Ceramics Collector: Face jugs – expressions in clay

Face jugs from the American South belong to separate tradition that continues to the present day. These vessels have roots in African-American cultural heritage but later become a bestselling product for regional potteries in the 20th century. Both the early folk creations and the signed works of later potters are sought out by collectors.

The exhibition text explains, “Historians originally believed that the face jug was utilitarian and used to store water. Multiple theories later surfaced involving its function as a container of magical materials and its ritualistic use. New research has shown that the vessel was likely multipurpose – and a coded object meant to be misunderstood.”

Dr. Graham Boettcher, curator of American art at the Birmingham Museum of Art, is delighted to have the show: “It fits in beautifully with our strong ceramics focus. Clay is the one material that connects all the departments in our museum. Whenever we have the opportunity to host a ceramics exhibition – particularly one that covers new territory – we are delighted to take it. This is the first time that all of these face jugs have been brought together in one place. In the course of researching and curating the exhibition, Claudia [Mooney of the Chipstone Foundation] uncovered face jugs that were sitting in private collections which had never been on public view.”

He continued, “It’s a small show with great visual impact – I think there are 18 full jugs and a number of fragments. In a corner of the exhibition, we have added pieces from our own African collection, which are very clearly marked. We thought that was appropriate, since we have a major collection of African ceramics – I believe it’s the largest institutional collection in the United States. There are figural traditions in African ceramics, and so we show some African face jugs.”

The Birmingham Museum of Art presented its first Bunting Biennial Ceramics Symposium in February 2013. The theme – “Clay Embodied: Ceramics and the Human Form” – was a perfect complement to the face jug exhibition. Ceramic artist Magdalene Odundo was the keynote speaker, and well-known researcher Garth Clark gave a presentation on the vessel form. Curator Emily Hanna spoke on the museum’s recent acquisition of the Dick Jemison collection of African Ceramics mentioned above.

Serious collectors will enjoy reading more about the early pieces in the exhibition in the blog posts written by Claudia Mooney of the Chipstone Foundation, which can be found on the Milwaukee Museum of Art website, www.mam.org. She discusses at length the possible implications of a rare inscription on the back of one example in the exhibition, which was made around 1862.

She states: “We know that Edgefield face jugs were created by slaves, and later free African Americans in that district of South Carolina. We know that they were made from about 1860 to about 1880 or so, when they suddenly stopped being produced. We know that the form was appropriated by white potters in the 1880s.”

Working the clay with traditional techniques, a number of these later potters achieved national recognition as folk artists. Their signed face jugs are avidly sought after by collectors when they appear at southern auction houses, including Brunk Auctions in Asheville, N.C., and Case Auctions in Knoxville, Tenn.

One of the best-known makers of 20th century face jugs is Georgia potter Lanier Meaders (1917-1998), who became a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow in 1983. He took over the pottery founded by his grandfather and continued by his father, when he fulfilled an order for face jugs to sell at the first Festival of American Folk Life in the 1960s.

The NEA profile of the artist estimates that Meaders may have made 10,000 examples of the form during his career: “All his life, he continued the alkaline-glazed stoneware tradition of the area, working alone with a foot-powered treadle wheel and a rectangular wood-fired ‘tunnel’ kiln.”

“The face jugs produced by Lanier underwent a considerable evolution. The first ones featured blobs of clay representing eyes, now, and mouth applied to a jug wall. Later ones featured careful attention to facial details.”

Another important maker was Burlon Craig (1914-2002) who worked in the town of Vale, N.C, and was named a National Heritage Fellow in 1984. Daisy Wade Bridges, former associate curator, contributed the chapter on “North Carolina’s Ceramic Heritage” to North Carolina Pottery: The Collection of the Mint Museums (2004), which includes a number of examples of Craig’s face jugs.

She wrote, “One other popular product of the Catawba Valley kilns has been face jugs. Probably brought to North Carolina from the Edgefield district of South Carolina, face jugs have puzzled ceramic historians for decades. … There are many folktales about their use, but about the only thing known for certain is that they are popular with collectors and sell well. As a result, they have been produced in large numbers for the past half-century. Burlon Craig’s large jugs with weeping eyes are particularly fine examples of the form.”

Many examples of earlier and later face jugs have passed through the hands of Southern pottery expert John Case. Most have molded features, but in 2011 the auction house sold a mid-19th century jug discovered in Washington County in southwest Virginia, which had a profile portrait head painted in cobalt, rather than a sculpted face. He notes, “That’s was a very fascinating piece because we have few early face vessels from the East Tennessee-Southwest Virginia area.” The exceptional unsigned jug brought $5,800.

Asked what sort of consignments of the face jug form he would like to see in the future, he refers back to the early types on view in the current exhibition: “What I would like to see is a 19th century example with exaggerated features. Some of the early brown ones are fairly simplistic, but there is an elegance in the simplicity.”

After closing in Birmingham in April, “Face Jugs: Art and Ritual in 19th Century South Carolina” travels to the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens for a May 4 - July 7 run.

Ceramics Collector: Ken Price's vivid table sculptures

Ceramics are sometimes relegated to that artistic stepchild, the “crafts” category. But no one has ever suggested that the work of Ken Price (1935-2012) is anything other than fine art, even though his miniaturized sculptures can be held in one hand.

A new traveling retrospective exhibition, organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and designed by architect Frank O. Gehry, displays works from every twist and turn of Price’s career. Most valuable for enthusiasts is the accompanying 288-page catalog with magnificent images and essays by LACMA Senior Curator of Modern Art Stephanie Barron, Frank Gehry, Phyllis Tuchman and Dave Hickey, as well as past interviews with the artist himself.

In his review of the exhibition for Crafts magazine in London, ceramics expert Garth Clark wrote: “Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective is kiln hot, blazing with color with works that glow like embers plucked from the fire and forms that emulate the flow of molten lava. It is a pyrotechnic display that is shockingly beautiful for those who do not already know the work, an affirmation for those who do. However, brightly as this retrospective glows, it has taken Price his entire career to reach this point, his coronation as a great American artist. Alas, he died four months earlier at age 77.”

A Los Angeles native, Ken Price received a B.F.A. in 1956 from the University of Southern California and a M.F.A. in 1959 from the renowned New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He divided his long working career between Venice, Calif., and Taos, N.M., producing some of his most celebrated pieces in the 21st century near the end of his life.

While some Alfred graduates are classed as studio potters or even just creative tableware makers, Price entered the art world at a high level. Clark pointed out, “Though one will not find an artist more dedicated to his core medium, this is not the craft-rags to art-riches scenario. Price lived his entire career in the fine arts. …”

“His first solo show was at Irving Blum’s legendary Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles in 1960, joining a stable of his surfing buddies and friends: Billy Al Bengston, Ed Ruscha, Craig Kauffman, Ed Keinholz, and others. He was also introduced to the New York artists Blum showed: Ellsworth Kelly, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol (whose first solo exhibition was at Ferus). This was, and remained, Price’s milieu.”

Clark wrote the extensive catalog entry when the Cowans+Clark+DelVecchio ceramics auction sold a Price Geometric Cup in November 2011 for $114,562.50. Confident in his status as a sculptor, Price was fascinated by the cup form, taking a ceramics standby and turning it on its head. He had ventured into this design area in the 1960s, but the series of strongly geometric cup shapes he created after moving his family to Taos in the early 1970s has become his most sought-after works. Examples rarely come up for sale, so the strong Cowan’s result came as no surprise; one offered at Sotheby’s in 2006 brought over $200,000.

Happy’s Curios – named after his wife Happy – was another series executed during his time in Taos (1972-1977). These colorful objects, inspired by Mexican folk art ceramics, can be more affordable for collectors. Three subtly colored tequila cups from this group sold for $4,880 at a Rago auction in 2010.

From 1991-2001, Ken Price returned to USC as professor of ceramics. The flat planes of earlier geometric pieces gave way to oozing, amorphous blobs with layered colors, which rose a foot or two off the base surface. The shapes made Catherine Wagley title her Oct. 8, 2012 exhibition review in LA Weekly: “Why are Ken Price’s Oddball Sculptures at LACMA So Compelling?”

She wrote, “But Price, who in the late 1950s fell in with the Ferus Gallery crowd now known as L.A.'s first art avant-garde, was making strange, sexy, alienlike sculptures in the last two decades of his career, forms as visceral and memorable as anything he'd done before. Hunchback of Venice (2000) has a wonky, curved, orange-on-green back and fluorescent purple underbelly you have to lean over to see. OG (2008) is a roly-poly amalgam of breastlike protrusions.”

She explained the creation process: “Price would build up clay forms like these, firing them up to 20 times each. He had stopped using glaze in the 1980s and would instead paint the surfaces with layer upon layer of acrylic before working back into the color with rubbing alcohol or wet sandpaper, making it look as if paint had eroded in places. Finally, with a Q-tip, he would add new, bright colors into those eroded spots, giving his sculptures meticulously mottled, multicolored skins.”

One only need look at Balls Congo, the 2003 work illustrated here, to understand the effect these later works have on the viewer. The speckled creature seems to rise on multiple legs in preparation for a slither across the table. These works also bring substantial prices. Last year at Phillips, Blind Bob 1998 sold for $80,500 in November and Steeps 2004 brought $98,500 in June.

Having finished its 2012 run at LACMA, "Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective" begins a national tour with stops at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Feb. 9-May 12, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, June 18-Sept. 22.

Ceramics Collector: Merry Meissen! Setting a Dresden-style table

Today brainpower may focus on inventing new software or digital devices, but 300 years ago unlocking the formula for porcelain production was the Holy Grail. At that time, China had the know-how, and King Augustus II the Strong was buying up porcelain from the Orient, while longing to learn the secret of its manufacture.

Approaching the holidays, the host or hostess in charge may open the china cabinet, pondering what dishes will look the best and inspire a festive spirit. The king may have enjoyed a far more extravagant lifestyle at his palace in Dresden, the capital of Saxony, but his motivation was the same. He wanted to set the royal table to impress his guests.

Sandon continues the tale: “The world’s finest porcelain was discovered by an alchemist imprisoned in the king of Saxony’s castle. Working in a dungeon jail, Johann Friedrich Bottger found the ‘arcanum’, the secret process that made pure white porcelain. This precious commodity was known as ‘white gold’, for in 1710 porcelain was worth more than its weight in gold. Three centuries later, Meissen is still precious.”

Once the process of producing dining services and figures from the white porcelain was perfected, the factory focused creating new decorative techniques. Sandon’s comprehensive volume breaks down the history of decoration into chronological periods. Several strong personalities stand out, notably Johann Gregor Horoldt, who was famous for his fantastic chinoiserie landscapes around 1713-1740.

The most famous artist to work at Meissen was probably Johann Joachim Kandler (1706-1775). The skilled modeler and his workshop of craftsmen produced prototypes for Meissen’s famous figurines – often used as table centerpieces – as well as sculptural dining and serving wares. Among his creations was a series of characters from the Italian commedia dell’arte in their colorful costumes and amusing figures of formally dressed monkeys playing musical instruments.

Collecting Meissen and porcelain from other German factories should involved serious study and advice from experts in the field, because numerous pitfalls exist. Right from its 18th century beginnings, everybody else wanted to “be Meissen.” Industrial espionage was common, and styles and marks were imitated by other wannabe makers. The familiar blue crossed swords mark was added, appropriated and faked on lesser porcelain throughout Europe.

From the beginning, pieces made at Meissen – sometimes “seconds” – were purchased in the white and decorated elsewhere. And Meissen continued to replicate its own popular painting styles and figurine types from the 18th century throughout the 19th and into the 20th. These later-made pieces have become collectible in their own right.

John Sandon gives this collecting advice: “The finest specimens from the 18th century are deservedly expensive, but not every piece costs a king’s ransom. Choice pieces of 19th- and 20th-century Meissen present today’s collectors with an enormous opportunity.”

A good buying opportunity arose earlier this year when an important collection came on the auction market. Caroline Shuford, consignment director at the Dallas Auction Gallery, commented: “The Meissen in our Sept. 27th sale came from private collections in Texas, Oklahoma and from the estate of Mimi and Herman W. Lay, founder of H.W. Lay & Co. (makers of Lay's potato chips) and former CEO of Frito Lay and Pepsico. Group lots of Meissen figures gained the most interest from buyers, as did figural cabinet plates and an exceptional topographical coffee service. The majority sold within or exceeded our presale estimates confirming that with the right pieces and conservative estimating, the Meissen market can bring strong prices.”

The coffee and tea service is an excellent example of how Meissen continued to turn out wonderful porcelain in the 19th century, which replicated the topographical painting style and colored grounds that originated in the first half of the 18th century. The 31-piece service included coffee and teapots, sugar and cream vessels, 12 cups and saucers, two small trays and a bowl. They are marked with crossed swords in underglaze blue as well impressed and painted numerals.

Whether gathering a few decorative pieces or planning more serious acquisition, potential buyers can start by visiting one of the excellent collections on view in American museums. “White Gold: Highlights from Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain” – on view through Jan. 6 at the Frick Collection in New York City – displays approximately 70 pieces from Henry Arnhold’s promised gift to the museum. The Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain, 1710-50 by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Sebastian Kuhn and Heike Biedermann is available from the bookstore.

On view at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Fla., is the Wark Collection of Early Meissen Porcelain. Research on the collection appears in a 600-page catalog authored by Ulrich Pietsch, director of the state collection of Meissen porcelain in Dresden, Germany.

Warda Stevens Stout left her Meissen collection to the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, a special house museum in Memphis, Tenn. Visitors can see the best pieces in the current exhibition “Fire and Desire: A Passion of Porcelain in the 18th Century” through Jan. 20. A catalog of the collection by Christina H. Nelson and Letitia Roberts will be available in March.

Ceramics Collector: Splendor of the pharoahs revived on porcelain

Over 30 years ago, Kevin Stayton, curator of decorative arts at the Brooklyn Museum, wrote an essay on “Revivalism and the Egyptian Movement” in connection with an exhibition – “The Sphinx and the Lotus” – at the Hudson River Museum. He said, “The mysteries and the majesty evoked by ancient Egypt have long occupied a secure niche in the mind and art of western man.”

“Indeed perhaps the greatest difficulty in defining an Egyptian revival in the 19th century is isolating a moment in history when the fascination with Egypt and things Egyptian is entirely lacking. Whether for its associations with exotic romance and absolutist power or for the purely aesthetic appreciation of its commanding forms and brilliant control of pattern, Egyptian art has played a role in Western culture since the Roman Emperors raided the land of the Pharaohs and re-erected looted obelisks in Rome …”

As the curator pointed out, Egyptian Revival is “The Thing That Wouldn’t Die.”

The Roman Emperor Hadrian, who ruled 117-138 A.D., decorated a wing of his Tivoli vacation villa like an Egyptian sanctuary. Artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) illustrated how Egyptian motifs could be used in decorating the interiors of his own day. Architects from past to present have adapted ancient elements such as the obelisk, pyramid and pylon to fit modern purposes.

Although the relics of Egypt’s ancient civilization never completely disappeared, certain historical events brought the style back to the forefront of the public’s fashion consciousness. In the days before modern media, people were starved for accurate visual representations of far-off wonders. Fortunately, when Napoleon made his 1798-1801 expedition to Egypt, he took along artist Vivant Denon (1747-1825). His detailed drawings of monuments and scenes from daily life were published as Voyage dans la basse et la haute Egypte in 1802.

The overall result was passionate fervor for fashion, furniture and fine art featuring Egyptian themes which continued throughout the 19th century. The immediate effect on ceramics was the production of two massive Egyptian services at the French national porcelain manufactory of Sevres, under the leadership of Alexandre Brogniart.

A dessert service made for presentation to Czar Alexander I was sent to St. Petersburg in 1808 and now can be seen in the Kuskovo Palace, which serves as the Russian State Museum of Ceramics.

Empress Josephine had visited the factory during production and ordered a second Egyptian larger dinner service, to be paid for out of her divorce settlement. Eventually presented to the Duke of Wellington by a later monarch, the set is on display at Apsley House, his London residence. The plates from these services were carefully painted with Egyptian scenes after the Denon drawings. The deep blue and gold border designs feature ancient motifs including Horus falcons, scarab beetles and lotus flowers.

The specially designed serving pieces, such as sucriers, are further enhanced by handles and finials in the form of human or animal figures. Most notable were the sculptural centerpieces of white bisque, which depict architecturally accurate Egyptian temples and sphinxes. These services are among the most ambitious creative projects ever completed in clay.

The numerous smaller porcelain factories surrounding Paris quickly turned out their own cabinet plates painted with Egyptian scenes and patterns. Depending on the skill and imagination of the artist, some are more accurate, while others are decidedly fanciful. Pyramids rise at odd angles, sphinxes look more Renaissance than Middle Eastern and hieroglyphics are invented to fill space. The demand for exotic porcelain was extreme, and firms made money by putting their best decorators to work.

Across the Channel, Wedgwood – famous for fine Classical works – was encouraged to retool for Egyptian Revival by the 1801 British defeat of Napoleon in Egypt. The Rosetta Stone, which proved the key to the ancient Egyptian language, was put on display at the British Museum alongside other sculpture and artifacts retrieved from the valley of the Nile.

Wedgwood’s Egyptian designs are well-modeled and archaeologically accurate; they appear in the firm’s most popular wares. Collectors can find blue and white jasperware interpretations of the human-headed Canopic jars. Tea services were produced in a black and red ware called rosso antico; crocodiles form the finials. Black basalt ware, sometimes accented with gold, was used for elegant sphinxes.

While the most superb Sevres pieces are in museum collections, 19th century French and English porcelain in the Egyptian style was popular enough in its day that antique examples continue to appear at auction. Vigilant collectors can successfully locate and bid on desirable pieces at many price levels.