Shards2007september

Volume 11, Issue 1

A Newsletter of the China Students’ Club of Boston

September 2007

A Message from Our President Dear Club Members, The leaves are starting to change color, and flocks of students have returned to my hometown of Amherst.

It looks and feels a lot like Fall again. The arrival of September also begins the 73rd year of the China Students Club of Boston. One great goal has been accomplished since last May—we have launched a website at www.chinastudentsclub.org. For those of you with access to the web, the Club’s web page includes information on our history, program calendar, 75th anniversary plans, membership information, and a recent issue of Shards. There is also a page from which you can send us an email. I hope that many members will use the site as a reference tool, and potential members and friends can find information about us. I sincerely want to thank CSC member Jim Mattozzi for his time and effort in advancing this aspect of our club. Please check it out!

Program Chairman Anne Lanning has organized another great year of programming for the Club. I think

that we have hit the jackpot for subject diversity and talented speakers. This year’s lecture topics range widely, from Japanese export porcelain to Saturday Evening Girls’ pottery. Included on the roster are several well-known authors in the field of ceramics, so remember to bring your books to the lectures for signing!

One disturbing trend for our new year is a decline in Club membership. The Blue Book seems a little thinner this year with several former members dropping out and too few new members signing up. If you have any thoughts or ideas about how to increase our membership, please let me know. At our first meeting on September 27, we will have printed rack cards available that feature our season’s program as well as information on the Club. I hope that you all will consider dropping them off on your visits to antique shows, auction galleries, and dealers’ shops.

Sincerely, Amanda Lange President

Barbara Veith on “Edward Lycett and the Faience Manufacturing Company” Reviewed by Jeff Brown Our April talk was given by Barbara Veith, Research Associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who presented a lecture based on her master’s thesis on Edward Lycett.

The Faience Manufacturing Company in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, owed its artistic and commercial success to Edward Lycett, an English china painter who immigrated to New York City in 1861. His diverse career as artist, teacher, technical innovator, and art director for the Faience Manufacturing Company spanned five decades. During the past thirty years, Lycett has been recognized as a significant figure in the late 19thcentury ceramics industry.

Born on April 27, 1833, in Newcastle-under-Lyme,

Staffordshire, England, Lycett was the second son of William and Ann Lycett. Little is known of his childhood, but by the age of twelve he was an apprentice china decorator at Copeland and Garrett in Stoke-uponTrent. They produced all manner of tea, dinner, dessert, and toilet services as well as parian figures and “Etruscan” wares. In this company of a thousand employees, Edward Lycett received his artistic training under art director Thomas Battam, Jr. In 1852, Lycett moved to London to work for Thomas Battan Sr.’s china decorating firm, which had been in existence for over a century. China decorating required artistic talent as well as technical skill to paint Continued on page 2

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Edward Lycett and the Faience Manufacturing Company Continued from page 1 with enamels that changed colors in the kiln. Lycett was equally adept in all subject matters. His highly finished, minutely detailed style is characteristic of the finest English china painting and dictated his china painting style until the end of his life.

In 1861, Lycett, along with many other talented Englishmen, immigrated to New York City in search of better opportunities and wages. Most affluent Americans still purchased only imported European porcelains as fledgling American manufacturers only produced undecorated utilitarian wares such as stonewares and earthenwares. Eventually, protective tariffs spurred a developing American pottery industry, but until then entrepreneurial English china decorators arrived to start independent decorating businesses, decorating imported porcelain blanks to order.

By 1865 Lycett is listed as living with a wife and four children in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and eventually his china decorating business there grew to employ forty decorators. Working on commissions as diverse as additional Lincoln dinner-service pieces for President Andrew Johnson and enameled iron panels three feet by six feet for architect Richard Morris Hunt to decorate the facade of a building on Broadway. Throughout this period, Lycett either worked alone or in partnership with other decorators and, capitalizing on the widespread interest in amateur china painting that developed during the 1870s, he conducted china decorating classes for women. Lycett actually left his eldest son in charge of the business in New York while he taught at the St. Louis School of Design, as well as in Cincinnati, Ohio.

By March of 1879, though, he was back in New York forming a new partnership with John Bennett of 4 Great Jones Street. This association prospered until 1884 when it was dissolved upon Lycett’s acceptance of the position of Art Director for the Faience Manufacturing Company (or FMCo.) in Brooklyn. He not only designed innovative ceramic forms, but also conducted experiments in ceramic formulas and glazes. Fashionable French faience and Limoges pieces served as models for FMCo’s early wares. The relief decorated pieces, called Barbotine ware, are characterized by an earthenware body with three-dimensional flowers applied un-

der the glaze with colored slip. The firm’s Limoges ware was painted with flat underglaze colored slip.

Under Lycett’s direction, the firm developed increasingly diverse wares. From spare forms with unusual glazes reflecting an Asian influence, to Renaissance Palissy-inspired pieces, to pieces based upon fashionable English and European imports, Lycett responded quickly to rapidly changing tastes in the marketplace. The Worcester Royal Porcelain Company’s popular giltembellished ivory-bodied wares were inspired by Near and Far Eastern forms and decorations and had a great influence on Lycett.

FMCo’s productions were regularly retailed during the 1880s by Tiffany and Co., Black, Starr and Frost, and Bailey, Banks and Biddle. Lycett worked tirelessly to develop new ceramic bodies and glazes, and he broadened the line to include eclectic Aesthetic movement style wares (again influenced by Royal Worcester Derby Crown Porcelain). But despite these influences, FMCo’s pieces are always distinct because of their size, shape and decoration, being of large scale and exhibiting a selfconscious boldness that is distinctly American. The firm’s ewers, for example, frequently display an unusual stacking of elements combining long, segmented, tapering, or flaring necks and Near-Eastern inspired bulbous bodies with eccentrically shaped reticulated handles and covers. The firm’s skillfully executed stylized decoration consists of exuberant and loosely rendered, gilt-embellished motifs, painted in a vibrant polychrome palette. Decorators rarely signed their pieces. Luster-glazed pieces and jeweled decoration characterize other facets of the firm’s production. Through their flamboyant designs and decoration, FMCo’s extroverted, over-sized wares demonstrate Lycett’s ambitious response to English competition, which in comparison is crisply detailed, concise, and tight. On top of all this, Lycett continued teaching a twelve-class course in china painting for women at the factory.

Because of changing tastes and despite FMCo’s critical acclaim, financial difficulties forced the factory to cease production and reorganize as an agent for a French porcelain manufacturer, J. Pouyat of Limoges. Lycett retired at age 57 and relocated with his family to AtContinued on page 3

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Edward Lycett and the Faience Manufacturing Company Continued from page 2 lanta, where he continued decorating French and German blanks for his son’s china painting business. In addition, he experimented with different types of surface decoration, especially irridescent glazes from Middle Eastern tiles. These pieces proved such a success that the Smithsonian Institution acquired examples of Lycett’s luster-glazed tiles. By the time of Lycett’s death in 1910, interest in china painting was declining. Technological advances such as the chromolithic transfer process en-

Edward Lycett. Photograph, ca. 1895. From E.A. Barber The Pioneer of China Painting in America, New England Magazine 13 (September 1895).

Courtesy of The Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University, New York

abled ceramic manufacturers to produce colored decoration inexpensively in a single step, making china painting obsolete. Changing aesthetics rooted in the Arts and Crafts movement, the Colonial Revival, and, eventually, Modernism, made artists like Lycett a bit out of fashion.

But, as we have seen, ninety years after his death, a rediscovery of his diverse achievements reestablishes Edward Lycett’s once stellar reputation.

See also picture on back page

Advertisement, Faience Manufacturing Company From Jewelers Weekly 23, no. 2, October 6, 1886.

Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Please send comments/contributions to: Yonathan Bard, 6 Holland Street, Newton, MA 02458; telephone (617) 244-7688, fax (617) 965-2897, e-mail (the preferred venue!) doryon@rcn.com

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Lady Charlotte Schreiber: Collector Extraordinary

By Yonathan Bard The following is a summary of the talk I gave at last May’s meeting.

About 15 years ago I started collecting antique porcelain. When reading books about the subject, I encountered many references to Lady Charlotte Schreiber, who was often cited as the authority on 18th century British porcelain, which was one of my main fields of interest. I naturally wanted to learn more about her, and fortunately found a copy of her diaries in our local library. This consisted of two volumes of about 500 pages each, filled with the minutest details of her travels in pursuit of treasures to add to her collection.

Reading them proved to be endlessly fascinating, and I will try to share with you the essence of what I have learned.

Lady Charlotte was born in 1812 into an old English aristocratic family. Her father was Algernon Bertie, 9th Earl of Lindsey, with estates in Lincolnshire. She was her father’s eldest child, although he was already 68 years old at the time of her birth. He died when Charlotte was only six. Her mother, from the Layard family, soon remarried to a man who did not believe in educating girls; thus, Charlotte was left mostly to her own considerable devices: with a little help from her brothers’ tutors she managed to pick up French, Italian, Latin, and Hebrew. Her interests were wide ranging.

She started a diary; the entries from her teen years are full of impressions from the operas she attended, the performers she heard, and her travels abroad.

At the age of 21, after a brief flirtation with the

future statesman Benjamin Disraeli, she married Sir John Guest. Though a baronet, Member of Parliament, and owner of extensive ironworks, he was not an aristocrat—making him an unsuitable husband in the eyes of Charlotte’s friends and relatives. Furthermore, he was 38 years her senior. In spite of these handicaps, the marriage flourished. They spent most of the time running the ironworks in Wales; Charlotte learned the language, helped run the company, established and taught at schools for the female workers, and translated into English the Mabinogion—a Welsh national epic containing the King Arthur legends. Her translation is still current, and has inspired many English poets who included Mabinogion characters into their own works. On top of all this, Charlotte gave birth to ten children—five boys and five girls—who, remarkably for the time, all survived their childhood. For our purposes, the children worth noting are: · Ivor, first son and heir, later to become an important collector in his own right. He was elevated to the peerage as first Baron Wimbore · Montague, who became a photographer and who edited and published his mother’s diaries · Enid, who married her much older cousin, her mother’s friend Sir Henry Layard, the excavator of Nineveh and future ambassador to Constantinople · Blanche, who married the Earl of Bessborough and inherited much of her mother’s collection (or what remained after the museum donations).

Continued on page 5

Charlotte at ages 2 years and two months, 21, 43, and old age

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Lady Charlotte Schreiber: Collector Extraordinary Continued from page 4 In 1852, after 19 years of married bliss, Sir John died. Charlotte essentially ran the factory for three years, but then married Charles Schreiber—her children’s tutor and 14 years her junior. Even compared to her “unsuitable” marriage to Sir John, this was quite scandalous. The couple’s social position in Wales became untenable, and Charlotte had to relinquish control of the factory and move to London.

Exactly when and why the Schreibers started collecting is a mystery. Even Montague in his introduction to his mother’s diaries avows ignorance. Suffice it to say that by the mid-1860s they were deeply involved in the chase. Here are some early milestones: • 1868: Acquired Bristol & Plymouth porcelain descended in Cookworthy’s family • 1868: Assisted at and acquired fragments from Bow excavations • 1869: Purchased John Bowcocke (Bow Works) memoranda • 1870: Discovered Dwight’s notebooks and obtained Fulham Works specimens from 1689-1698.

They soon learned that British ceramics could often be acquired on the Continent at better prices, perhaps because the dealers didn’t understand what they had. At any rate, by the late 1860s the Schreibers had established the routine of crossing the channel twice each year, in the spring and in the fall, each time spending several weeks traveling wherever their fancy took them.

By that time, the Continent was covered by a dense and efficient railway network, and getting around Europe was almost as easy as it is now. In a single day, for example, they could go from Lausanne to Geneva by lake steamer and return by train; or they could start in The Hague and visit Rotterdam, Utrecht, Arnhem, and back to Utrecht and Rotterdam. Everywhere they stopped they visited all the antique shops; most of what they saw was either “rubbish” or overpriced—their resources were not unlimited; but most days they did find a thing or two to add to their collection. Often they met local collectors, but mostly they were unimpressed by what they were shown.

When time permitted they also enjoyed the local sights.

From 1869 to 1882 they visited Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Morocco, the Neth-

erlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey (the last one as guests of the ambassador, Charlotte’s son in law Henry Layard). Paris and the cities of the Low Countries were their most frequent destinations. Their travels went remarkably smoothly, with hardly any untoward incidents. Paris in 1870-71 was inaccessible because of the Prussian occupation and the rule of the Commune, but there were plenty of other places to visit.

Towards the end of the period, Charles’s health began deteriorating. Finally, on doctors’ advice, they sailed to South Africa in the winter of 1883, with the idea that the climate there would be better for him. But during a stop-over in Lisbon on the way back he died.

Charlotte spent the next few years realizing a plan they had formed together: to donate their English ceramics collection to the South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum. Selecting and cataloguing the pieces to be given proved to be a daunting task that required the assistance of two or three experts working for two years! Finally, in 1885, the catalog was published and the collection was moved to its new home in the museum.

The catalog consists of three volumes, each with about 600 entries. Volume 1 is devoted to British porcelain. The table below indicates the number of pieces from each factory according to the revised edition of 1928; the numbers in parentheses show the number of pieces that had to be reclassified since the original edition, as a result of new scholarship. It would be interesting to see how many more changes would be required if the catalog were to be revised today!

• Worcester 207 (18) • Chelsea 167 (1) • Derby 148 (81) • Bow 119 (25) • Bristol 55 (6) • Plymouth 44 (4) • Longton Hall 20 (12) • Lowdin’s Bristol 16 (16) • Other British 37 (12) • Non-British 16 (8) • Total 657 (183=28%) Continued on page 6

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Lady Charlotte Schreiber: Cllector Extraordinary Continued from page 5 Volume 2 contains 646 entries classified into Delftware (55 pieces), salt-glazed stoneware (181), other early Staffordshire (82), industrial Wedgwood (146), fine stoneware (110), miscellaneous & foreign (9), Tassie glass plate reliefs (41), and wax reliefs (22). The third volume contains about 600 non-ceramic pieces, e.g., enamels and glass.

The ceramics were not the only collection that Charlotte donated to museums. Large collections of fans, board games, and playing cards went to the British Museum. Charlotte lived on until 1895. Her eyesight was failing and her collecting days were over, but she continued to enjoy the company of her large progeny.

The remainder of her collection—an eclectic lot of nonBritish ceramics, paintings, furniture, orientalia, etc., was dispersed among her children, the largest portion appearing to go to the Bessborough family. Little of it went to the public at large until many of the Bessborough possessions from their Stansted Park estate were auctioned off by Sotheby’s on 10/5/1999. Of the 592 lots, 357 were attributed to the Schreiber collection. Their range fully mirrored the collection’s eclectic nature. Among the lots was the one pictured on the right, whose saga is detailed below.

• 2/?/1873: Rotterdam. On a solo visit, Charles spots a spectacular faience vase in a dealer’s shop; it is attributed to Wedgwood. He cannot carry it with him, but the dealer promises to hold it until the next visit.

• 4/9/1873: Rotterdam. Charles returns with Charlotte, but the dealer has forgotten about the arrangement. Fortunately, the piece is still around, and the Schreibers happily acquire it.

• 4/10/1873: Utrecht. An expert judges the vase as being a worthless German piece. The Schreibers leave it with a dealer to be resold.

• 10/13/1873: Utrecht. A prospective buyer had disdained to take it, and the Schreibers reluctantly repossess it.

• 10/?/1873: Antwerp. The vase is left to be sold at auction.

• 8/13/1874: Rouen. At the Faience Museum the Schreibers see a similar piece, attributed to Denys Doriot, a rare and prestigious artist. They rue having

got rid of it.

• 10/14/1874: Brussels. By happenstance they espy the vase in a dealer’s shop and repurchase it.

• 10/13/1875: Rouen. They show the piece to experts who confirm it to be one of the very few extant Denys Doriot masterpieces.

• 10/5/1999: Rowlans Castle, Hampshire. The piece is put on sale by Sotheby’s, listed as “A rare German faience Hausmaler double-gourd vase, the faience probably Frankfurt, probably painted by Abraham Hemback, circa 1700.” The estimated price was £10,000-15,000, but it failed to sell.

The moral of the story is that if you like a piece, keep it—regardless of what anyone else has to say about it. And, yes, even the best “experts” sometimes don’t know what they are talking about!

None of this takes anything away from Charlotte, whose achievements in many fields speak for themselves.

German Faience bottle from SchreiberBessborough collection; ca. 1700

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Upcoming Ceramics Events CSC Meetings All meetings at 1 PM at the College Club, 44 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston 9/27, Japanese Export Porcelain for the West; Christiaan Jörg, professor of east-west interactions in decorative art, Leiden University 10/25, The Vivian Hawes Memorial Lecture: The Staffordshire Phenomenon, David Barker FSA, archeological consultant and ceramics specialist 11/29, Art and Reform: Sara Galner, the Saturday Evening Girls and the Paul Revere Pottery, Nonie Gadsden, assistant curator of decorative arts and sculpture, Art of the Americas, MFA, Boston 1/24/08, A Change in Taste: Ming Porcelain and Ming Culture, Robert D. Mowry, curator of Chinese art, Harvard University Museums 2/28, Bits and Pieces: members are invited to bring a piece or two for discussion 3/27, People, Passions, Pastimes, and Pleasures: Staffordshire Figures, 1810-1835, Myrna Schkolne, author and collector 4/24, The Influence of Salt-glazed Stoneware on English Creamware Design, Diane Edwards, CSC member 5/22, Annual Meeting and Tea; Survey of Fireplace Tiles in Early Portsmouth, NH Houses, Sandra Rux, CSC member.

Pottery and Porcelain Club of Providence Meetings Please contact Mrs. Barnum, 401-861-6083, for meeting locations and to let her know that you will be attending.

9/19, noon, Les Cinq Grandes: French Faience, Millicent Molli, Collector and Scholar 10/18, 2 PM, The Clay Gardener, Katherine Houston, Artist 11/14, 2PM, Fifty Years of Collecting at Historic Deerfield, Don Friary, Director Emeritus, Historic Deerfield 12/7, 6 PM, The Revolutionary Origins of American Culture, Gordon S. Wood, Professor of History at Brown University 2/13, 2 PM, From Robust to Refined: Korean Ceramics of the Koryo Dynasty (918-1392), Robert Mowry, Curator of Chinese Art at the Sackler Museum,

Harvard University 3/12, 2 PM, Tempest in a Teacup: A Steamy Review of Early Asian Ceramics of the World’s Favorite Drink, Andrew Maske, Assistant Professor of Asian Art History, University of Kentucky.

Auctions Asian: 9/18, Sotheby’s NY (Chinese) 9/19, Christie’s NY (Chinese) 10/7, Sotheby’s Hong Kong (Qing porcelain) 10/20, Skinner Boston 11/6, 11/9, Christie’s London (Chinese) 11/7, Sotheby’s London (Chinese) 11/8, Christie’s London (Japanese) 11/27, Christie’s Hong Kong (Chinese) 1/23, Christie’s NY (Chinese export) 1/24, Christie’s NY (Chinese export from Leo & Doris Hodroff coll.)

British and/or continental: 9/18, 9/27, Christie’s London (19th century) 9/27, Christie’s London (Bell export pottery from Edwin Robertson coll.)

10/3, Sotheby’s NY (French) 10/11, Christie’s NY (English) 10/19, Christie’s NY 10/20, Skinner Boston 10/25, Christie’s NY (Meissen porcelain from Dr. W.A. Criswell coll.)

11/7, Christie’s Paris 11/13, Sotheby’s Milan 11/14, Christie’s London (British) 11/21, Sotheby’s London 12/5, 1/10, Christie’s London 1/14, Christie’s London (Ardmore ceramics art) Miscellaneous: 9/17-18, Amsterdam 10/25, Christie’s NY (19th century) 12/11, Christie’s London.

Exhibitions: Alistair Sampson Collection of English Creamware, ongoing at the Flynt Center, Historic Deerfield Parades: Freer Ceramics Installed by Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, until November 30, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

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Contents A message from our president ................................................................................................ 1 Barbara Veith on Edward Lycett, report by Jeff Brown ......................................................... 1 Yonathan Bard on Lady Charlotte Schreiber ......................................................................... 4 Upcoming Ceramics Events .................................................................................................... 7

Faience Manufacturing Company, Vase, ca. 1887. Earthenware. H: 18�.

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Jay and Emma Lewis