Museum accessions - pocelain, glassware, silver overlay - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2000 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

Silver overlay decoration is a perfect summation of the interaction of science, industry, and art at the end of the nineteenth century, Sometimes called silver deposit, the process involved the electrodeposition of silver onto ceramic or glass objects. First, a metal-based powdered or liquid flux was applied to the ceramic or glass piece, giving it a conductive surface; then it was placed in a liquid silver-plating bath, where the silver bonded to the areas covered by the flux. The flux could be applied in a desired pattern or the whole object could be coated with silver, which was then shaped mechanically or chemically (usually with an acid bath) by removing the unwanted areas. Many patents were taken out for variations of the process in both England and the United States starting in the mid-1880s. One of the primary producers of overlay silver in this country was the Gorham Manufacturing Company of Providence, Rhode Island, whose archives provide important documentation for the processes they used.

Of course, as a silvermaking concern Gorham did not produce the ceramic or glass vessels the firm decorated with overlay. In the photograph illustrated here the iridescent vases at the right were made by the Quezal Art Glass and Decorating Company of Queens, in New York City, and sold to Gorham for overlay. Judging by the marks on these objects, they were decorated within a few days of each other at Gorham, probably in 1903. The tall vase in the center of the photograph was also made by Quezal, but its archetypal art nouveau silver overlay was executed by the Alvin Corporation, which was established in Irvington, New Jersey in 1886; moved to Sag harbor, New York, in 1895; and was acquired by Gorham in 1928. All the objects are from the collection assembled by Warren Gilson. The Gorham pieces are among those he has given to the Milwaukee Museum of Art; the Alvin vase is a long-term loan.

Glassmaking flourished in the Netherlands and Germany in the seventeenth century, rivaling the long dominance of Venice in this art. A fine example is the amethyst-colored bottle shown at the left, the most recent of a series of gifts of early European and Middle Eastern glass to the Saint Louis Art Museum from E. Martin Wunsch of New York City. Such long-necked, onion-shaped bottles, often with crinkled ribs like this one, were favored in the Netherlands in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, where they were made in fine green or blue glass as well as in purple.

Last year's many celebrations marking the two hundredth anniversary of the death of George Washington generated some important museum accessions. To wit: the Bayou Bend Collection in Houston acquired an important Chinese export porcelain stand that Chinese export porcelain stand that belonged to Washington and a rare pair of mezzotints portraying Washington (not shown) and his wife. The stand, from a 302-piece service brought over on the Empress of China and purchased by Washington in 1786, bears the emblems of the Society of the Cincinnati, a hereditary society formed by French and American officers who served during the American Revolution. The prints, of which only about a half-dozen impressions are known to survive, are attributed to the Massachusetts gold-and silversmith and engraver Joseph Hiller Sr. (see ANTIQUES, February 1969, pp. 240-241). They are based on the pair of portraits painted by Charles Willson peals (1741-1827) for John Hancock of Boston in 1776. The likeness of Washington in now in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, but that of Martha Washington is unlocated and is known primarily through Hiller's print. She is shown as a much younger woman than we are accustomed to seeing. The print of Washington was the earliest published likeness of him and completely dominated American images of him through the 1780s.