Strange Fruit

On the Contributors Page of the current House Beautiful, I mention that one of my current obsessions is Italian trompe l'oeil ceramics. In fact, I've been obsessed with Italian ceramics, both of the trompe l'oeil variety and not, for years now, and my passion for it has yet to abate. (And I hope it never will, either!) I will be the first to admit that whimsical Italian ceramics can be an acquired taste. A lot of people just don't get it and even find it to be ugly. But if you do get it and it captures your fancy, then you will become mad for it. At least, that's been my experience.

I was first introduced to Italian trompe l'oeil ceramicware when I worked at Tiffany. Back in the 1960s, the great Van Day Truex introduced a line of ceramic tableware decorated with trompe l'oeil fruits, vegetables, and legumes, all of which was produced in Italy. While some of these plates are still being sold at Tiffany today, much of it has unfortunately been discontinued.

I started collecting these pieces around eight years ago after seeing my friend Kappy's enviable collection, and now I own roughly twenty trompe l'oeil pieces- and I'm not done collecting it, either. You can see part of my collection in the photo at top. I have to say that the plates are amazingly realistic looking, with the exception of those with carrots and strawberries. For some reason, the Italian ceramicists seemed to have trouble with those two.

In addition to the trompe l'oeil plates, I also love Italian ceramic tureens, garden seats, lettuceware, and, well, I'll put a lid on it because I could go on and on. But I'm not the only person who is taken with this type of ceramicware. Mid-century Italian ceramic tureens are hot sellers at my friend Barry Hutner's antiques shop, Parc Monceau. Bergdorf Goodman installed all kinds of wonderful ceramic tableware and accessories in one of their 7th floor galleries, a charming way to usher in the summer season. And rumor has it that the Italian ceramic swan tureen that alighted on Christopher Spitzmiller's Lenox Hill Neighborhood House Spring Benefit table elicited many queries of "How much will you take for it?" By the way, it's not for sale, and if I owned it, I wouldn't part with it either!

This tureen, part of my collection, is meant to look like a stack of plates with chocolates on top.




The egg plate really does look peeled hard-boiled eggs.




A plate of green beans and a pear on a plate.




This trompe l'oeil piece, one that depicts a bunch of asparagus, is a cigarette box from the 1960s.



A pair of Italian ceramic garden stools graced the 7th floor of Bergdorf's this Spring. I wonder if they're still there?




A shell tureen and a rabbit version, both mid-century Italian, are currently available at Parc Monceau.




Christopher Spitzmiller's Lenox Hill table with the highly coveted mid-century Swan tureen.


All photos by Jennifer Boles for The Peak of Chic, with the exception of the Spitzmiller table photo by Roberto Ricci and Marco Ricca.

Easter Egg Traditions

When I was a small child, I was always delighted at what the Easter Bunny brought me on Easter morning. My favorite treat was the cheap plastic chicken that laid plastic eggs when you pressed down on its legs. Remember those?

After I discovered that my parents were in fact the Easter Bunny, Easter morning didn't lack for excitement thanks to the more grown-up Easter eggs that my sister and I started to receive. For a period of a few years, my parents always gave us Limoges egg boxes from Tiffany & Co. (Although one year, the egg was by Halcyon Days, not Tiffany. You can see some of the eggs, above.) It was really a nice tradition that I believe ended, unfortunately, when I went off to college.

Never was the tradition of giving jeweled or porcelain eggs on Easter day more spectacular than when Tsar Alexander III commissioned Peter Carl Fabergé to create masterpiece eggs for his wife, Tsarina Maria Feodorovna. The first Fabergé egg that Alexander presented to the Tsarina was enameled, and hidden within the egg was a golden yolk that contained a golden hen that in turn held a tiny diamond royal crown and a ruby egg. Now that was an egg. Alexander III's son, Tsar Nicholas II, continued the tradition of commissioning Fabergé eggs for the Easter holiday until the Russian Revolution cut short both his reign and his life.

While Fabergé eggs may be out of reach for most of us, there are all kinds of wonderful eggs that one can collect or give as gifts to others. There are versions in papier-mâché, porcelain, silver, and even malachite. But truth be told, I still have a soft spot in my heart for plain old dyed Easter eggs. That was the one craft project that I could do as a child with semi-successful results!





Marjorie Merriweather Post owned this fabulous Fabergé egg, now displayed at Hillwood Estate Museum.




Porcelain eggs from Atelier Le Tallec.




I have always loved (and always wanted) a Schlumberger egg charm. This one is lapis.





Silversmith Stuart Devlin is known for his highly collectible egg boxes. This one which contains a surprise hummingbird dates to 1976 and is available through Styles Silver.




Bill Blass owned this Stuart Devlin egg that was made in 1969.




How sweet are these vintage German papier-mâché eggs that can hold candy? At $6.50 each, you should buy a dozen. Available through D. Blümchen & Company.

Pamela Tidwell and Vieuxtemps Porcelain

Last week, my friend Kappy hosted a lunch in honor of her dear friend Pamela Tidwell, a very talented porcelain artist based in Greenville, GA. Pamela's porcelain collection, Vieuxtemps Porcelain, is reminiscent of antique Chelsea and Meissen. I first became enchanted with her porcelain peapods, stalks of asparagus, heads of lettuce, and other fruits and vegetables after having seen them at the Atlanta shop B.D. Jeffries. But what I didn't realize until last week is that Pamela recently branched out into porcelain potted flowers which, I must say, are truly magnificent.

For our lunch, the table was set with an array of Pamela's porcelain flowers, all nestled within charming porcelain pots, plus a few heads of lettuce. It was the most lovely setting for a ladies lunch! Imagine dining amongst colorful and delicate Hydrangea, Roses, and Grape Hyacinth. The only thing missing was the floral fragrance, but the beauty of the pieces more than made up for it. Needless to say, I'm now absolutely smitten with her porcelain flowers and vegetables.

Pamela's porcelain pieces can be viewed on her website as well as at retail shops including B.D. Jeffries and Boxwood Gardens in Atlanta and Vieuxtemps in Charleston. But what's really exciting is that her collection is now available on Taigan. If you collect porcelain or if you are passionate about flowers, I urge you to take a look at Vieuxtemps Porcelain. You won't be sorry.



Hydrangea



English Roses



Lily of the Valley



Grape Hyacinth



Foxglove and Morning Glory



White Hydrangea



Foxglove



White Geranium



White Hydrangea and Yellow Auricula






Heads of Lettuce





All photos by Jennifer Boles for The Peak of Chic

Buy Me a Milking-Pail

Buy me a milking-pail, O mother, O mother!
Buy me a milking-pail, O dearest mother of mine!*

Sounds like an odd thing for me to request, but I wish that someone would buy me a milking-pail. A Sèvres style milk pail, that is. I never really thought much about them until I was looking through my copy of the Jayne Wrightsman auction catalogue over the weekend. The 2010 Sotheby's auction featured the contents of Wrightsman's London residence. And in that residence was a Samson Sèvres-style porcelain milk pail from the late 19th century. (That's it at the top.) Somehow, I missed seeing this lot when I first read the catalogue almost two years ago.

It was Marie Antoinette who first used a Sèvres milk pail while she and her courtiers played milk maids at the Dairy at Rambouillet. According to what I've read, Marie Antoinette's pail was decorated in a faux bois design, meant to emulate real wood grain. Later models, though, are more often decorated with a floral motif. It's the rams heads handles that I find most interesting, though.

If I had a milk pail, I would use it as a cachepot or maybe even as a waste paper basket. But if the milk pail look is a little too pastoral for you, you might be interested in the two jardinières that I included below. They're not milk pails, but they have those great gilt rams heads on them.

*The excerpt at top is from an old nursery rhyme.


A Sèvres style (Samson) milk pail, late 19th c. Sold at Christie's in 2006; price realized $2800.




Pair of Sèvres style milk pails




Sèvres porcelain cachepot with gilded rams heads. Available from Vintage Views Consignment & Consulting.




A Dresden porcelain ram head jardiniere. 20th c. Sold by Neal Auction Company.




Pair of Louis XVI style blue and white Sevres porcelain jardinières, 19th c. From the estate of Evelyn Walsh McLean. Available from Newel.




Also from Vintage Views, a Louis XVI style bisque porcelain jardinière.

San Francisco Antiques Show

Attending the San Francisco Antiques Show has become an annual tradition for me. It's an opportunity for me to see my San Francisco friends (including Diane Dorrans Saeks, Grant Gibson, and Scot Meacham Wood), to salivate over beautiful antiques, and to party. Let's face it- the show's organizers sure know how to throw one fun Preview Party!

This year's show did not disappoint. The show's theme, Hidden Treasures, served to highlight pieces that, in the organizers' words, "have something to hide." At the front of the exhibition hall, curated vignettes were displayed that featured hidden treasures owned by San Francisco collectors. These treasures included pieces with trompe l'oeil decoration or hidden compartments. Many of the exhibiting dealers also included a hidden treasure or two in their booths.

There was so much to see that, quite frankly, I could write a week's worth of show-related posts. I tried to winnow down my photos to those pieces that really caught my eye. Below is a sampling of show highlights.

So, San Francisco Antiques Show, until next year...



I always look forward to visiting the Therien & Co. booth. In addition to being one of the most attractive booths, the mix of antiques and 20th century furniture is always intriguing. You can see a few of the Therien vignettes both above and at the top of the post.




This c. 1920 Constructivist Polychrome Painted Tabouret at Therien & Co. caught my eye, as did:




this c. 1935 cabinet by the Hungarian artist, Andrew Szoeke. Trained at the Weiner Werkstatte, Szoeke's pieces "exhibit a unique combination of Mittel European iconography executed in exotic wood inlay and Moderne form."





Also at Therien, a c. 18th century Spanish Mudejar Giltwood Drop Front Arca.






One of the most decorated booths at the show has to be that of Galerie Steinitz, based in Paris. Walking through it, you feel as though you're in someone's very elegant Parisian drawing room.







In keeping with the show's theme of hidden treasures, Engs-Dimitri showed this 18th c. Mexican painted marriage chest. Opening the chest's lid reveals a charming painted scene of a betrothed couple. On the front of the chest is nail head decoration.





This English naive painting of a coaching horse and dog is what drew me to the booth of Earle Vandekar of Knightsbridge Inc. I always find naive art so interesting because oftentimes, a painting can look slightly contemporary despite its old age. This painting dates to the 19th c.



Vandekar sells all kinds of wonderful antiques including porcelain, one of my weaknesses!









Another specialty of Vandekar is Sailors' Woolworks, needlework that was done by British sailors while at sea. I'm fascinated at how they depicted the water, especially the chevron-print sea in the first example. If you look at the detail shot (the photo immediately above this text), you can see that the stitches were quite long. The examples seen here date to the late 19th century.






And finally, Vandekar had the most amazing set of Chinese watercolors of insects. Look closely, and you'll see that the insects were painted on lacquered leafs. These date to around 1850.





Not everything at the show is old. This Alexander Gorliziki miniature painting, The Hero Departs (2010), was displayed at the John Berggruen Gallery booth.





Being a dog lover, I couldn't resist photographing this 19th c. English engraving titled "The First Lesson"; available through the Daniel Stein Antiques.







The Lucy Johnson booth boasted this 19th c. Italian or Spanish scagliola tabletop, one that is decorated with trompe l'oeil maps of the Persian Empire circa 500 B.C. I don't know if the bronze table base is of recent vintage or not.

All photos copyright of The Peak of Chic