Maine Antique Digest March 2015

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8-A Maine Antique Digest, March 2015
Creamware, the luscious
cream-colored English earth-
enware of the late 18th century,
will be the topic of the Connecti-
cut Ceramics Study Circle on
March 9. Amanda Lange, cura-
torial department chair and cu-
rator of historic interiors at His-
toric Deerfield, Inc., will give a
lecture beginning at 1:15 p.m.
at the Bruce Museum, One Mu-
seum Drive, Greenwich, Con-
necticut. Lange will survey the
history of English creamware
using notable examples from the
Alistair Sampson Collection of
English Creamware at Historic
Deerfield.
Still in demand with collectors
today, creamware or queensware
was developed as early as the
1740s in Staffordshire, England
in a concerted effort to find a
substitute for the Chinese porce-
lain or tin-glazed delftware dom-
inating the market at that time.
Enoch Booth (1717-c.1743) is
credited with inventing a type of
earthenware made from a com-
bination of ball clay and ground
calcined flint that was cheaper
than porcelain and sturdier than
delft. Josiah Wedgwood (1730-
1795), however, perfected and
Covered tureen, probably Yorkshire,
England, circa 1780, lead-glazed
creamware. Museum purchase with
funds provided by Ray J. & Anne K.
Groves, 2010.1 Historic Deerfield,
Inc., Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Photograph by Penny Leveritt.
HATTIESBURG,
MISSISSIPPI
On February 3, a truck carry-
ing 16 homemade Appalachian
musical instruments was broken
into at a Motel 6 in Hattiesburg,
Mississippi, and the instruments
were stolen. The instruments
were being sent to a buyer in
Texas. A reward is offered for
the return of any or all of the
instruments. Any information
should be directed to Officer Joe
Holman, Hattiesburg Police De-
partment, at (601) 544-7900.
LOS ANGELES,
CALIFORNIA
On January 10, a surveillance
video shows a man with a fur-
niture dolly stopping in front
of Engine Co. No. 28, a restau-
WHO MADE THIS?
Who made this bronze wood-
cock? Please reply if you know.
Lynn Grund
25925 South La Grange
Rd., Monee, IL 60449
Help Stolen
successfully marketed the ce-
ramic body, made at Burslem
from about 1762.
Wedgwood described the
new product as “a species
of earthenware for the table,
quite new in appearance,
covered with a rich and bril-
liant glaze, bearing sudden
alterations of heat and cold,
manufactured with ease and
expedition, and consequent-
ly cheap.” Equally fashion-
able with the aristocracy
and middle-class consumers
alike, creamware transcended
its status as an earthenware
body and was often valued as
the equal of porcelain. Wedg-
wood’s refined designs and
creamy glazes attracted the
patronage of George III’s wife,
Queen Charlotte (1744-1818),
who allowed him to adopt the
name “Queen’s ware.” His most
considerable effort was a cream-
ware dinner service of 952 pieces
supplied to Catherine the Great
of Russia in 1775. By the 1790s,
other English factories—Liver-
pool, Bristol, and Staffordshire
potters—were cashing in on the
new development with exten-
sive cream-colored production of
their own, with objects left plain
or elaborately ornamented with
painted decoration.
Lange has held curatorial posi-
tions at Historic Deerfield since
1994 and since 2007 has led a
curatorial department staff of
four responsible for research and
publication of over 7000 ceram-
ic, glass, and metal objects, their
display and furnishing within
Historic Deerfield’s 13 historic
houses along its one-mile street,
and for providing lectures and
preparing exhibitions for the
Flynt Center of Early New En-
gland Life.
Refreshments will be served
following the lecture. The fee for
nonmembers is$25.Reservations
are not necessary. For informa-
rant in Los Angeles, California,
owned by high-profile lawyer
Mark Geragos. The man smokes
a cigarette and then rolls the
20th-century water cannon onto
the dolly and casually wheels it
away.
According to Det. Steven
Franssen of the LAPD, Geragos
bought the water cannon for
$18,000 in 2011 from the old
Wilshire Grand Hotel. He used it
to decorate his restaurant at the
old firehouse at 644 S. Figueroa
St.
The water cannon is 3½' tall
with large wheels. If you have
any information, contact Det.
Franssen at (213) 928-8223.
F r a gm e n t s
Effective February 1,
Sotheby’s enacted a new
buyer’s premium rate structure.
The new rate structure will be
25% on the first $200,000 of
the hammer price; 20% on the
portion of the hammer price
above $200,000 up to and
including $3 million; and 12%
on any remaining amount above
$3 million.
The previous buyer’s premium
rate structure, which had been in
effect since March 15, 2013, was
25% on the first $100,000 of the
hammer price; 20% on the por-
tion of the hammer price above
$100,000 up to and including $2
million; and 12% on any remain-
ing amount above $2 million.
An unsigned painting by
Henry Koerner (1915-
1991), Tailor’s Dummies, offered
as lot #1 at Dirk Soulis Auctions’
December 5 and 6, 2014, sale
in Kansas City, Missouri,
brought $270,250 (includes
buyer’s premium) from a New
Jersey dealer, bidding on the
phone for a private client. The
painting likely will be donated
to a museum following minor
conservation work.
Bidding opened on line at
$50,000 but settled into a battle
between two bidders, each en-
tering $5000 at a time until the
phone bidder prevailed, making
it the second-highest auction
price on record for the Vienna-
born artist. (Koerner’s unsigned
Post War, a 29½" x 35" oil on
board, sold for $329,600 at So-
theby’s in New York City on
May 24, 2006.)
Tailor’s Dummies, a 28" x 35"
oil on masonite, had been ex-
hibited at Midtown Galleries in
New York City, January 25-Feb-
ruary 19, 1949, Koerner’s first
solo exhibition held in the Unit-
ed States. It was once owned by
Joseph Verner Reed, an Amer-
ican banker, diplomat, and col-
lector. A related watercolor or
gouache titled Tailor’s Dummies
was exhibited in An Exhibition
of 100 Prizewinning Watercol-
ors of the Second International
Hallmark Art Award in Kansas
City in 1952.
According to Soulis, the paint-
ing was owned by two sisters
in the Kansas City area. Their
father had purchased it in New
York City, and for years it hung
in the bedroom of one of the sis-
ters.
Koerner’s son Joseph, an art
historian at Harvard University,
provided insights into the sym-
bolism of his father’s work and
clues to the date of its execution,
which he pegged at 1948. “Play-
ing children was a favorite theme
already in his earliest pictures…
children at play represented for
him the energy of survival (he
observed children playing in ru-
ins in Vienna and Berlin). The
motif of the mannequins features
in his work as an ‘uncanny’ rep-
resentation of the body,” Joseph
Koerner wrote. “For me the most
interesting feature of the painting
is the portrait represented as if it
were painted on the brick wall.
The representation of represen-
tations in the urban landscape
(posters, store signs, newspa-
pers) was a specialty of my fa-
ther, as it demonstrated his skill.
The representation seems to me
to be a portrait of his mother,
Feige Dwora (‘Feige’) Koern-
er, born Mager, who was mur-
dered in the Holocaust. He had
photos of her, which he brought
with him to the States when he
emigrated from Vienna in 1938.
My father seems to have imag-
ined his mother in her youth, or
at least into the period when he
was a child, as the hat and dress
are those of an elegant lady from
the period long before the 1930s.
Thus the painting in the painting
is a memory image, connecting
this painting to several others
that include her (and my father’s
father’s effigy), e.g., My Parents
I and My Parents II.”
Koerner also painted from
life. Between 1955 and 1967, he
painted over 50 Time magazine
covers of notable people who sat
for him, including John F. Ken-
nedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Maria
Callas, Paul Getty, and Barbra
Streisand. He was honored, after
his death in 1991, by retrospec-
tives at the Austrian National
Gallery and the Frick Art & His-
torical Center in Pittsburgh.
Three other works of art in
The William Secord Gallery’s
inaugural exhibition at its
new location at 29 West 15th
Street in Manhattan’s historic
Chelsea district is Canine
Masters, The Nineteenth
Century. It will feature works
by English artists such as Maud
Earl (1864-1943), Thomas Earl
(fl. 1836-85), John Emms (1843-
1912) and Arthur Wardle (1864-
1949), as well asAmerican artists
such as Percival Rosseau (1859-
1937) and Arthur Fitzwilliam
Tait (1819-1905). The exhibition
will run until March 20.
Secord, who specializes in the
sale of 19th- and early 20th-centu-
ry dog and animal paintings, said,
“We are very excited to be in our
new location, and I look forward
to continuing my research in the
field, and to welcoming our cli-
ents to our new space. It is ideally
suited for displaying paintings.”
The gallery is open by ap-
pointment only. For more infor-
mation, call (212) 249-0075 or
Sotheby’s Raises Buyer’s Premium
William Secord’s Inaugural Exhibition in
New Gallery
Tailor’s Dummies by Henry Koerner
Brings $270,250
CREAMWARE FROM
THE ALISTAIR SAMPSON
COLLECTION