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THE AMERICAN DECORATIVE ARTS FORUM OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

An Affiliate of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

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American Decorative Arts Forum of Northern California Officially Becomes an Affiliate Support Group of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

The Board of Trustees of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco has officially recognized the American Decorative Arts Forum as an affiliate support group joining the Achenbach Graphic Arts Council, the Ceramic Circle and the Textile Arts Council. In recognition of that relationship, the phrase “an affiliate of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco” now appears on the newsletter’s masthead, the lecture schedule, Forum stationery and the Forum’s website: www.adafca.org.

One of the few other things that will change as a result of the Forum’s affiliation is that the Board will disburse the Northern California fund, totaling $2,895.54, to one or more worthy institutions by June 1. Applicants must be a museum, historical house museum, historical society or educational institution supporting appreciation of American decorative arts. The funds may be used for:

artifact acquisition, restoration, preservation or collections management;

education such as purchase of library books, publication of educational materials, photographic reproductions or speaker honoraria; or exhibit design, installation or catalogues.

Requests for operating expenses, capital improvement, endowment funds, equipment and architectural renovation or construction cannot be considered.

Interested institutions should contact President Jane Alexiadis for application forms. Completed applications must be received by April 1 for consideration.

Highlights & Programs

Upcoming Lectures

THAR' SHE BLOWS! Maritime Series Punctuates '09 Lecture Lineup

Scrimshaw, The Whalemen’s Art

Tuesday, April 14, 2009, 8:00 p.m.

Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum

A slide lecture by Stuart M. Frank, New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, MA

The Shipcarvers’ Art: Wooden Sculpture in 19th Century America

Tuesday, June 9, 2009, 8:00 p.m.

Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum

An illustrated presentation by Ralph Sessions, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY

Countless numbers of human figures were carved in wood in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most served as ship figureheads or shop signs, but they were also used for architectural sculpture, garden statuary and commemorative figures for important civic ceremonies. The vast majority of these figures were made by shipcarvers, a tightly knit group of professional carvers bound by family ties and master-apprentice relationships who operated through a network of workshops in port cities and towns along the East Coast and, to a lesser extent, the Great Lakes. They created figureheads and other maritime carvings, architectural, church work and, by mid-19th century, circus wagon figures.

These artisans also carved life-size shop figures, patterned after ships’ figureheads, that advertised a wide variety of goods and services long before telephone directories and webpages. The carvers themselves coined the phrase the “image business” to characterize the wide range of figures that populated the streets - and imaginations - of urban and small-town America in the 18th and 19th centuries. A journalist noted in 1886 that “few objects, policemen and lamp-posts excepted, are more familiar to the public than the cigar store wooden Indian.” Less common images ranged from George Washington to Buffalo Bill to John L. Sullivan. After about 1860, characters that caught the public’s imagination were skillfully personified, from the more traditional Turks, Scotsmen and sailors to up-to-date baseball players, fashionable ladies and caricatures of race track touts or “dudes.” The success of the age of advertising, ushered in to some extent by show figures, eventually supplanted the use of carved figures as the mass media developed.

Dr. Sessions’ talk considers the development of wooden sculpture from the mid-18th to the end of the 19th centuries, with a primary focus on New York City, the most important shipbuilding center in the country from about 1820 until after the Civil War. New York was the site of many of the most innovative developments in the production and marketing of wooden figures at a time when they evolved from traditional craft to Victorian fad.

Stylistic development followed trends in the fine arts, from 18th-century baroque through neoclassicism to 19th-century romanticism and realism. Figureheads and shop figures, as products of a shared cultural and artistic imagination, speak volumes about several important aspects of American social history, including racial and gender stereotyping, and the emergence of a national popular culture. These figures embody traditional values and simultaneously reflect the attitudes, prejudices and trends of a rapidly developing society.

Ralph Sessions’ education reflects the range of expertise he brings to his research, a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in folklore from the University of North Carolina and a doctorate in art history from the City University of New York. Ralph Sessions is Director of Special Projects for the DC Moore Gallery in New York. Dr. Sessions previously served as the chief curator of the Museum of American Folk Art, director of the Abigail Adams Smith Museum in New York City and director of the Historical Society of Rockland County, New York, where he wrote “The Movies in Rockland County: Adolf Zukor and the Silent Era” (1982) about early movie-making in Rockland County (where the president of Paramount Pictures had a country home from 1918 until the late 1930s).

Dr. Sessions’ other publications include “The Shipcarvers’ Art: Figureheads and Cigar Store Figures in Nineteenth-Century America” (2005); the sculpture catalogue for “American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum” (2001) by Stacey Hollander et al.; and the catalogue for “Spiritually Moving: A Collection of American Folk Sculpture” (1998) by Tom Geismar and Harvey Kahn. Dr. Sessions last spoke to the Forum in April, 1996 on “The Carver’s Art: Nineteenth Century American Folk Sculpture.”

7:15 p.m. mini-exhibition: Share your folk art objects and images. Nautical themes, scrimshaw and bone objects, and images of Indians, Scotsmen, Turks, fashionable ladies, baseball players and “dudes” are especially welcome.

8:00 p.m. lecture: Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Enter from Level B1 of the parking garage; pedestrians enter the garage from the concourse side of Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive and down the steps across the street from the museum’s main entrance. Admission is free to ADAF members and $15 to the general public.

'They took to their tools like ducks to water': The Cincinnati Women Woodcarvers of the Aesthetic Movement

Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 8:00 p.m.

Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum

An illustrated presentation by Jennifer L. Howe, Cincinnati, OH

Jennifer Howe will examine the important role of women in the development of woodcarving in Cincinnati, the carvers’ adherence to Aesthetic Movement principles and the stylistic significance of their work. In the late- 19th century, the Aesthetic Movement flourished in Cincinnati with the production of art-carved furniture, introduced and taught by three English immigrants (who also happened to be Swedenborgians and vegetarians), Henry Lindley Fry, his son William Henry Fry and Benn Pitman. The Frys, Pitman and their followers, inspired by the Aesthetic Movement principles of John Ruskin and William Morris, advocated the production of artistic household goods and believed that nature provided the greatest source of inspiration for decorative motifs.

By the time the Frys and Pitman settled in Cincinnati in the 1850s, the city was a major center for furniture manufacturing. The Frys established a successful business carving individual pieces of furniture as well as domestic and ecclesiastical interiors.

The Frys’ work for several of the city’s wealthiest residents drew considerable attention and they began to offer private woodcarving classes. (Favored by the city’s capitalist elite, the elder Fry downplayed his earlier enthusiasm, in England, for utopian schemes and socialism.) At the same time, Benn Pitman began to teach woodcarving at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Most of the woodcarving students were the wives and daughters of Cincinnati’s judges, doctors, industrialists and merchants. Most of the students pursued woodcarving as an artistic pastime, creating objects intended mainly for domestic use. While some of the women merely dabbled in woodcarving, creating small hatboxes, picture frames and fruit plates, others excelled, producing large-scale works such as fireplace mantels, bedsteads, cupboards, and dressers.

The Frys and Pitman believed that women were better suited for woodcarving than men, and encouraged their natural artistic inclinations. A few students, however, studied in order to gain employment as art teachers or as carvers in the furniture trade. What began as a mostly private endeavor for the female carvers turned into a public enterprise when the Cincinnati woodcarvers displayed more than 200 carved works, including furniture and architectural elements, at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.

The carvers returned home from the Centennial energized by the national recognition and praise they received. National art journals continued to feature Cincinnati woodcarving throughout the 1880s and to publish articles by Pitman, a prolific writer and philosopher of the movement.

Jennifer Howe is an independent curator who lectures on decorative arts and consults for museums and private collectors. She teaches courses in art history as an adjunct faculty member at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where the Frys and Pitman taught. From 1996 to 2002, Howe served as associate curator of decorative arts at the Cincinnati Art Museum where she curated numerous exhibitions including The Best Part of Waking Up: The Folgers Coffee Silver Collection. She was also one of the lead curators for the Cincinnati Wing, the museum’s integrated galleries of Cincinnati painting, sculpture and decorative arts, which opened in 2003.

Jennifer Howe’s research and publications have focused on decorative arts, in particular on Cincinnati furniture, silver and Arts and Crafts metalwork. Howe was a contributing author of The Cincinnati Wing: Art in the Queen City and served as editor and contributing author of the book Cincinnati Art-Carved Furniture and Interiors.

7:15 p.m. mini-exhibition: If you don’t have time (or the skill) to carve your own items, bring some other hand carved object or furniture.

Harbor and Home: Furniture of Coastal New England, 1725-1825

Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 8:00 p.m.

Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum

An illustrated presentation by Brock Jobe, Winterthur Museum, Wilmington, DE

When Yale’s President, Timothy Dwight, visited Cape Cod in 1800, he found that the inhabitants “are like beavers, gaining their subsistence from the water, and make use of the land chiefly as a residence.” The extensive coastline and network of tidal rivers placed nearly everyone within sight of the water. Although early settlers farmed, they soon learned that money was to be made from the water all around them. Fishing, whaling, ship-building and maritime commerce brought prosperity to the region.

Brock Jobe’s presentation will consider how the sea affected the furniture of southeastern Massachusetts, a region stretching from Rhode Island to just south of Boston. The story is a familiar one, repeated in many towns along the coast of New England. Imported furniture easily reached these ports, providing both competition and sources of design for the local craftsmen who clustered in these seaport communities. Goods from Boston, Newport and Providence as well as Philadelphia, New York and Europe influenced regional furniture. By the 1820s, a flood of products, fashioned in larger furniture manufactories outside southeastern Massachusetts, changed the local industry forever.

Following graduation from Wake Forest University with a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, Brock Jobe was a research assistant at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and an editorial assistant - and contributor - for Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century (1974).

Brock Jobe then served as associate curator and curator of exhibition buildings at Colonial Williamsburg and chief curator for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. He returned to Winterthur as deputy director for collections and interpretation and then deputy director for collections, conservation and interpretation.

After a 28-year career as a museum curator and administrator, his career came full circle in 2000 when he returned to Winterthur as a professor. Brock Jobe teaches graduate courses in historic interiors and American decorative arts, mentors graduate students, advises theses, leads field trips and helps place students after graduation. He is also a frequent lecturer at museums, antiques shows and collectors’ clubs throughout the country, including his December, 1990 presentation to the Forum, “Portsmouth Furniture, 1700-1825.”

Brock Jobe’s fields of interest are early American furniture and upholstery, 18th century domestic interiors and historic house management. He co-authored New England Furniture: The Colonial Era (1984) and organized and edited Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast (1993). He also edited and contributed essays to Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century (1974) and New England Furniture: Essays in Memory of Benno M. Forman (1987); contributed “The Boston Upholstery Trade, 1700-1775” to Upholstery in America and Europe from the Seventeenth Century to World War I (1987); co-authored American Furniture with Related Decorative Arts 1660-1830, The Milwaukee Art Museum and the Layton Art Collection (1991); contributed to Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U. S. Department of State (1991); and contributed to The Concord Museum, Decorative Arts from a New England Collection (1996).

Brock Jobe’s contributions to the Chipstone publication are “The Lisle Desk and Bookcase: A Rhode Island Icon” (2001) and “Sophistication in Rural Massachusetts: The Inlaid Cherry Furniture of Nathan Lombard” (1998) with Clark Pearce (July’s speaker as well as in April, 2008 for “Sophistication in Central Massachusetts: The Inlaid Furniture of Nathan Lombard“). Mr. Jobe’s most recent work is Harbor and Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710-1850, coauthored with Gary Sullivan and Jack O’Brien, also the subject of a Winterthur exhibition.

7:15 p.m. mini-exhibition: Share your seashells by the sea shore. Let us see your seascapes.

And on land...

Cutthroat Competition for Peaceable Kingdoms: Connoisseurship in the Marketplace for Edward Hicks Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 8:00 p.m. Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum An illustrated presentation by Susan D. Kleckner, University City, MO

American folk art grabs the attention of its audience in ways few other art forms do because of its immediacy and its clear communication of values and aspirations. We can easily understand the pride of a seven year old schoolgirl completing her first sampler, or how a trade sign rivets potential consumers past and present with its graphic promise of professionalism and the quality of a finely delivered product.

Within the oeuvre, few American folk artists have captured the hearts and imaginations of its viewers as has Edward Hicks (1780-1849). The Pennsylvania Quaker artist was known in his day for his coach and sign painting and itinerant ministry. Today he is recognized as the creator of a series of unforgettable images (62 known versions) illustrating the prophecy of Isaiah, The Peaceable Kingdom, in which the wolf and the lamb, predator and prey, lie together in a peaceful, ideal world. This theme of otherwise adversaries living in harmony, is repeated in several of Hicks’ other works. These paintings have come to represent the ultimate in American folk art both for their innocence and their command in the market place.

Auction records for Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdoms have been set and surpassed in 1999 and almost each year since 2006. The assumption that ownership of a painting by Edward Hicks is a bankable retirement plan for its owner has enticed consignors to bring a variety of works by the artist to the market place. However, if the hammer price is the test of that market assumption, then the glittering aura surrounding Edward Hicks may not be the American folk art gold it is believed to be.

The performance of Hicks’s paintings at auction corroborates one of the most transparent lessons in how the art market functions. Factors such as condition, rarity, provenance and sale circumstances each play a role in the final hammer price. By examining several of Hicks’ works in addition to recent Peaceable Kingdoms, and their respective moments on the auction block, the lesson we come away with is that it is not a single market for a single artist, but multiple markets according to the individual circumstances of the work for sale.

Susan Kleckner holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale, where her thesis was “Images of the New Republic: Connecticut Itinerant Painters, 1780-1800,” and a master’s degree from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in Early American Culture. Her Winterthur thesis was “Strawberry Hill: A Case Study of the Gothic Revival.”

As a curatorial assistant at the Maryland Historical Society, Ms Kleckner contributed to “Classical Maryland, 1815-1845: Fine and Decorative Arts from the Golden Age” (1993) and “Lavish Legacies: Baltimore Album Quilts” (1994). From 1992-2002, Ms Kleckner directed the folk art department at Christie’s auction house in New York, where she handled a variety of paintings by Edward Hicks, among other notable American folk artists. Then she taught at New York University’s appraisal program and co-authored Instant Expert: American Folk Art (2004), a primer for budding American folk art collectors.

Ms Kleckner is now an Americana consultant based in University City, MO and an adjunct professor of decorative arts at Washington University in St. Louis and frequent lecturer at the St Louis Art Museum. Her recent contribution to the Winterthur Portfolio is “Art and Reform: Sarah Galner, the Saturday Evening Girls, and the Paul Revere Pottery” (2009). Ms. Kleckner is an ADAF member and former Board member; she installed, launched and maintains the ADAF website. Susan Kleckner also appeared on the “Antiques Roadshow” as a folk art appraiser from 2002 to 2005.

7:15 p.m. mini-exhibition: The lion shall lie with the lamb at the mini-exhibition. Share your Noah’s Ark (another Edward Hicks theme) of animal figures and animal images.

George G. Wright and Philadelphia’s Federal Cabinetmakers, 1795-1815 Tuesday, July 14, 2009, 8:00 p.m. Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum An illustrated presentation by Clark Pearce, Essex, MA

More than a decade ago, a collector with a “good eye” purchased a magnificent pair of solid satinwood “trick-leg” card tables (referred to as “mechanical tables” in the period) that were made in Philadelphia. One of the tables (illustrated with this article) was gouged with the initials “GGW” and the date “1813.” At the time they were purchased, no one recognized the initials. After years of research, the collector concluded that the initials stood for George G. Wright who left employment at the large and prestigious firm of Joseph B. Barry & Son about 1813 to establish his own cabinetmaking shop. These tables advertise the entrepreneur’s availability for commissions from Philadelphia’s elite by using the latest designs from New York, London and Europe with the most extravagant materials available.

From the construction techniques and high level of workmanship of the inscribed “G.G.W.” card table, a group of card tables has been firmly attributed to George Wright’s hand. One of his “trademarks” is a rayed veneered top on card, pier and pembroke tables. Wright employed the finest and most expensive woods for these rayed tops, including satinwood and rich burl veneers.

George Wright combined his well-honed skills as cabinetmaker and designer, business knowledge and contacts with the highest echelon of society to produce some of the finest late Federal furniture made in Philadelphia. George Wright had served as foreman at Barry’s shop for a number of years, providing a hand in crafting many important commissions that exhibited the highest level of Philadelphia Federal furniture. George Wright also brought to his new enterprise familiarity with some of Barry’s best clients. Barry’s clients included Thomas Jefferson, who was then furnishing the White House; Louis Clapier, a wealthy French merchant who commissioned the exquisite pier table now at the Metropolitan Museum (illustrated with this article); and William and Mary Waln who commissioned an elaborate suite of furniture for their Chestnut Street house that was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

The extraordinary table constructed for Mr. Clapier is heavily influenced by the French “le gout antique” (antique taste) which Mr. Barry saw on his numerous trips to Europe. George Wright oversaw the creation of this Clapier table, probably while his master was traveling in Europe to study the most recent styles and bring back high-end decorative arts for his Philadelphia showroom.

George Wright faced competition from other skilled artisans in Philadelphia. While George Wright trained with Joseph Barry, Robert McGuffin worked in Henry Connolly’s large shop, perhaps in a similar role to the foreman position that Wright had held in Barry’s shop. McGuffin’s signature and the date of 1807 are found on a different pair of satinwood card tables that are icons of American Federal furniture.

Clark Pearce’s research on Wright’s card tables found similarities between the two men’s work. Robert McGuffin, for instance, also inlayed rays on table tops. George Wright and Robert McGuffin were apparently very much aware of each other‘s work. Perhaps they attempted to outdo each other in producing increasingly luxurious masterpieces.

Wright left Philadelphia for Pittsburgh by 1818, and later moved to Ohio, because of the changing nature of the cabinetmaking business in urban America and a downturn in the economy following the War of 1812. Wright is believed to have stopped making the exquisite furniture for which he is now known. George Wright created his masterpieces during an all too brief, five year period of intense creativity and productivity in Philadelphia.

Clark Pearce apprenticed with Maurice Reid, cabinetmaker and antiquarian, from whom he learned 18th century furniture construction methods - and how the antiques trade works. While earning a master’s degree in American studies and museum studies from the University of Michigan, Mr. Pearce catalogued the early glass and English porcelains at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. He also taught seminars in American decorative arts, and designed and made dining tables for the Eagle Tavern in Greenfield Village.

Clark Pearce next catalogued 19th century American furniture trade catalogues as a Winterthur intern. He then restored the interiors of the 1906 McFaddin-Ward House Museum in Beaumont, Texas. Later, he mounted an exhibition, with catalogue, on Addison LeBoutillier, a significant figure in the Arts and Crafts movement in Boston. He also has written about Pewabic Pottery and Mary Chase Stratton’s role with the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts.

Since 1987, Clark Pearce has evaluated American decorative arts for private, corporate and museum collections; consulted on historic interiors; and overseen object conservation. He spoke to the Forum in April, 2007 on “Sophistication in Central Massachusetts: the Inlaid Furniture of Nathan Lombard,” the subject of a 1998 Chipstone publication he coauthored with Brock Jobe (December’s speaker on “Harbor and Home: Furniture of Coastal New England, 1725-1825”).

Mr. Pearce also wrote “Living With Antiques: A Federal Collection” for The Magazine Antiques (May, 2005). He co-authored “From Apprentice to Master, The Life and Career of Philadelphia Cabinetmaker George G. Wright” for the 2007 Chipstone publication with Cathy Ebert and Alexandra Kirtley (who spoke to the Forum about “The Furnishings of the Lloyd family of Maryland, 1750-1850” in August, 2004 and “A Good and Elegant House and Furniture: Furnishing the Cadwaladers’ Philadelphia House, 1770-1775” in November, 2007).

7:15 p.m. mini-exhibition: If your candlestick is a column, the young ladies in your needlework wear flowing gowns or the transfer print on your Staffordshire pottery depicts Boston’s State House by Charles Bulfinch, share your classical images or objects.

Michael Weller Silver Seminar: American Flatware

Sunday, August 16, 2009, 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Florence Gould Theatre, Palace of the Legion of Honor

Please note that the silver seminar is on a Sunday at 11:00 a.m. at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, NOT the de Young Museum.

Three illustrated presentations by D. Albert Soeffing, Philadelphia, PA and William P. Hood, Jr., M.D., Dothan, AL

11:00 a.m., Unexpected Servings: Colonial and Federal Flatware, D. Albert Soeffing

Silver flatware was greatly valued - but scarce - in 18th and early 19th century America. Eighteenth century silver serving pieces are even rarer. Only about five percent of the population owned any silver when silver was considered a way to keep tangible family assets at home. Most colonists fortunate, i.e., wealthy) enough to own silver possessed only a few simple items. Silver pieces were often reserved for the use of the young, the infirm and the elderly, because silver was associated with good hygiene.

The most prevalent individual silver items were spoons. Spoons were necessary to consume foods: beverages such as tea, coffee and chocolate, soups and stews; and caudle, a combination of warmed ale or wine with brad or gruel, eggs, sugar and spices, traditionally drunk by young mothers and the ailing elderly. Knives also played a large part at table to cut food and also spear food for eating - serving the function of a fork - when using one‘s hands became considered gauche. Forks were rare and silver forks were almost unknown in the 18th and early 19th century. Silver forks were not generally used , even by those able to afford them, until the late 1830s.

Mr. Soeffing earned a bachelor’s degree from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY and a master’s degree in history from Fordham University. Our speaker was a Forman Fellowship Scholar at the Winterthur Museum in 1991. He lectured on identification and appraisal of fine and antique silver at the Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus (1994-2003) and currently is an adjunct assistant professor for New York University’s appraisal studies program. Donald Soeffing founded the New York Silver Society and has been its president from 1992-1996 and president emeritus from 1997-present.

Mr. Soeffing’s publications include “Silver Medallion Flatware” (1988), contributions to “Silver in America: A Century of Splendor, 1840-1940” (1994) and “The History of the Origins, Design and Promotion of Tiffany & Co. Hollowware” (1999). He has also contributed many articles to Silver Magazine and The Magazine Antiques.

12:15 p.m., A Cornucopia of Choices: American Patterned Flatware, 1842 - 1876, D. Albert Soeffing

By the middle of the 19th century, there was an explosion of affordable silver for the middle class, as well as forms and patterns of American silver that took on distinctively American forms and designs. Victorian Americans made more silverware, extraordinarily ornamented silverware, with state-of-the-art technology and far less labor.

Much of the reason for this great variety was due to the invention of die-rollers by New York silversmith William Gale, who patented the machinery on December 7, 1826. Passage of a protective tariff in 1842 effectively excluded Europeans from the American silverware market. American novelty soon expanded the number of forms and patterns. At least six to seven hundred different die-struck patterns were available in the marketplace, as well as elaborate engine-turning and engraving.

The Civil War only temporarily diminished the sale of luxury goods, particularly silverware. The war generated enormous wealth and silverware that flew off the merchants’ shelves and onto the dining tables of American consumers. The proliferation of silver on American tables was also due, in part, to the greatly expanded affordability of silver flowing from the Comstock Lode (1859-1874).

Mr. Soeffing will take us on a visual journey of the forms, and especially the many interesting ornamental patterns, that were introduced during the 19th century. His original research on important silversmiths and silverware manufacturers will aid in stamping out a history of this important American industry.

1:15 p.m. lunch on your own

2:00 p.m., American Nineteenth-Century Flatware: Jewelry of the Table, William P. Hood Jr., M.D.

American silver flatware of the second half of the 19th century is characterized by diversity in forms and decorative styles. Victorian America adopted the newly popular Russian formal dining style, service à la russe, serving each major course separately. An accompanying fashion was to serve and eat each course or major food item with form-specific flatware designated for a specific function. The types of serving pieces ranged from asparagus tongs to berry spoons and melon forks, from terrapin forks and sardine forks to fish knives; sorbet spoons and dessert knives. In some cases, there was more than one form for a given food or course; for example, macaroni (meaning pasta) had its own serving fork, knife and spoon. By the end of the 19th century, it was common for a given pattern of flatware to offer at least a hundred different piece types, and some offered many more.

The favorite decorative styles of this period were “revivals.” Neoclassical styles recalled classical, rococo revival recalled rococo styles. New styles, such as Japanese, were eagerly accepted at the 1876 Centennial in Philadelphia (the subject of William Hosley’s August, 2002 “Japonism in America”). Decoration became increasingly elaborate, often combining several, eclectic styles. Some of the fanciest silver pieces were produced in limited quantities because of their detail and great cost. Today these rare specimens are highly prized by collectors.

Dr. Hood’s lecture will showcase some of the rarest and most beautiful examples of American flatware from the late 19th century - jewelry of the table. - when American dining was formal, elegant and theatrical. This lecture will showcase examples of American flatware by Tiffany & Company, Gorham, Whiting, George S. Shiebler, William B. Durgin and other companies.

Dr. Hood graduated from Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina. After a stint in the U.S. Army, including service in Korea, he completed residency training in internal medicine at South Carolina and a cardiology fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Hood joined the faculty at Chapel Hill before engaging in practice, teaching and researching at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He practiced cardiology in Dothan, Alabama until he retired in 1999.

About 25 years ago, Dr. Hood’s love for cooking and an interest in food presentation lead to his collecting silver flatware. Upon retirement, his hobby became his new vocation. His flatware interests include American 19th century silver flatware, especially by Tiffany & Company, and contemporary flatware, including stainless steel, by prominent designers.

Intrigued by silver, but disappointed by the dearth of scholarship on Victorian flatware, Dr. Hood conducted his own research at the Tiffany archives in Parsippany, New Jersey. The result is “Tiffany Silver Flatware, 1845- 1905: When Dining Was an Art” (2000) with Roslyn Berlin and Edward Wawrynek. His prolific contributions to Silver Magazine and The Magazine Antiques include research on specific patterns, special forms such as sardine, fish and asparagus servers, and the stylistic effects of Japonism.

11:00 a.m. mini-exhibition: Let your silver shine. If it’s silver and ornate, the new pattern for your serving pieces and flatware is “mini-exhibit.”

ADAF members are invited to join the Ceramic Circle at the same location at 10:00 a.m. for a presentation by Anne Forschler-Tarrasch, Birmingham (AL) Museum of Art, on “Wedgwood’s Jasper: Sources and Inspiration.”

Arrive in time for the Ceramic Circle presentation at 10:00 a.m. and find a place to park at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, San Francisco. Enter by the front entrance descend to the ground floor for the Florence Gould Theatre. Admission is free to ADAF members and to the general public. Bring a friend who may be interested in American decorative arts. Please note that everyone must be a current museum member or pay museum admission.

America’s First Face: The Progress of Portrait Miniatures in the New Republic Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 8:00 p.m. Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum An illustrated presentation by Elle Shushan, Philadelphia, PA

Please note that October lecture is on the fourth, not the second, Tuesday of the month.

July 11, 1804 marked a turning point for the new republic, the United States of America. The new nation’s naivete was blasted when Vice President Aaron Burr fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton, former Secretary of the Treasury and author of 51 of the 85 “Federalist Papers.” One founding father fatally wounded another founding father, ending America’s age of innocence with the country’s first great political tragedy.

Three days after the duel, record crowds thronged Broadway to pay homage as Alexander Hamilton’s funeral cortege passed. While the mourners congregated in the streets below, an important - and far happier - meeting of artistic importance took place. In a studio overlooking the street, Anson Dickinson, then 24 years old, first met the miniaturist Edward Greene Malbone. The legendary reputation of the 26-year old Malbone lead Dickinson to commission Malbone to paint his portrait so that the younger artist could study the more experienced artist’s technique.

Around the corner, 24-year old John Wesley Jarvis formed a partnership with 26-year old Joseph Wood. The four young, attractive, educated men forged a firm friendship and, along the way, developed a distinctively American style. American miniatures developed an open, lighter appearance that reflected the new republic’s - momentarily diminished - optimism. Washes of watercolor bathed rectangular ivory supports with luminosity. Backgrounds of blue sky and clouds gave way to feigned landscapes tinged with shades of turquoise and mauve.

The uniquely American characteristics of the new majestic style influenced, among other artists, Gilbert Stuart and George Savage. The next generation of artists taught by Malbone, Dickinson, Jarvis and Wood - Henry Inman, Charles Bird King, Nathaniel Rogers and Thomas Seir Cummings - helped found the National Academy of Design, in 1825, “to promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition.” The success of that uniquely American institution is demonstrated by subsequent generations of Academicians, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent to Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Rauschenberg, Wayne Thiebaud and Andrew Wyeth.

Elle Shushan specializes in the full range of portrait miniatures from the 16th through the 20th centuries, from Great Britain, continental Europe and America. Although she is known as a dealer in portrait miniatures, Elle Shushan’s resume shows a career lived large. She represented Cher and produced a Broadway show.

Ms Shushan also has an enduring interest in otherworldly things. Her home décor includes Gothic revival furniture, tombstones and memento mori art, often a companion field of portrait miniatures. These eerie interests led to her book “Grave Matters: A Curious Collection of 500 Actual Epitaphs” (1990). She also contributed “Tears of Sorrow: New England Portrait Miniatures and Mourning Jewelry” to “The Art of the Family: Genealogical Artifacts in New England” (2002).

Our speaker has effectively combined her artistic, dramatic, entrepreneurial and otherworldly interests. Which inclination, however, predominates? Had Elle Shushan been in Edward Greene Malbone’s studio on July 14, 1804, would she have brokered a deal with Anson Dickinson or been engrossed by Alexander Hamilton’s funeral cortege?

7:15 p.m. mini-exhibition: Be creative in sharing your miniature portraiture and objects. Think small. Think children’s furniture, doll house furnishings, perhaps a tea party in miniature, toys and ships models.

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Author, Author: ADAF Board Members Publish

The Forum is pleased to recognize two of our distinguished past and present Board members, Susan Kleckner and Paul Duscherer, whose accomplishments include publication. Susan Kleckner co-authored Instant Expert: Collecting American Folk Art (2004) with Helaine Fendelman.

Paul Duscherer spoke to the Forum in January 2003 on "Inside the Bungalow: Arts & Crafts Interiors," and in April 2005 on "Victorian Glory: Victorian Interiors and All the Stuff They Contained." Paul has written:

The Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Home (1995)

Inside the Bungalow: American Arts & Crafts Interior (1997)

Outside the Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Garden (1999)

Victorian Glory in San Francisco and the Bay Area (2001)

Beyond the Bungalow: America's Larger Arts & Crafts Homes (2005)

Paul's works on the bungalow have lead to a series of "small format" specialist books:

Bungalow Basics: Fireplaces (2003)

Bungalow Basics: Bedrooms (2003)

Bungalow Basics: Living Rooms (2003)

Bungalow Basics: Dining Rooms (2003)

Bungalow Basics: Kitchens (2004)

Bungalow Basics: Bathrooms (2004)

Bungalow Basics: Doors (2004)

Bungalow Basics: Porches (2004)