SHARDS2019 SPRING

_________________________________________________ WINTER/SPRING 2019 Dear Members, It is a pleasure to write to you at the conclusion of a highly successful 2018-2019 program year for the Ceramics Study Club of Boston. It was a year in which we welcomed several new members.

Our relationship with the Wedgwood Society of Boston was strengthened through cooperative programming and the sharing of newsletters. On 23 May 2019, we held our Annual Meeting at which point members of the Executive Board and Board of Directors were elected for two-year terms. While most officers remain in their positions, I wish to recognize J. Tracy Wiggin who retired from the position of Auditor for the club after several years of service. Daniel Sousa was elected to fill the position vacated by Tracy. A full list of board members is published in the Blue Book which will be sent to members at the end of the summer. I would like to express my personal gratitude to all of the members of the board and the special committees for their time, expertise, good nature, and commitment to the CSC. At the Annual Meeting, I reported that after a search of several years, the CSC has finally found a home for the club’s archives. Historic New England has agreed to take custody of the archives and will consider it an open collection, periodically accepting new material. The archives will be accessible to HNE staff as well as scholars and researchers by appointment and it is a relief that the records of the club finally have a permanent home. For the past several years, Debbie Bassett has had custody of our important papers and legacy; her willingness to care for them is greatly appreciated. If any members or former officers have materials in their possession which might be appropriate for the archives, please contact me. Along the same lines, we are continuing to pursue not-for-profit status for the club.

The success of the club relies on contributions from the membership and the board. Included in this issue is a brief summary of a very special event held for the benefit of the club, the tour of Jeffrey Stamen’s collection of Kangxi porcelain followed by tea at the home of Jeffrey and Elizabeth Brown. Jeffrey Brown conceived of this event as a fundraiser and indeed it was, adding $750 to the club’s treasury. Not only did it benefit the club financially, but it was a wonderful opportunity to see a first-rate collection of Chinese porcelain in an incredible Beacon Hill setting (the house and previous inhabitants are fascinating in their own right) with a truly enthusiastic host.

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The visit to the Browns’ house in the South End was icing on the cake with wonderful objects and hospitality along with Liz’s legendary baking. All in all, it was a fabulous day! More of this sort of activity would be welcome; if anyone has any ideas, please feel free to contact me.

As of this writing, we have received dues from most, but not all, of the membership. Club dues were payable in May and reminders have gone out. The money raised from dues pays rent for our meeting space and provides honoraria for speakers. If you have not sent in your dues, please forward them to Greg Lovell, our club treasurer, at your earliest convenience. If you have a question about whether or not you have paid, please contact Greg or me.

The Blue Book will be sent to members around the end of the month. Mark your calendars now for the first meeting in September which will be a field trip to Portsmouth on the 21st to see the incredible exhibition of stoneware at the Warner House. Details on the trip are forthcoming and will be included with the program announcement.

Enjoy the rest of the summer and I look forward to seeing you in the fall!

Best wishes, Carolyn Parsons Roy President, Ceramics Study Club of Boston

CREEPY-CRAWLERS ON PORCELAIN The CSC 2019 program year was ushered in by Elizabeth A. Williams, PhD, the David and Peggy Rockefeller Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the RISD Museum in Providence. Her talk was entitled Slither, Flutter and Crawl: Dining with Friends, and was inspired by the Winterthur exhibit last year Dining by Design: Nature Displayed on the Dinner Table. Elizabeth thought about the ways human beings interact with nature, specifically how nature is, or isn’t, invited to our dining tables.

Humans interact with creatures in different ways. We have for some time had a burning desire to identify, classify and codify the myriad varieties, publishing volumes of accurately rendered species that few people can pronounce. More often, we try to protect ourselves from being bitten, stung, pinched or poisoned -or simply to kill them. But when they decorate a porcelain plate, suddenly, we welcome them into our home! The intention of the talk, then, was to explore and consider how humans negotiate between fascination and fear of creatures, the psychological experience where one can be simultaneously attracted and repelled by something.

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In the ‘slither’ category, it was pointed out that although many of us fear snakes they appear on ceramics quite frequently. Snakes have been used to form handles since ancient times. From a design perspective their bodies aptly lend themselves to the purpose. From Roman terracotta and lead-glazed amphorae to Italian Renaissance majolica wares, snakes bend, loop and twist about the vessels. Looking to France, there are numerous examples of slithering creatures on the works of Bernard Palissy and his workshop and followers. Reflecting the 16th century scientific interest in natural phenomenon, Palissy’s extremely realistic pieces teem with fish, frogs, crayfish and snakes that were cast from actual specimens and he referred to these creations as “Pastoral Pottery”.

Palissy Majolica Platter The English were not to be outdone with their own snake-handled posset pots, and, later, Josiah Wedgwood bringing the classical influence full circle employed snake handles on his neoclassical jasperware of the late 18th century. Alligators appear on pieces from Meissen to Staffordshire as allegories of the American continent. In the 20th century, Elizabeth discussed a set of plates by the designer Piero Fornasetti, a recent acquisition at RISD. The set of fourteen is entitled Improbable Recipes and each plate depicts a slithering creature-alligator or snake-along with a recipe on how to cook and serve each creature.

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Left: Fornasetti “Improbable Recipes’ Plate, 20th c. Right: Chinese export porcelain plate with a composite design after engravings by Sybille Merian, circa 1740.

As an aside, Elizabeth wanted to point out the story of a remarkable woman, Sybille Merian, an accomplished artist who left the Netherlands in 1699 at the age of 52 for the colony of Surinam to record the flora and fauna of the island. She returned home to produce by 1705 a publication of her sixty paintings entitled The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam. It was publications such as these that suppled source material for decorators and, moving on to the ‘flutter’ category of her talk, our speaker illustrated a Chinese export porcelain plate whose design was actually a composite of several Merian watercolors. The plate featured yellow-spotted caterpillars, red butterflies and irises, rendered in twenty-three enamels and gilding -a costly production indeed.

Other examples inspired by, and decorated with, exotic butterflies, insects, birds and flowers were created at the 18th century Worcester factory with renderings often in reserve against their famous ‘blue scale’ ground. Developed to compete with French Sevres porcelain designs, the blue-scale ground was painstakingly built-up with washes of cobalt, often enhanced by honey gilding. Gold leaf was mixed with honey to produce a thick mixture that could be built up in relief, fired, and subsequently chased. This elaborate pattern coincided with the apex of the company’s prosperity circa 1765-1767. In a similar vein is the famous Chelsea service, commissioned by George III and Queen Charlotte as a gift for her brother, which carries images of birds and golden butterflies-each plate with a different creature. A Meissen service in the RISD collection is also decorated in the same manner with each piece designed with a different species of bird.

On French petit-feu faience works one often discovers butterflies and dragonflies amongst the floral designs, all taken from print sources. One such source of inspiration was prints after drawings by Jean Baptiste Pillement; his illustrations mix chinoiserie with a host of fantastic flora and fauna, circa 1755. One of the most elaborate uses of butterflies, though, is on the mid-19th century Chinese export porcelain ‘Hundred Butterfly’ pattern where the surface of the object is covered with richly enameled butterflies and insects to the point of creating a frenzied crazy quilt pattern.

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18th century Meissen service with each piece decorated with a different species of bird.

Chinese export porcelain ‘Hundred Butterfly’ pattern where the surface of the object is covered with richly enameled butterflies and insects to the point of creating a frenzied crazy quilt pattern.

The Aesthetic Movement in Europe and America in the late 19th century brought about a significant stylistic change as new source materials became available, one of the most notable was the Manga by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. A copy of this fifteen- volume work of decorative motifs (with 4000 illustrations of nature alone) published between 1814-1878 was acquired by Felix Braquemond who was director of the Haviland porcelain factory in Paris.

Elements from this massive compendium of designs were used as decoration on Braquemond’s two-hundred piece ‘Rousseau’ service which was commissioned by an earthenware merchant named Eugene Rousseau and was exhibited in 1867 at the L’Exposition Universelle in Paris.

Under the ‘crawl’ category our speaker discussed design elements that developed out of a relationship between the Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory and its next-door neighbor, the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. The garden’s curator, Philip Miller, published the Gardener’s Dictionary in 1752 and engaged the well-known horticultural artist Dionysius Ehret to illustrate the publication; there are period pieces of Chelsea porcelain with plant and insect decoration drawn from this work. Insects were sometimes carefully placed to cover flaws in the porcelain.

In our own day the insect tradition continues with the work of contemporary artist Evelyn Bracklow who hand-paints vintage porcelain teeming with ants. The artist’s work is meant to evince fear, disgust, fascination and admiration sparked by the juxtaposition between the luxuriousness and elegance of the porcelain and the creepiness and repulsion by the painted infestation.

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Mid-18th century Chelsea Leaf-Form Dish with Insect Decoration In our own day the insect tradition continues with the work of contemporary artist Evelyn Bracklow who hand-paints vintage porcelain teeming with ants. The artist’s work is meant to evince fear, disgust, fascination and admiration sparked by the juxtaposition between the luxuriousness and elegance of the porcelain and the creepiness and repulsion by the painted infestation.

19th century British designer Christopher Dresser took artistic inspiration from nature with a very scientific approach, but also was able to take naturalistic forms and break them down into stylized geometric design components. On some Minton pieces he designed, one sees very realistic beetles and butterflies, but in another direction the designer created a skeletal border pattern called ‘Old Bogey’ which relies upon abstracted components of fish and salamander vertebrae.

Any discussion on crawling things should certainly mention turtles as they were well represented both in porcelain and silver forms as turtle tureens. Whether in Chinese export porcelain, or 18th century silver by Paul de Lamerie, the creature’s body becomes the vessel, and the vessel would have held a form of the creature such as turtle soup, which was very popular. The crawling artform was taken to new heights with Gorham Silver Company’s late 19th century ‘Terrapin Set’ which contained a turtle tureen, individual covered bowls and matching forks.

So, whether your tablewares’ decoration “slithers, flutters or crawls” keep in mind it is part of a very long-standing design tradition. Bon Appetit!

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ANNUAL BITS ‘N’ PIECES CONTINUES TO INFORM AND DELIGHT Despite an early morning snowstorm, our annual February Bits ‘N’ Pieces drew a good audience eager to show and tell and learn something, either about objects from their own collection, or pieces from fellow members. It is one of our consistently favorite programs and here are some of the reasons why:

Left: Stoneware Plaque made by the Chelsea Keramics Artworks, c.1882, made after a large painting in the MFA by French painter Henri Regnault. Right: A large octagonal Chinese export porcelain Famille Rose plate with peony decoration. Qianlong period, mid-18th century.

Two English inscribed commemorative pieces. On the left, a rare form loving cup in Pearlware with an unusual muted color palette, 1810. On the right, a brown body mug with silver lustre inscription, 1811.

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Left: Two Dutch delft footed trays or stands supposedly to support a three-legged tea urn, others suggested possibly cruet stands. Circa 1790-1800. Right: An English Derbyshire salt glaze stoneware large cylindrical jar decorated with iron slip and rouletted designs. Quite large for a jam jar; the three holes in the rim led Nic Johnson to speculate it was a small butter churn, the holes there to secure a lid for the dasher. Circa 1850.

Left: A small Chinese export porcelain ginger jar, marked “CHINA� so datable to after 1893. Right: From our club miniaturist Lee-Ann Wessel, three miniature copies of the work of Viktor Schreckengost from circa 1930. In the foreground, a copy of a 12th century Syrian plate; silhouette style wares such as these most likely inspired the design and palette of the Art Deco Schreckengost pieces.

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Left: A close-up of Lee Ann’s version of the famous “Jazz Bowl” by Schreckengost. Right: An auction ad for an actual 17” Schreckengost bowl; they usually fetch around $100,000.00 when they rarely appear on market.

Left: A large Japanese Imari covered bowl, sometimes called a potiche, which most likely would have formed part of an impressively sized garniture set. Early 18th century. Right: An English Worcester sucrier in the ‘Old Japan’ pattern, circa 1770. Note how the form persisted and was adapted by Worcester, and, how the taste for all things Asian continued through the 18th century.

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Left: Turkish Kutahya ware saucer. Despite its fritware body, this 18th century piece is amazingly thinly potted to the point of almost having a hole in its center. Right: A very organic and pleasingly tactile piece by contemporary ceramic artist Debra Fleury.

CSC member Rebecca Davis, whose research work usually precludes her attending meetings, was able to join us and talk about her interest in Arts and Crafts period wares decorated with natural subjects, and especially those rendered by amateur china painters such as these two pieces: a cachepot with a whimsical frog design and a lusterware chocolate pot (the lid missing) with fish and sea turtle renderings. Both dating to around 1900. Rebecca’s question was: Does anyone know what kind of paint or glaze was used to color the lower half of the cachepot, producing a matte black very susceptible to scrapes and scratches?

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MET MUSEUM COLLECTIONS AND VIVIAN HAWES RECOLLECTIONS IN MARCH The CSC March program is traditionally our Vivian Hawes Memorial lecture, named for our former longtime member, president and treasurer who was known for her ardent research, scholarship, and love for all things ceramic. So, it was quite fitting that we hosted Jeffrey Munger, a former curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York to speak, as he personally knew Vivian knew Vivian and benefitted from her guidance at the MFA in Boston where he worked before his move to the Met. He spoke most kindly of his admiration of Vivian’s focused discipline and scholarship and how much it inspired him as a young curator. The subject of Jeffrey’s talk was European Porcelain at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vivian would have been pleased.

Jeffrey’s talk centered upon his last great project at the Met before retiring, namely the production of the publication of a volume entitled Masterpieces of European Ceramics from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met has an enormous collection of European ceramics numbering over fivethousand pieces and it was Jeffrey’s daunting task to choose ninety of the “best” of them for this book. The time frame decided upon encompassed pieces from the Renaissance through 1900.

The Met’s greatest strength in these holdings is porcelain as the collection was formed, for the most part, from donations from private collectors, and so it was their tastes and choices that directed a lot of what we see today. When these great collections were formed from the end of the 19th century through the middle of the 20th century the dominant preference was porcelain. Jeffrey then enlightened us with the back story of some these major players beginning with the voracious J.P. Morgan, who died in 1913: it was his donation that formed the nucleus of the Met’s incipient ceramics collection. One of Jeffrey’s favorite collectors was a fellow named R. Thornton Wilson whose ceramics were bequeathed to the Met in 1977. He often purchased pieces specifically for the museum’s collection, keeping in mind what they needed, seldom taking possession of the piece for himself-simply bringing it directly to the Met for drop-off. This frequent and very generous behavior won him the nickname of “One-a-Day-Wilson”! His extraordinary eye, in Jeffrey’s opinion, helped give the Met’s collection its uniqueness. A contemporary of Wilson’s was Irwin Untermeyer, a great collector of English decorative arts, as well as English and German ceramics and when he died in 1973, he bequeathed over two-thousand pieces to the Met. He and Wilson, though, were often competing for the same objects in the market and the two men came to loathe each other to such an extent that they stipulated that any objects that they loaned or donated to the Met could not be displayed in the same cabinet together. At some point these rivals came to some sort of unspoken agreement, collecting complementary objects that augmented the Met’s collection favorably.

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Moving along, another benefactor of the museum was the Kress Foundation (of Kress family department store fame). They assembled one of the largest groups of Sevres-inlaid French furniture which came to the Metropolitan. Not along the lines of millionaire collectors, and quite under the radar for years, Emma and Lesley Sheafer, who had for years been quietly collecting German and French ceramics. They had never been in contact with the Met, and yet, upon Mrs. Schaeffer’s death, a probate letter arrived informing the museum of a gift of two-thousand pieces of ceramics.

The Met has also benefitted from the gifts of a former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Douglas Dillon, who was an avid admirer of Capodimonte figures; they were not especially trendy at the time so he was able to assemble one of the most comprehensive collections of figures in the world, which now resides at the Met. Gifts are always lovely to receive, but not all are especially easy to deal with. Case in point, the collection of Jack and Belle Linsky which came with so many tight restrictions attached as to its care and display that it led to a complete re-writing of the acceptance of gifts policy of the institution. But, the biggest donors, outside of J.P. Morgan, have been Charles and Jane Wrightsman who have been colossal benefactors of the Metropolitan. Although their ceramic gifts haven’t been as extensive in number as some of the aforementioned collectors, the pieces they have donated are of the highest quality and are key components of the institution’s holdings. So, one can see with all that to choose from, what an agonizing, and yet, delightful time Jeffrey had compiling a ‘highlights of the collection’ publication!

When Jeffrey joined the Met in 2000, he had grand ambitions to catalogue this superb collection.

The last attempt was in the 1950s with black and white images and so needless to say, a lot had changed concerning attributions and ongoing scholarship. Given the growth in popularity of online publishing, Jeffrey soon realized that a massive undertaking would probably not be approved. Instead, a simpler, smaller, ‘highlights’ publication was suggested. As the European porcelain holdings are so strong, he decided on that as a focus instead of European ceramics in general.

The volume was to contain ninety entries and the object list took him three years to compile. He wanted the highlights to reflect the nature of the collection; some pieces were chosen in order to help tell the story of European porcelain in addition to reflecting the quality of the holdings.

There were also a lot of figures to consider as they were deemed more important than hollow wares during the heyday of ceramic collecting in the 1940s-1960s; they were desirable and very expensive.

Jeffrey also tried to arrange the volume chronologically starting with a piece from the Morgan collection-a piece of Medici porcelain from the 1580s. He also wanted not to just illustrate masterpieces collected by connoisseurs, but objects that spoke to and illustrated the times in which they were created such as Capodimonte figures of street vendors. There were many ‘great’ objects considered, but then excluded, because they had no story to tell beside a maker or date. Other items were included as they told the story of technological advancements at various factories.

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Meissen certainly had to be included because, numbering close to nine hundred pieces, it makes up a significant amount of the entire collection. There are Meissen pieces resembling Jasperware from a brief period when the factory experimented with tinting the paste instead of enameling the piece. And, examples of Meissen animal figures also had to be included as these life-sized creatures were a huge technological challenge to create. They are considered masterpieces of Augustus the Strong’s impressive collection. These creatures were originally to be enameled, but they were too fragile to be fired a second time for that process. They were then cold-painted but the paint eventually flaked off over the centuries, so it was scrubbed off resulting in the white porcelain figures we enjoy today. Meissen, Du Paquier, and other smaller German factories are wellrepresented as so much of it became available on the market after World War II- just when these great collections were being formed.

These are just some of the criteria and issues that Jeffrey had to deal with as he made his highlights selections. Space limits us here to discuss every object he shared with the group during his talk, so I thought it best to let Jeffrey choose some of the ‘highlights’ from the Met collection to speak for themselves…..

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Previous Page, Top Left: Potpourri Vase, Sevres Factory, soft-paste porcelain, French, 1757. Top Right: Pair of Vases, Dihl et Guerhard Factory, hard-paste porcelain, French, c.1795-98. Lower Left: Rape of Proserpina, figural group, a technical tour-de-force of porcelain production, Carlo Ginori Factory (Doccia), hard-paste porcelain, Italy c. 1750. Lower Center: Vase with cover, Saint-Cloud Factory, soft-paste porcelain, French, c.

1695-1710. Lower Right: Bust of George II, Factory Unknown, soft-paste porcelain, English, c. 1760.

CHINESE IMPERIAL PORCELAINS IN APRIL April’s program featured a talk by a return speaker to our group, Mr. Robert D. Mowry, the Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art Emeritus at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at the Harvard Art Museums. Mr. Mowry thought that instead of focusing upon one specific ware or period he would speak on the subject of Porcelains for the Emperors: Chinese Imperial Wares of the Song, Ming and Qing Dynasties, allowing us to study the “very best of the best” porcelains made during these three periods.

The earliest known Imperial wares date back to the celadon wares of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE); they are extremely rare, and few have survived. They were developed over a period of a thousand years and are contemporaneous with the Tang earthenware funerary figures which are so well known. Hong Jo was where the celadon tradition was pioneered and developed during the 8th10th centuries. Celadons of this period are usually undecorated, relying upon the beauty of the glaze and the object’s form for their aesthetic appeal. These pieces are more in the way of a white stoneware than a true porcelain. Pieces tend not to have a foot rim and are incised, not with a reign mark, but a mark for the Imperial palace. Forms were influenced by silver and gold forms of the period as the material was considered on a par with those precious metals. The celadon tradition carried on into the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE) and reached a peak of perfection, the age being known for its great artistic refinement. Also developed during this time of great subtley in art was white Ding Ware around the 11th-12th centuries. It was known for its great elegance and delicacy of decoration. As pieces were fired upside down the lips of pieces were left unglazed so they were almost always fitted with metal bands of silver, copper, or tin, to protect the unglazed porcelain from becoming soiled. Ding Ware production was also known for its technical efficiency as special saggers were designed to hold more pieces during the firing which allowed for increased production and more efficient use of fuel. Ding Ware was also produced in black; these wares were used almost exclusively as teawares. From the 12th-13th century there was a marked increase in molded designs.

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Ding Ware was eventually supplanted by Ru Ware which was the first official Imperial ware being made exclusively for palace use. It is extremely rare-only about seventy-five pieces known to exist worldwide; Boston’s MFA has a piece in their collection. It has a light grey body with a glaze resembling ‘duck egg’ or a very light sky blue. Production was brief, about 1100-1125 CE as Tartars invaded in 1127 and sacked the palace.

Left: Black Ding Ware Bowl with mottled ‘Partridge Feathers’ glaze. Right: Rue Ware Cusped Rim Bowl.

The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368 CE) which briefly preceded the Ming (1368-1644 CE) set the stage for a marked change in taste in porcelain production. The Mongol Yuan period expanded trade routes, bringing into China blue and white wares from the Middle East, which re-ignited a long dormant blue and white tradition. Ironically, it was blue and white Chinese wares exported to the Middle East centuries earlier that had created this long-standing tradition in the Middle East. Blue and white decoration had always existed in China, but it never received any appreciation at court or amongst scholars who thought it vulgar and worthy of export to foreigners. That certainly changed in the Yuan and especially in the Ming periods. By the 15th century blue and white wares were elevated in quality and design to be worthy of the Imperial palace. The Ming period sees some of the supreme achievements in blue and white porcelain. This interest in blue and white was only part of a larger taste for an expanding palette of colors that drove experimentation and development from the Ming right through to the Qing dynasties.

One of those forays into color experimentation was an underglaze iron red. An extremely intransigent color, requiring a very small firing window of plus or minus five degrees, iron red, when done correctly, resembles “crushed, ripe strawberries”. Unfortunately, it can run, bleed and be blotchy. It finally dawned on the potters and decorators that, instead of trying to achieve Page 15

precisely drawn and detailed designs like one would with cobalt (which held a line beautifully and didn’t run) why not cover the entire object in an iron red glaze? This was a bit more successful and produced iron red monochromes and eventually led to Ox Blood and Flambe glazes as time went on. Another Ming innovation was Doucai colors - ‘Doucai’ meaning ‘joined’- which were created by an underglaze blue design being colored in by other overglaze enamels such as iron red, yellow and green.

Left: Blue and White Foliate Bowl with ‘Fish Pond’ decoration. Right: Monochrome Saucer Dish in ‘Sacrificial Red’ …when copper red glaze is fired perfectly.

By the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 CE) the kilns reach the pinnacle of technical perfection. In the late 17th and early 18th century, the color palette broadens, and, with the addition of tin oxide, enamels could now be made opaque which allowed for gradation of color, shading and an illusion of depth. Porcelain decorating could now be rendered with the finesse of fine paintings on paper and silk. Imperial wares had run the gamut over centuries from subdued Celadons and white Ding Wares to blue and white wares, to a full spectrum of overglaze enamels.

The full palette of colors is achieved; overglaze decorated ‘Quail Bowl’ Yongzheng period, circa 1730.

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CSC ANNUAL MEETING AND TEA On May 23rd the Club convened at the King’s Chapel Parish House to hold our annual meeting, hear a great talk, and enjoy an afternoon tea before dispersing for the summer; it’s hard to believe another program year of enlightening lectures has passed so quickly. The season closer was CSC member, past president, and Independent Curator William R. Sargent who spoke on the subject Boars’ Heads on the Table: 18th Century Porcelain Animal Tureens.

At first glance, these undeniably beautiful and exquisitely sculpted porcelains might seem a little unusual, maybe even bizarre. They are that, but although we now view them as individual works of art each illustrates a complicated story of cross-cultural trade and eighteenth-century dining habits in Europe. Such wares have been described as “table theater”. They reflect economic, social, cultural and religious forces that brought these tureens into existence, saw them fade from use, and then rise to status of art objects today. In exhibit cases, publications and exhibitions these tureens are divorced from their origins and meaning, and that’s an injustice to the fuller and more meaningful understanding of them that Bill wanted to share with us.

One must look to dining traditions to understand the scope of services needed. Continental dining in the 18th century was, since the Middle Ages, conducted in the style known as service à la française, where dinners were served in three courses, and each course was accompanied by many dishes placed on the table at once. In the eighteenth century a normal service of Chinese export porcelain for a wealthy consumer could easily run between 150-300 pieces. Add to this the special, and more costly, requests for animal form tureens, and you can imagine the impressive nature of a table set with these Asian, and European, treasures. Animal form tureens first appeared in Europe around 1730: Realistic ducks, pigeons and plovers were the first models of fowl made at Strasbourg, by Paul Hannong between 1748 and 1754, although these are often described as butter dishes.

Bill then gave us a quick note on construction of tureens in China. China had a long history of figural ceramics known as (xiangsheng) “porcelain made in the shape of living forms.” Father François Xavier d’Entrecolles (1664-1741), the Jesuit missionary stationed at Jingdezhen in the 1720s, described the production of molds used for three dimensional ceramics, although it was decades before the creation of animal shaped tureens. The description suggests the great difficulty in producing large pieces, the complexity of molding, and the difficulty of firing, procedures that resulted in high prices and therefore the scarcity of such objects, then and now.

Figures made specifically for the Western market were often, but not always, based on European sources, as d’Entrecolles mentioned in his letters- either copied from ceramic or wooden models of European manufacture, or from print sources. The only currently known references to ordering Page 17

animal form tureens come from Dutch East India Company records that show that for the first time, twenty-five boar head and twenty-five goose tureens were ordered in 1763 In 1764 nineteen boar head and four goose tureens were shipped. For the latter order, each cost 10.50 Dutch florin (or guilders); that’s the equivalent of about $207-331US (in 2015), or £158-252. Animal form tureens were 3 to 5 times the cost of a regular tureen.

Goose Tureen and Underdish, made for the Asquieta family, Spanish market, c. 1750.

Aside from the VOC records, there are no other references in shipping documents that Bill knows of; there are no paintings or documentary references to them in Europe; there are no shards or fragments of molds found at kiln sites, and none have been found on shipwrecks. The bottom line is that we have little to go on other than the physical presence of these surviving pieces.

The earliest fish-shaped tureens in Europe were created at the Chelsea, Lawrence Street Factory, during the Red anchor period. In the 1755 and 1756 Sale Catalogues, there were listed “Two exceeding fine Carps, and 2 fine dishes to ditto.” They are actually plaice, not carp, but their tails sweep up and their mouths were open as was followed later in the Chinese models of carp. In the Chelsea example the top of the tureen is cut horizontally through the entire body, including the mouth, while on Chinese examples there is always a lid that is a smaller oval cut from the top of the tureen. It is unlikely these European animal form ceramic tureens were carried on board European ship to be used as models for Chinese potters. So, if European merchants requested fish shaped tureens, for example, the Chinese might be forgiven for turning for inspiration to the carp (yu, li). The word for fish and abundance are homonyms (yu), and symbolizes wealth, harmony, marital happiness and reproduction, and the carp with its whiskers was thought to resemble a Page 18

dragon (li hua long), a symbol of power. Many carp tureens were produced for the general market and carry no armorials, monograms or other special decorations that would have put their pricing out of reach of a larger constituency.

For dinners, fish and meat were often prepared and served in meat pies, the crusts occasionally surmounted by a carcass representing the contents. Only bird carcasses seem to have been placed over the crust and paraded into the dining room. Peacocks were a favorite, perhaps as much for the colors of the feathers as the meat.

Around 1745 the meat pies surmounted by carcasses began to be replaced with European ceramic replicas. But the conceit of a carcass on a pie was not used as often as a replica of the entire animal. No direct replicas of large European animal shaped tureens are known, so orders for these may have been verbal requests. But it would have been easy for Chinese potters to respond to Western requirements and to realize a desirable product. For example, duck-form incense burners would have easily lent themselves to porcelain versions of European tureens.

In the Middle Ages meats were often served whole, as they were not heavily prepared. Boar had long been part of the diet in Europe and a boar head was often portrayed in Dutch paintings of the early seventeenth century to indicate the abundance and wealth of the period. Boar (gong zhu) do not feature significantly in Chinese culture, but they do exist and are a symbol of the wealth of the forest. In the 1750s Paul Hannong, of Strasbourg, produced a realistic version of a boar head.

The Chelsea porcelain manufactory auction catalog for March 18, 1755 listed “a very curious TUREEN in the form of a BOAR’S HEAD, and a beautiful dish to ditto with proper ornaments.”

A model by Nicholas Sprimont (1713-1771) is realistic to the point that blood trickles from the eyes, nostrils, mouth and ears.

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Previous Page Left: Boar’s Head Tureen, Hochst, Faience, c. 1750. Bonham’s London, 2013. Right: Water Buffalo Tureen, China, c.1760-1780. Campbell Collection of Soup Tureens, Winterthur.

Chinese export porcelain boar head tureens, range in size from 15.5 cm (6 in.) to 40 cm (15¾ in.) in length. All boar head tureens are rendered in enamel decorations which might be called stylistically realistic, in that they do not approach the realism of European models, but they do not shy away from a factual account of a severed animal head on a platter. Each was constructed, following European models, with the head divided horizontal from the open mouth to the back of the head, to be lifted as a lid by the snout and head. The nostrils are open to the interior allowing steam to rise from them during the dinner.

The heads of ox or cattle were available in the market in the 16th and 17th century and were used in meals, but less frequently than other animals, and apparently only the meat was used. Same with lamb or sheep. But the ox head or water buffalo head tureen is a form not recorded in Western ceramics. The ox or water buffalo (niu) is native to China and is a common subject in Chinese art: the ox is an emblem of spring and agriculture, and is the second of the symbolic animals in the Chinese zodiac, and is the animal that, as a beast of burden, draws the plough. As such it is respected and not seen as a food. So, it might just be that the mold makers of Jingdezhen took it upon themselves to introduce a variation on a theme they thought might sell well in the West, or were they horrified when a Western merchant requested the model? There were a small number of ox head tureens produced and most are dated ca. 1770.

Animal form ceramic tureens, in Europe and from China, were a short-lived fashion that started around 1745 and had passed by the 1780s. The tureens I’ve shown are a small portion of what was produced in those roughly 25 years. What caused the demise of interest in these forms: Cost?

Taste? Or the introduction of service à la russe as a style of dining, where staff carried platters around the table, making carrying large tureens impractical. Perhaps all of these factors.

Bill closed with saying that he has been an art historian and curator for 45 years, but before that he was trained as a potter, so he has a good idea of what goes into modeling, molding, constructing, firing, decorating, and firing again these pieces. It’s not easy. He considers these tureens remarkable sculptures, remarkable accomplishments of the potters’ art, that just happen to have been created to serve a function. He hopes that everyone is as amazed as he is at these accomplishments of the Chinese potters’ and decorators’ art.

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PRIVATE TOUR AND FUND-RAISER OFFERED IN MAY In addition to our regular program of monthly lectures, members of the CSC were invited to a private tour of a personal collection of Chinese porcelains on Boston’s Beacon Hill on Sunday, May 5th.. The collector, Mr. Jeffrey Stamen, generously opened his home and offered his time so that all proceeds from registration fees could go directly into the Club’s coffers. Members who joined the tour were treated to a world class collection of Kangxi period (1662-1722) porcelains.

Named the Jie Rui Tang Collection, this collection has been formed by Mr. Stamen over the past thirty-five years. It was not only a pleasure to hear the collector speak so passionately and knowledgably about his subject, but also to see how he lives with the collection in situ in his home.

Here are a few of the many highlights the group enjoyed before repairing to members Jeff and Liz Brown’s home for an afternoon tea.

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Pictured above: Jeffrey Stamen amongst his treasures of Chinese Kangxi period porcelains. The triple gourd vase to the left of his image is a very rare form of unusual size; the rouleau form vase on the right is what Jeffrey refers to as “the Mona Lisa of Kangxi porcelain painting�. The second row of images depicts, left, a footed bottle vase of unusual color and design-made for the Persian Market. Bottom center, an impressively sized Monteith punch bowl-a European silver form covered completely in Chinese taste decoration. Bottom right, ritual pouring vessel called a Kendi of Buddhist origins. Although great blue and white porcelains were created during this period, note the extensive use here of the Famille Verte palette of enamels which were popular circa1700-1720.

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Everyone enjoy the rest of your summer!

See you in September!

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