Decorative Arts
Snake Jug
Cornwall and Wallace Kirkpatrick (Anna Potteries)
American, 19th century Ceramic: glazed earthenware
12" h. x 10" diam.
Gift of the Department of Ceramic Engineering, University of Illinois 1980-5-54
Along the Ohio River in the nineteenth century, pottery making, using the available clay, was one of the local industries. Working at their pottery factory in Anna, Illinois, the Kirkpatrick brothers, Cornwall (1814-90) and Wallace (1828-96), produced utilitarian ceramics such as sewer pipes. They also made imaginatively decorated vessels for household use; even a chimney pot in their hands could become a whimsical sculpture.
The "little brown jug" where the whisky was kept was a controversial item in the American home during the temperance movement. This jug, like many a work of temperance propaganda, joins drink with images of snakes and devilish figures crawling in and out and over the whiskey jug -- moralizing, to be sure, but at the same time quite functional. Cornwall Kirkpatrick's humorous interpretation may also have drawn inspiration from snakes on one of the popular copies of Palissy ware displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876.
Burnished blackware bowl (1925-1943)
Maria Martinez (1887-1980) and Santana Martinez (1897-1943)
American, 20th century
Ceramic: reduction-fired earthenware
4 1/6" x 4 1/2"
Bequest of the Estate of W. A. Neiswanger 1978-16-1
The making of distinctive decorated pottery in America was an art native to the Southwest, where some potters still follow a technology developed centuries before contact with the Europeans. In making this bowl, Maria Martinez (1887-1980) collaborated with her daughter-in-law, Santana. Their unglazed vessels use the natural properties of the clay; the blackening is achieved by controlling the flow of oxygen during firing, the same principle used by the ancient Greeks. The water-serpent motif, symbolizing rain, thanksgiving, and prayer for rain, combines abstract and traditional elements and is strikingly modern. Maria Martinez, a Tewa, lived at San Ildefonso Pueblo in north-central New Mexico and achieved international recognition for her outstanding work.
Rustic dish with molded plants and animals in a water habitat
Attributed to Bernard Palissy (1510-1590)
French, Paris, 16th century
Ceramic: glazed earthenware
18" x 15"
Purchase: Harlan E. Moore Charitable Trust 1988-10-1
Among the items in the Theresa E. and Harlan E. Moore Gallery is a remarkable faience dish attributed to Bernard Palissy (1510-90), a prominent Huguenot who embodied the spirit of the Renaissance in several ways. As a potter, he experimented with the chemistry of glazes to find a variety of colors that would not run. As a modeler, he used a clay that enabled him to make fine casts from life, so that the creatures here are life-sized and convincing, the plants detailed even to the surfaces of leaves. It was customary in prosperous households to display extravagant vessels like this showpiece as works of art not necessarily used at table. This dish, in the spirit of the ceramic grotto Palissy installed in the royal gardens at the Tuileries, would have suggested a natural coolness in the summertime. Palissy was probably inspired by German bronzeworkers' castings of small reptiles and amphibians and by the fashion in earlier manuscript painting for filling the border with naturalistic plants and animals. The meaning of the little griffin at the upper right--the patron's emblem?--is a mystery waiting to be solved.
Wedgwood vase with John Flaxman's 1785 frieze, Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides
Engish, Staffordshire, 18th century
Ceramic: four-color jasperware
h: 20"
Gift of Rosann and Richard Noel, Ruth Miller, and the Art Acquisition Fund 1990-8-1
A lighthearted and fanciful interpretation of classical art directed Josiah Wedgwood (1730-95) in his development of the much-admired jasper ware. This vase is a spectacular example. The color scheme of white on blue comes from Roman cameo glass; here he adds ochre and green.
The storytelling frieze comes from a famous ancient vase in an English collection, already copied by Wedgwood in flat red on black in imitation of the Greek pottery technique. The story is one of the heroic labors of Hercules, his gathering of golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. Wedgwood chose the leading neoclassical sculptor, John Flaxman, to adapt the design to the Roman form of a marble urn with figures in relief. Flaxman followed the main pattern of Greek painted vase compositions but based his figures on Roman sculptural types, imitating white marble in clay. Hercules seated on a rock is one of these ancient types, developed in Rome from lost Greek models. Even the idea for the vase handles, formed of pairs of entwined snakes, goes back to Roman models.
Wedgwood was a shrewd businessman and technical pioneer who applied Flaxman's Hesperides frieze, reproduced from a mold, to a variety of surfaces, including a flat panel for a mantelpiece. Wedgwood used both the shape and the ornaments of this vase in various other combinations, but this piece appears to be unique in its elaborate richness of design.