The High's Prized Collection of Decorative Art

ATLANTA, GA. - "In December 1979, I had a job interview with Katharine Gross Farnham, curator of decorative art at the High Museum of Art, who was seeking a successor for her position," Donald C. Peirce writes in his introduction to Art & Enterprise: American Decorative Art, 1825-1917, The Virginia Carroll Crawford Collection.

Thus began an ambitious acquisitions program that united the substantial talents and resources the High's past and present curators, Atlanta patron Virginia Crawford, and David A. Hanks, a New York-based decorative arts consultant.

Mission accomplished; the Crawford collection today stands as one of the most impressive assemblages of Nineteenth Century furniture, silver and ceramics in the country. Ranging from Tucker porcelain and Meeks furniture to commissions by Frank LLoyd Wright and Greene and Greene, 230 works are featured in the display that continues at the museum through September 26.

The project's culmination in a book and exhibition coincides with the fruition of scholarly projects underway elsewhere in the country. Perhaps its most striking parallel is with "Masterpieces of American Furniture From the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute," a show and catalogue organized by Institute curator Anna D'Ambrosio with the contributions of two dozen other furniture scholars. "Masterpieces" remains on display in Utica, N.Y. through October 31.

For the High, the impetus to collect may have come from the landmark exhibition "Nineteenth Century America: Furniture And Other Decorative Arts," mounted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1970. Progressive acquisitions agendas at the Philadelphia and Brooklyn Museums also influenced the Atlanta museum. Brooklyn, where Peirce had been a curator until he was recruited by the High Museum, had collected Victoriana since the 1940s. In 1953, Brooklyn was the first to install Nineteenth Century American period rooms.

The High Museum of the 1970s had expansive, if somewhat fractured, collecting ambitions. Various donors had made possible the purchase of Eighteenth Century English ceramics and a half dozen pieces of Eighteenth Century American furniture. Southern decorative arts were shown in "Furniture of the Georgia Piedmont," mounted for the Bicentennial. Increasingly, however, the museum believed that its collecting future lay with Nineteenth Century American furniture.

Enter Virginia Carroll Crawford, who not long after she joined High's board of directors in 1978 endorsed a plan developed by former Atlanta Historical Society curator Catherine Lynn. Writes Hanks, "With rare wisdom, she understood the underlying needs and expenses of developing an important collection, and with a receptivity that was daring for the time and place, she endorsed the first systematic attempt to form a comprehensive art museum collection of American Nineteenth Century decorative art of the highest quality."

The museum's first purchase was a labeled Baltimore cabinet made by Thomas Godey between 1867 and 1872. "The object testified to the broad appeal of elaborate Parisian-style furniture made outside New York in the 1860s and 1870s," writes Hanks, who likened the inlaid casepiece to pieces by the New York cabinetmaker Alexander Roux.

Lack of exhibition space forced the High to warehouse the first Crawford acquisitions. It was not until 1983, when the High Museum opened new galleries designed by Richard Meier, that the treasures were finally exhibited. They remained there, with subsequent additions, through 1996.

Organized chronologically by style, Art & Enterprise outlines the years between 1830 and World War I. Dominant themes emerge. As sketched by Peirce, they include the industrialization of the United States through the 1850s; the influence of architects, and architect-designed furnishings, from 1850 on; the triumph of mass-manufacturing and mass-marketing; and the revolt against the same in the late Nineteenth Century. These trends are set against a landscape of dramatically changing communications and transportation industries.

Outstanding Classical period decor in the Crawford collection includes a five-piece Philadelphia tea service by Edward Lownes; a pair of Argand lamps marked with the name of its manufacturer, Messenger & Sons of London and Birmingham, and with the name of its retailer, Jones, Low & Ball, Boston; a Tucker pitcher made by the United States' first porcelain factory in Philadelphia; an unmarked Grecian-style pier table with an elaborate, prismatic plinth; and a labeled Joseph Meeks & Sons card table.

From the industrialized period, 1835-1900, the collection includes glass from manufactories in Providence and Pittsburgh; and pottery from Jersey City, Bennington and Baltimore. Most interesting is an extensive selection of cast iron furniture by various makers for indoor and outdoor use. An upholstered iron Rococo style ottoman by M.L. Greene of Cincinnati reflects the supremacy of John Henry Belter's stylish designs in mahogany.

The Gothic and Elizabethan Revivals, 1845-65, are represented by labeled examples in silver, iron, brass and wood. A center table of circa 1850 was designed by Andrew Jackson Downing for Kenwood, Joel Rathbone's Hudson River estate. It is illustrated by Downing's The Architecture of Country Houses.

Rococo Revival pieces made between 1845 and 1865 include a hot water kettle on stand with elaborate Chinoiserie decorations, possibly by George Sharp of Philadelphia; a sumptuous Tiffany tea and coffee service presented to the president of the Hartford & New Haven Railroad Company; Greenpoint porcelain; a Belter suite; a Roux etagere; and a sideboard laden with game, fruit and vegetables that has tentatively been attributed to the carver Joseph Alexis Bailly.

The mid-century return to Classicism is illustrated in a Gustave Herter tall clock, an Alexander Roux card table, sumptuous mantel garniture retailed by J.E. Caldwell and Company of Philadelphia, and an inlaid cabinet that is probably the work of Kimbel and Cabus. Though undocumented pieces, other pieces from this era are superbly designed and crafted.

Those who follow auctions or attend New York's top shows will recognize some headline items. Made by Union Porcelain Works, a Century Vase was added to the High's collection in 1986. The matching pedestal followed a decade later.

Patent furniture made between the 1850s and the 1880s runs the gamut from a Lalance and Grosjean armchair, stylistically the forerunner of the modern spring steel garden seat, to an upholstered Hunzinger folding chair and a folding secretary, instantly recognizable as the design of William S. Wooton.

Between 1870 and 1910, elements of Japanese design permeated the decorative arts, most extravagantly represented here by Tiffany silver and Herter Brothers furniture. Art & Enterprise treats less well traveled subjects as well, with fascinating entries on period upholstery, wicker and faux bamboo furniture, and the exotic Asian-style designs of Gabriel Viardot, exhibited at the 1899 Paris Exposition Universelle.

Art pottery and glass reached their artistic apex at the hands of designers and craftsmen at firms such as Chelsea Keramic Art Works; Ott and Brewer; J. and J.G. Low Art Tile Works; Knowles, Taylor and Knowles; New England Glass Works; Hobbs, Brockunier and Company; and the Mount Washington Glass Company, each treated in separate entries.

Horn chairs and other eccentricities of late Nineteenth Century design segue into a section on Brilliant Period cut glass made between 1890 and 1917. Furniture by Rohlfs and Stickley, silver by Arthur Stone and the Kalo Shop, and ceramics by Van Briggle, Grueby, Marblehead, University City, and Fulper round out a display of Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts design.

Suitably, furniture designed by architects fills Art & Enterprise's last chapter. Ensemble pieces meant to perform in an orchestrated whole, these varied works and the interiors for which they were drawn are the most evolved form of architectural practice. Here, they range from Alexander Jackson Davis's designs for country estates along the Hudson to Frank Furness's Beaux Art commissions for New York and Philadelphia, Louis Sullivan's filigree grillwork for the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, and the early Modernist innovations of Frank Lloyd Wright and Greene and Greene.

First conceived as a four-year project that would terminate with the opening of the Meier building in 1983, the Crawford Collection continues to grow. Its mission is unchanged from 1979, when Catharine Gross Farnham and then director Gudmund Vigtel proposed to Crawford that the High Museum stake its reputation on historically and artistically superior American objects made between 1825 and 1917.

"In the end," Peirce writes, credit goes mainly to Crawford, "...a remarkable and gracious patron... who enthusiastically supported this project from its beginning."

"Art & Enterprise: The Virginia Carroll Collection of American Decorative Art, 1825-1917" was organized by Donald C. Peirce, a Winterthur Fellow who joined the High Museum's staff in 1980. Accompanying the exhibition is a scholarly catalogue, also by Peirce. Extensively researched and beautifully produced, the 464-page color volume illustrates 227 objects. Meticulous entries offer a historical overview for each object. Equally interesting are the book's footnotes, which document sources, provenance and extensive correspondence among Peirce, Hanks, their colleagues at other institutions, and the many antiques dealers who have contributed to this collection. Distributed by Antique Collectors' Club of Wappingers Falls, N.Y., the $60 hard cover volume is mandatory reading for anyone interested in the period.

In "Art & Enterprise," a picture emerges of the fascinating commercial web linking craftsman to merchant, manager and designer. The High Museum has made great progress in naming the participants in this complex enterprise, and has laid the groundwork for further study.

The High Museum of Art is at 1280 Peachtree Street in midtown Atlanta. Telephone 404/733-HIGH.