Whimsical Wedgwood At San Diego Museum Of Art

SAN DIEGO, CALIF.

:In conjunction with "Maxfield Parrish, Master of Make-Believe," the San Diego Museum of Art is presenting a fanciful selection of Wedgwood's Fairyland lusterware from the collection of Maurice Kawashima. The 27 pieces on view through September 11 were all produced at the Wedgwood manufactory in Etruria, England, in the decade after World War I and feature imaginative patterns inhabited with fairies and sprites, goblins and dragons.

The tremendously popular Fairyland designs helped to jumpstart profits for the ailing Wedgwood company in the 1920s, and offered solace in the form of fantasy to a public only recently recovering from the upheavals of war. The pieces also reveal the genius of Fairyland designer Daisy Makeig-Jones, whose fierce imagination created both stories and patterns with such names as Fairy Condola, Butterfly Woman and Tree Serpent. Makeig-Jones did not present her work as depictions of make-believe, but rather as parallel histories and hidden worlds to both amuse and torment mortals.

The dazzling jewel-like colors are enriched with the addition of metals - such as copper - to the glazes, yielding the fantastical sheen that is characteristic of lusterware. One of the most impressive objects in the exhibition is a vase with the Bubbles pattern, which tells the story of the creation of the earth, of a horrid fairy-eating dragon and the intervention of the goddess Benten.

The presentation will feature examples of Makeig-Jones's original black and white etched designs for the vases, which will enable visitors to more fully experience the magical world she creates.

Kawashima is a passionate collector of fine and decorative arts. His interest in ceramics reaches beyond Wedgwood's Fairyland, both into the Twentieth Century with masterworks from his native Japan and as far back as the Eighteenth Century with distinguished examples of Meissen. His Fairyland collection is lent to the museum in memory of Dr Richard P. Wunder.

The San Diego Museum of Art is at 1450 El Prado, Balboa Park. For information. www.sdsmart.org or 619-232-7931.