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22-D Maine Antique Digest, April 2017
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SHOW -
22-D
New York City
The New York Ceramics & Glass Fair
by Lita Solis-Cohen
T
he opening moments of the five-day New York
Ceramics & Glass Fair on the fourth and fifth floors
of the Bohemian National Hall at 321 East 73rd
Street in NewYork City on Wednesday afternoon, January
18, were as competitive as at an auction. The major
collectors and curators who had received e-mails with
images of some of the treasures on offer made a beeline
for their favorite stands, hoping their competition hadn’t
gotten there first.
By the end of the three-and-a-half-hour preview,
London dealer Garry Atkins had sprinkled red “sold” dots
in all his cases. New York City dealer Alan Kaplan, who
had a selection of early English salt-glazed and creamware
ceramics from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Henry
Weldon (the things they bought after they gave to Colonial
Williamsburg all the pieces illustrated in the two books
published on their collection), sold quickly to collectors
and to museums.
North Adams, Massachusetts, dealer Leslie Ferrin,
who has been showing contemporary ceramics at this fair
since its earliest days, said the preview gives artists and
collectors a deadline. “Artists need to send their best work
in time for this show, and collectors rush to in to see it, not
knowing who they might be competing against,” she said.
That is why there is excitement in the opening moments
of the ceramics and glass fair, the last of the specialized,
narrowly focused fairs to survive.
Like the London Ceramics Fair, launched by Anna and
Brian Haughton in London in 1981 and which continued
until its demise in 2009, the New York Ceramics & Glass
Fair offers a series of free lectures every day. Generally
well attended by scholars and collectors, it is where
discussions about the latest research, the latest finds, and
the next exhibitions take place and where a limited number
of advance copies of
Ceramics in America
were for sale.
Ferrin led a lively round-table discussion on “What do you
do when the children don’t want it.” The conclusion: this
is a good time to collect because so much is coming on the
market at the same time in a generational shift.
The ceramics and glass fair was smaller this year, with
just 28 dealers. More than half of the exhibitors offered
17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century wares; the rest offered
contemporary studio ceramics and glass. Museum curators
from across the country come to this show, and they set in
motion acquisitions for the year. The 33 museum curators
who shopped at the fair, according to a post-sale press
release, bought antique and contemporary works and put
works on reserve that must be approved by acquisition
committees.
This fair is still weighted toward the old, but it would
not survive without the contemporary. The two galleries
offering the work of several contemporary craftsmen
sold more than the eight craftsmen who represented
This fair is still weighted toward
the old, but it would not survive
without the contemporary.
themselves. There is generally a turnover of individual
craftsmen that keeps the show fresh. The exceptions
were ceramic artists Cliff Lee of Stevens, New Jersey,
the Taiwanese neurosurgeon turned potter who has been
prominent in the crafts world since his inclusion in the
White House Collection of American Crafts in 1993, and
Hideaki Miyamura, the Japanese-born American potter
who works in Kensington, New Hampshire. His work,
like Lee’s, is in major museum collections. Boston artist
Katherine Houston, who makes porcelain still lifes of
fruits, vegetables, and flowers, is a regular at this show and
has a following. Museums have also acquired her work.
The dealers in earlier wares were busy. For some, such
as Alan Kaplan of Leo Kaplan Ltd., New York City, this
is the only show he does (he has a gallery on the sixth
floor of a building on 57th Street where he carries on
business). Garry Atkins comes to New York City from
London just once each year and saves his rarest early
earthenware, delft, and creamware for this fair. Martyn
Edgell of Cambridgeshire, England brings a large stock
of mostly British ceramics from the 17th though the early
19th century. He came to the U.S. twice this season and
showed at the Delaware Antiques Show in November
because his major clients are Americans. Martine Boston
of Limerick, Ireland brought Victorian majolica to the fair.
Her husband, Nicholas, who used to exhibit at the fair, said
he is working on a major museum majolica exhibition to
open in the U.S. in 2018 and is still a partner in yearly
majolica auctions in the U.S.
English ceramics are the strong suit at this fair. Robert
Prescott Walker of Waccabuc, New York, who has been
exhibiting for the past three years under the name Polka
Dot Antiques, said he had his best fair so far. “Historical
Deerfield purchased two of my rarest items—a triple-
colored transfer-printed salt-glazed stoneware plate, 1756-
60, one of only five known to exist—but more importantly
they bought the unique hand-drawn estate plan of Thomas
Whieldon’s estate, dated 1794. It was discovered a few
months ago in the U.K. at an auction of a solicitor’s office
that closed.” Walker said he could have sold it to several
other museums, but Deerfield got there first. He also sold
lead-glazed “Landskip” ware, salt-glazed agate animals,
early English delftware, and Moorcroft pottery.
Baltimore dealers Marcia Moylan and Jacqueline
Smelkinson, specialists in Japan pattern English porcelain
and Georgian and Victorian jewelry, moved their stand
upstairs this year and loved their new location on the
Early in the show, London dealer Garry Atkins sold this
unusual 11" diameter English Staffordshire slipware
dish attributed to Thomas Toft, circa 1675, the rim
with radiating oak leaves with human faces and with a
stylized leaf in the center with more human faces. The
decoration is thought to be symbolic of Charles II hiding
in the Boscobel oak, and the buff clay was given a coating
of black slip before the leaves with human faces were
applied. A similar plate in the Fitzwilliam Museum in
Cambridge, England is signed Thomas Toft.
The 12½" diameter London delftware plate with the arms
of the Tobacco Pipe Makers’ Company, 1670-90, is painted
in tones of blue on a pale blue ground. A tobacco plant is
depicted on a shield supported by a pair of blackamoors;
the crest is a blackamoor holding a clay pipe. It was sold by
Garry Atkins of London.
Leslie Grigsby, curator of ceramics and glass at the
Winterthur Museum, makes beaded sculpture. This teapot
of wood, glass, wooden beads, and thread, 11½" x 15" x
8½", is from her water and fish “Water Ways” series. Some
of her sculptures were available for purchase, priced from
$1000 to $12,000. She sold four.
Part of the loan exhibition, this hard-paste porcelain bowl
was probably made at the Bonnin and Morris porcelain
works in Philadelphia, circa 1772. Measuring just 5½"
diameter, it was among the 85,000 artifacts recovered from
the site of the new Museum of the American Revolution
that is to open in Philadelphia in April. Discovered in 2014
and first analyzed by Dr. J. Victor Owen, an expert on the
geochemistry of archaeological ceramics and glass, and his
colleagues, the bowl was identified as being true porcelain,
most likely manufactured in Philadelphia in the 18th century.
Archaeologist and ceramic historian Robert Hunter
believes that the bowl is made of aluminous-silica paste and
reflects experiments with Cherokee clay (kaolin) sent to
Bonnin and Morris in 1771 by Henry Laurens of Charleston,
South Carolina. The findings of Dr. Owens and his colleagues,
along with an article by Robert Hunter and Juliette
Gerhardt, are presented in the 2016 volume of
Ceramics in
America
, published by the Chipstone Foundation.
During the election season, Ferrin Contemporary, North
Adams, Massachusetts, showed Justin Rothshank’s
Dinner with the Presidents
and
Know Justice
, handmade
commemorative tableware with transfer prints of
presidents and justices of the Supreme Court, as a way
of creating dialogue about politics. At the Ceramics &
Glass Fair, Ferrin offered Rothshank’s plates and mugs
with the Obamas and with Supreme Court Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg for $60 and $70 each. Rothshank works
in Goshen, Indiana. Individual settings and complete sets
are available for purchase and for special exhibitions at
historical societies and museums.
Ferrin said she sold every Rothshank piece she had, but
she did not show his Trump plates because of the protests in
New York City and Washington, D.C., during the fair, even
though the artist said if Ferrin had sold any Trump plates,
he would donate all proceeds to Planned Parenthood.