Day 301 - Vase

 June 6, 2022

With not a great deal of time allotted for this visit, I took the elevator to the second floor, only to learn  that the last gallery I visited is the last numbered gallery on the floor. The American art collection is enormous, but I am nearing its end! (I will, of course, have to return to the galleries that are currently closed )

I locate Gallery 773 on the mezzanine. The long rectangular room is home to a collection of American ceramics dating from 1876 to about 1940 that was given to the museum a couple of years ago by Martin Eidelberg, a professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers who is an expert on ceramics and Tiffany glass.  There must be a hundred or so objects on display, including some by the Vicksburg ceramist George Ohr, whose work I noted previously. None of the Ohr pieces in this gallery are as radical as the ones I'd seen earlier, however.

I don't have the time - or the inclination - to look carefully at many pieces. I realize how little I know about the various techniques involved in their creation. But three aspects of what might be called the social historical aspects of the works and their creators strike me as particularly interesting. 

The first is the influence of contemporary artistic developments in England and the Continent, as well as of Japanese art. Several works bear the traces of the Arts and Crafts movement and, later, of Matisse. Some show their makers' familiarity with Japanese ceramic traditions. Clearly, the United States was engaged with the larger world, and some prominent ceramists were, in fact, immigrants. 

Second is the fact that there were important and innovative ceramics industries in a number of cities of the Midwest, including Cincinnati, Saint Louis, and Zanesville, Ohio - places we don't think of today as centers of artistic invention. It's a reminder of how thriving and prosperous these places once were. 

Finally, several important ceramists were women.  At a time when women were largely, although not completely, excluded from painting and sculpture,  I suspect that they were more welcome to create objects that were intended for domestic and utilitarian purposes. 

Today's work, labeled "Vase with Primroses" and made by M. Louise McLaughlin in Cincinnati in 1881, exemplifies all these developments.  The vase is about eight inches high and covered with a blue glaze that shades from light to dark. On this, the artist used thick paint to depict white primroses arising from a base of light and dark green foliage.  The label says that McLaughlin learned this decorative technique after she saw an exhibit of Limoges faience at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia; furthermore,  she was often inspired by Japanese art, as evidenced by the asymmetry of the floral arrangement.  The vase is one of the first objects I see in the gallery, and I love the feeling of casual freshness and natural beauty it conveys.