Enfilade

From LACMA:

Daily Pleasures: French Ceramics from the MaryLou Boone Collection
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 6 October 2012 — 31 March 2013

Ewer, c. 1700, Rouen, France, Earthenware with tin glaze and enamel (grand feu faïence), 11 x 11 in. LACMA, Gift of MaryLou and George Boone in honor of the museum’s twenty-fifth anniversary, M.2010.51.1, Photo © Susan Einstein.

Long-time LACMA benefactor MaryLou Boone has amassed the West Coast’s finest collection of French faience and soft-paste porcelain, 25 pieces of which she gave to LACMA in 2010. (Although originally made to emulate hard-paste porcelain imported into Europe from Asia, faience and soft-paste porcelain ultimately became distinctive and sought-after ceramics in their own right.)

The exhibition comprises over 130 pieces from the foremost manufactories of the era, representing myriad aesthetic influences, as well as advances in technology and the rhythms of domestic life. The collection includes wares for dining and taking tea, for storing the many toiletries necessary for a stylish appearance, and for preparing mixtures that comforted in time of sickness. Inextricably intertwined with every day duties and diversions, these objects provide a unique view of French life and culture.

The accompanying exhibition catalogue, Daily Pleasures: French Ceramics from the MaryLou Boone Collection, includes more than 145 entries of French faience and porcelain from the collection, as well as essays about the collector and 17th and 18th-century French ceramics.

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From ACC Distribution:

Elizabeth Williams and Meredith Chilton, Daily Pleasures French Ceramics from the MaryLou Boone Collection (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2012), 392 pages, ISBN: 9780875872155, $75.

MaryLou Boone’s collection of French ceramics spans the reigns of some of France’s most fascinating kings, from Louis XIII to Louis XVI, yet the collection is not one of royal vases and princely gifts but, rather, of wares for dining and taking tea, of porcelain frivolities, and of ceramics for the sickroom and the pharmacy. Mrs. Boone – a collector, scholar, and donor – has amassed the West Coast’s finest collection of 17th and 18th-century French faience and soft-paste porcelain, objects that provide a unique view of French life and culture. Emphasizing the aesthetics French ceramics and also its functionality, the catalogue comprises over 130 collection entries, as well as essays on the collector, ceramics in 17th-18th century France, French faience and its makers and French porcelain and its makers. Although originally created to emulate Asian porcelain, faïence and soft-paste porcelain ultimately became distinctive and sought-after ceramics in their own right.

C O N T E N T S

• Michael Govan and John Murdoch — Foreword
• Elizabeth Williams — Introduction
• Map of Manufactories
• Victoria Kastner — MaryLou Boone: The Accidental Collector
• Meredith Chilton — The Pleasures of Life: Ceramics in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France
• Antoinette Faÿ-Hallé — French Faience from Its Origins to the Nineteenth Century
• Antoinette Faÿ-Hallé — Faience Manufactory Histories
• Faience Catalogue
• Meredith Chilton — Porcelain Production in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France
• Meredith Chilton — Porcelain Manufactory Histories
• Porcelain Catalogue
• Marks Appendix
• Glossary
• Selected Bibliography
• Illustration Credits
• Index

Meredith Chilton is an independent art historian and was the founding curator of the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto from 1983 to 2004. She has curated many exhibitions, published extensively and lectured internationally. Antoinette Faÿ-Hallé is Conservateur général honoraire du Patrimoine and Ancien directeur du musée national de Céramique, Sèvres where she worked as both a conservator and director. She has organized many ceramic and glass exhibitions and written extensively on the history of ceramics. Catherine Hess is Chief Curator of European Art at The Huntington Art Collections in San Marino, California. She is responsible for a collection particularly strong in Renaissance bronzes, 18th-Century French decorative arts, and 18th-Century British portraiture. Victoria Kastner, the Historian at Hearst Castle, has published several books and holds graduate degrees in architectural history and museum management. Elizabeth A. Williams is the Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Assistant Curator of the Decorative Arts and Design department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

From the New-York Historical Society:

Stories in Sterling: Four Centuries of Silver in New York
New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, 4 May — 2 September 2012

Brandywine bowl (brandewijnkom), silver, ca. 1700 (New-York Historical Society) — Brandywine bowls are traditionally associated with the Dutch New York ritual of the kindermaal, a celebratory feast held in honor of a mother and her newborn child within ten days of the birth. The guests, predominantly female, feasted on sweet cakes and communally sipped a potent brew of brandy and raisins from a bowl such as this.

Stories in Sterling: Four Centuries of Silver in New York, highlights the histories of 150 notable examples of silver from the New-York Historical Society’s collection. Made across the span of four centuries, the objects in the exhibition tell a diversity of stories: many speak to individual accomplishment and family pride, while a few have unsettling ties or backgrounds. The silver, ranging from simple spoons to extravagant trophies, culled from a trove of over 3,000 objects, includes powerful eyewitness artifacts linked to significant moments in the history of New York and the United States.

Stories in Sterling interprets these compelling objects within a cultural context, focusing on the men and women that made, used, and treasured these objects. The exhibition is organized thematically and addresses issues of silver patronage, usage of objects, rituals of presentation and the meanings of silver as they evolved over time. The exhibition will be enriched by a judicious selection of paintings, prints, photographs, manuscripts, furniture and other documents that illuminate the silver, help bring to life the individuals who acquired it and illustrate the physical context in which it was used.

Objects in the exhibition span the sixteenth through the twentieth  centuries, with a concentration on silver of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While the majority of objects were made in New York, some were crafted as far afield as England, the Netherlands, France, as well as China, Jamaica, and Argentina. All of the silver is firmly connected through its ownership to New York, highlighting the cosmopolitan nature of the city as early as the seventeenth century. For instance, the examples of Dutch silver brought to New York by early settlers, as well as the many imports from England, help chart cultural shifts, taste, and stylistic influence in colonial America and the early years of the nation.

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From the publisher:

Margaret K. Hofer with Debra Schmidt Bach, Stories in Sterling Four Centuries of Silver in New York (London: Giles, 2012), 352 pages, ISBN: 9781904832652, $70.

Stories in Sterling is the first comprehensive survey of the New-York Historical Society’s superb collection of early American silver, one of the finest in the United States. It features the full range of silver works, from masterpieces like the 1772 salver by New York City silversmith Lewis Fueter, to the simpler, but no less significant teapot made for the Schuyler family by the Albany silversmith Kiliaen Van Rensselaer in 1695 – one of the earliest teapots made in New York.

Seven chapters consider silver from a range of perspectives: its reflection of the multiethnic character of colonial New York; the impact of industrialization on its manufacture and consumption; its role in honouring public achievement or marking rites of passage; and, finally, its ability to express its owners’ social standing. With a wealth of related objects and original documents, Stories in Sterling is a vital reference tool for for scholars, collectors and enthusiasts of American silver and culture. It features extensive and superbly illustrated entries
with full dimensions, makers’ marks and weights in troy ounces,
and an appendix and checklist.

Margaret K. Hofer is curator of Decorative Arts at the New-York Historical Society, where she has organized numerous exhibitions, including A New Light on Tiffany (2007), which she co-authored. Debra Schmidt Bach, associate curator at the New-York Historical Society organized the exhibition The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society,(2010). Kenneth Ames is professor of American Decorative Arts and Material Culture of the 18th and 19th-centuries at the Bard Graduate Center, New York. His publications include Beyond Necessity: Art in the Folk Tradition; Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture (1995). David Barquist is curator of American Decorative Arts at Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a scholar on colonial New York silver. He is the author of Myer Myers Jewish Silversmith in Colonial New York (2001).