Winterthur in Washington, D.C - Current and Coming - decorative arts exhibits - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, May, 2002 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

To visit the Winterthur Museum, in Winterthur, Delaware, is to encounter masterpieces of American decorative arts that comprise a comprehensive survey of our artistic heritage from 1640 to 1860. The works are installed in period-room settings that are the legacy of the museum's founder Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969). Much has been written about the man and his museum, to which this magazine devoted its January 2002 issue on the occasion of the museum's fiftieth anniversary.

From May 5 through October 6 visitors to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., will be able to see more than three hundred objects from the museum in gallery settings. These comprise paintings, furniture, textiles, prints, drawings, ceramics, glass, and metalwork drawn from some eighty-five thousand objects in the museum. All the objects in the show were made or used in this country, and many hear labels, inscriptions, brands, and other marks associated with their makers, or are firmly documented as to their place of origin.

The exhibition is installed both chronologically and thematically. It opens with a section entitled "Early Settlement and Sophistication," which includes objects made during the late seventeenth century chiefly by newly arrived English and European immigrants, which reflect the artistic traditions of the craftsmen's homelands. The next section, "Passion for Rococo," treats artists and craftsmen working in the Chippendale or rococo style in Philadelphia, Charleston, and Boston during the mid-eighteenth century. The next section explores the theme of "East Meets West" and the omnipresent influence of the trade with China that both Americans and Europeans enjoyed during the eighteenth century. In this section Chinese export porcelains and ceramics made in Europe in imitation of these popular wares are installed with the luxurious textiles that were hand-painted or printed in India for export to the West. Chinese lacquered furniture inspired American craftsmen to produce japanned furniture with pictorial scenes derived from the Orient, such as the high chest of drawers illustrated below. Furniture makers also made use of fretwork (a decorative device used in Asia) when fashioning such practical furniture components as galleries on tables and stretchers on chairs.

Du Pont discovered the distinctive objects associated with the Pennsylvania Germans as he was embarking on his collecting odyssey in the 1920s. These pieces were made by German and Swiss immigrants who settled in the eastern part of Pennsylvania in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, bringing their aesthetic and craft traditions with them. This section of the exhibition includes ornately decorated painted furniture, pottery, woven coverlets and quilts, and frakturs.

The next section of the exhibition is entitled "American Classicism," and explores how craftsmen modeled their stylistic repertory on recently excavated classical Greek and Roman artifacts. Classical motifs were incorporated into every medium of the decorative arts and gave rise to new forms, from archaeologically correct klismos chairs to helmet-shaped silver cream pitchers.

The exhibition closes with a vignette drawn from the Du Pont Dining Room at Winterthur. It salutes H. F. du Pont and his dedicated pursuit of the finest examples of a given type and his talent for installing them in interiors that are artful representations of their era. He became obsessed with the smallest object or decorative detail, paying particular attention to its color, proportions, and how it fitted into the overall composition of a room. In so doing, he created a museum that has been admired and emulated ever since it opened to the public in 1952.

The guest curator of the exhibition and author of the accompanying catalogue is Wendy A. Cooper, the Lois E and Henry S. McNeil Senior Curator of Furniture at Winterthur. The catalogue may be ordered by telephoning 800-288-2129.