"Three-handled Mug (tyg),"
Leona Nicholson, 1908. Newcomb Pottery, glazed earthenware
decorated with iris.
NEW YORK CITY - The china-decorating fervor that swept the United
States from the late 1870s to the early Twentieth Century -
giving rise to this country's art and studio pottery tradition
and providing women artists and artisans with a means of support
- is the focus of "," an exhibition on view in the Metropolitan's
Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of Americana Art through April
14.
The exhibition, a complement to the concurrent "Candace Wheeler:
The Art and Enterprise of American Design, 1875-1900," features
some 40 works, dating from approximately 1853 to the 1920s, drawn
exclusively from the Metropolitan's comprehensive collections.
The Eugénie Prendergast Exhibitions of American Art are made
possible by a grant from Jan and Warren Adelson.
Among the highlights of the exhibition are superb works by M.
Louise McLaughlin, Maria Longworth Nichols (founder, in 1880, of
the Rookwood Pottery), Adelaide Alsop Robineau and Celia Thaxter.
The Englishmen Edward Lycett and John Bennett, important figures
in the early years of the china decorating movement in America,
are also represented.
Many factors contributed to a burgeoning interest in china
decorating in the late 1800s. Prosperous post-Civil War Americans
enjoyed unprecedented amounts of leisure time for artistic and
cultural pursuits. Exhibitions such as the 1876 Centennial
Exhibition in Philadelphia introduced the country to a wide range
of ceramics as well as to the distant cultures of the Near and
Far East, and to the English Reform and Aesthetic movements that
sought to infuse art into all aspects of life.
Some of the earliest works in the exhibition were created in the
ateliers of retailers supplying special-order goods to private
individuals as well as to such commercial establishments as
hotels and saloons.
On view is a group of four pitchers featuring commissioned
designs painted by anonymous decorators, some with elaborate
names or initials adorned with naturalistic flowers. One pitcher
displays a portrait of a hotel. Another, probably exhibited at
the New York Crystal Palace exhibition of 1853 by the retailer
Haughwout & Daily, bears a rendering of the great seal of the
United States, suggesting a possible china pattern for a
presidential service. Mrs Abraham Lincoln later ordered a service
in a similar pattern; much of it remains at the White House
today.
The Englishmen Edward Lycett (1833-1910) and John Bennett
(1840-1907) had both trained in the Staffordshire pottery
tradition and then developed highly skilled and individualistic
styles. Both artists encouraged china decorating by teaching
classes in their studios and by firing amateurs' work in their
kilns.
The Society of Decorative Art in New York City - founded by
Candace Wheeler in 1877 - enlisted Bennett in 1878 to teach
classes in underglaze china painting. In the late 1870s and early
1880s, Lycett conducted classes in his New York shop and in St
Louis and Cincinnati, Ohio.
At the same time, Celia Thaxter, an essayist, poet, watercolorist
and china painter from New Hampshire, was painting designs based
on Japanese art and, later, classical sources. Thaxter's 1888
vase depicting olive branches and a Greek inscription from
Sophocles's Oedipus at Colonus is among the highlights of
the exhibition.
With the exception of Bennett, Lucett, Thaxter and their circles,
the amateur china painting movement made its first appearance in
Cincinnati. There, German immigrant and ceramic chemist Karl
Langenbeck taught Maria Longworth Nichols how to paint on china.
Nichols, along with M. Louise McLaughlin, who had studied at the
Cincinnati School of Design, began by decorating imported
porcelain "blanks." Both women evolved into extraordinarily
successful artists who designed, painted and decorated their own
wares.
Serious rivals, they both received widespread critical acclaim
and produced pottery considered among the foremost examples of
art pottery in the United States. McLaughlin, founder of the
Cincinnati Pottery Club in 1879, produced and decorated two large
vases for the club's first annual exhibition in May 1880, one of
which is on view in "."
At the time, two monumental works, one of which McLaughlin called
the "Ali Baba Vase," were the two largest pieces of art pottery
ever produced in the country. In direct response, Maria Longworth
Nichols produced her counterpart, the "Aladdin Vase," which
demonstrated her fascination with Japanese art through the
extravagant use of marine creatures - ray, carp, eels and turtles
in high relief captured within a gilt net - drawn from Japanese
print sources.
Nichols would go on to found, in 1880, one of the most successful
and long-lived of the art potteries, Rookwood, which remained in
existence for nearly a century. Before closing its doors in 1967,
Rookwood had provided a venue for hundreds of talented female
artists to professionally decorate ceramic wares.
Works by Nichols and McLaughlin are on view in the exhibition,
including three examples of McLaughlin's porcelain, which she
called "Losanti."
Other potteries represented in "Women China Decorators" include
the Newcomb Pottery, founded at the women's school at Tulane
University, Newcomb College, in New Orleans, and the Saturday
Evening Girls, whose purpose was to educate and train young girls
who had recently immigrated and were then situated in Boston's
North End.
One of the most prominent figures in American art ceramics,
Adelaide Alsop Robineau, is best known for her extraordinary work
in porcelain, which she endeavored to fabricate and decorate in
her Syracuse studio. Many examples of Robineau's work are on view
in the exhibition, including her Peruvian Serpent Bowl, which
features intricately carved and compressed crouching Mayan
figures and a deep, rich, matte brown glaze. Robineau's
experimentation with glazes is evident in the works on view in
the exhibition, which include a tiny, 3 -inch high covered jar
with a jewel-like crystalline finish, and the rich celadon,
turquoise and gun metal grays seen on various bottle-shaped
vases.
In addition to decorated ceramics, the exhibition includes
related publications of the period that offered advice to
aspiring amateurs while providing step-by-step decorating
instruction and aesthetic guidance.
Also on view are trade catalogs advertising a wide array of
materials necessary for decorating china, including porcelain
blanks, enamels and brushes, and the new portable coal- or
gas-fired kilns that enabled the amateur china decorator to fire
her work at home.
The curator of "" is Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Anthony W. and
Lulu C. Wang curator of American decorative arts. Assistance is
provided by Barbara Veith, research assistant, department of
American decorative arts. Exhibition design is by Michael
Langley, with graphic design by Jill Hammarberg and lighting by
Zack Zanolli, all of the museum's design department.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is at 1000 Fifth Avenue. Hours
are Friday and Saturday, 9:30 am to 9 pm; Sunday and Tuesday to
Thursday, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm. For information, 212-535-7710.
