Museum accessions - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2000 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

In September 1816 Louis XVIII of France was in need of a gift for Baron von Holzhausen of Frankfurt, who had sent him a portrait of the king's older brother Louis XVI. On Louis XVIII's behalf, the comte de Pradel, minister to the royal household, sent the baron the porcelain tea and coffee set, or defeuner, shown above. Made at the Manufacture royale de Sevres, it was decorated by Denis Desine Riocreux, who specialized in flower painting at the factory Set against the symmetricality of the neoclassical shapes and lavish gilding, the flowers are particularly lush and complex, on one hand reflecting Sevres's inspiration from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch still-life paintings and on the other, the botanical precision characteristic of the period's more rigorously scientific approach to nature. Over the course of several months Riocreux applied unique bouquets to each piece to form a truly remarkable record of floral species. Afterwards, the gilding was applied by gilding specialists- Antoine Gabriel Boullemier le Jeune, who executed all but the tray, and Frangois Antoine Boullemier. The records at Sevres indicate that the set was completed in 1814 and that, fortunately for the comte de Pradel, it was still in the salesroom when he went shopping for Louis XVIII.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art has acquired the cabinet shown here, probably one of the most important pieces of British Gothic revival furniture now in the United States. It was designed about 1847 by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the preeminent artist-architect of his day, for Henry Sharples, as part of the furnishings for the latter's house, Oswald Croft in Bishops Eaton, near Liverpool. Much of the furniture for the house, meluding the cabinet, was made and carved by George Myers, who worked extensively with Pugin, most notably in the construction of the cathedrals in Newcastle, Birmingham, Nottingham, and Southwark, and in the Medieval Court for the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Indeed, the cabinet for Sharples (which bears his initials at the top and his family's badge in the cupboard doors) is very similar to furniture designed by Pugin for display in the Medieval Court, particularly a cabinet (now in a private collection) intended for his own dining room.

Designer, artist, poet, illuminator, printer, craftsman, and utopian socialist--few men in the history of English art and design have had the wide-ranging influence of the multitalented William Morris. Legions of scholars and collectors have been drawn to the beauty and variety of his work, but few have assembled the kind of all-encompassing collection as that amassed by Sanford and Helen Berger of Carmel, California Their comprehensive collection has been acquired by the Huntington Library Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, making that institution one of the world's foremost centers for the study and appreciation of the arts and crafts movement.

The Bergers began collecting in 1965 with the relatively modest goal of acquiring an original copy of one of the sixty-five volumes published by Morris's Kelmscott Press. In the ensuing years they procured many Kelmscott books as well as fine examples of carpets, embroidery stained glass, textiles, wallpaper drawings, sketches, ceramics, and archival materials from Morris's business enterprises; also letters by Morris and his circle, an important collection of his socialist pamphiets, and thousands of secondary sources on his work.

The wallpaper design illustrated here is by John Henry Dearle, who became the artistic director of Morris and Company after Morris's death in 1896. This is one of his most successful designs, incorporating Morris's ideals for expressing beauty and naturalism in a pattern that is clearly not naturalistic.