conception is a Lancaster County slide-lid box. Known since the 1920s, it was auctioned by Freeman's last year. A hanging wall cupboard by Johannes Spitler is strikingly original in its design and decoration. It made headlines when it was discovered in an under-stairs closet in 2004.
"I admire powerfully packed things that communicate in economical ways," says Katcher. Forced to pick one piece, it would be "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt," which Katcher first saw around 2000. "Six Children," a Brewster oil on canvas of circa 1810, is a close second.
Katcher's intellectual bent is reflected in her website, www.janekatchercollection.com, which provides new findings on objects as information becomes available. Says the collector, "One of my dreams is that the family depicted in 'Six Children' will be identified. We've been hard at work and have come up with nothing to date."
Schorsch's favorite works include "Mary Gay and Lucy Gay," an arresting, circa 1780 portrait of two Suffield, Conn., girls, shown as if through portholes, and "George Weld Hilliard," a severely abstract portrait attributed to Sheldon Peck. Of sentimental interest is a small yellow trinket box that Schorsch, exhibiting for the first time, bought at the Connecticut Antiques Show from Ann Timpson, who got it from Wayne Pratt.
"They sold it to me for $175. A week later I was in Ralph Esmerian's office, showing him the box. He put on his jeweler's loupe and a huge smile came across his face. He was smitten. Through a series of circumstances I was able to buy it back," says Schorsch.
The most elegant Baltimore album quilts, such as this one, made by Sarah and Mary J. Pool, circa 1845–55, have designs attributed to Mary Simon, a German-born Baltimore immigrant who married a carpet weaver. This quilt descended in a Maryland family before being acquired by Baltimore collectors Austin and Jill Fine. Sotheby's chose it as the cover lot in the January 1987 auction of the fine collection. Cotton fabrics, appliqued, with ink details; 106 by 107 inches.
With the help of David Schorsch and Eileen Smiles, Jane Katcher did the all but unimaginable: assemble a breathtaking collection in a well-trodden field over a short time.
Is Katcher's collection mature? "There is probably no such thing, although I am to a degree limited by space," she says, leaving open the possibility that she will continue to collect at the same pace.
Eileen Smiles says ruefully, "The number of Jane-quality pieces that come along each year is getting smaller, but her enthusiasm is undiminished."
Will Katcher sell? "It's not even remotely on my mind. I hope that I have many more years to enjoy these beautiful things with my family," says Katcher, adding, "It would please me immensely if my children wanted to live with some of these objects."
"Zest and enjoyment are the marks of a great object," Robert Shaw writes in an introductory essay, "Humanizing The Mundane." Zest and enjoyment are also the hallmarks of Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence, offering these splendid treasures for all to share, at least on the printed page.
