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A show of discoveries
[Times photos: Cherie Diez]
Crab trap, China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911), ivory on carved wood. |
By LENNIE BENNETT
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 4, 2002
The Museum of Fine Arts crafts an exhibit around Asian pottery it recently found in its storage rooms and vaults.
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ST. PETERSBURG -- "West Meets East: 1000 Years of Decorative Arts" is about discoveries. The big one this show celebrates is the West's discovery of Asian culture that began with the ancient Silk Road between China and Rome and reached a full flowering in the 18th and 19th centuries with the wholesale European appropriation of tea, porcelain and decorative motifs.
But more recent discoveries at the Museum of Fine Arts were the impetus for this show. Soon after he came to the job last year, museum director John Schloder began to look through storage rooms and vaults. The search yielded some wonderful surprises -- for this show, Asian art from a collection the museum had purchased in the early 1990s but had never displayed. He and chief curator Jennifer Hardin mixed them with some choice pieces of Wedgwood pottery donated by Barbara Olsen and her late husband, John Olsen, in 2001, plus other items from the permanent collection. The result is a charming mix that makes multiple historical and artistic cross-references.
Fan, Japan, Meiji period, c. 1880, ivory.
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Visitors have an implicit invitation to embark on a treasure hunt. Find the same plum blossoms on a white Yuan dynasty vase (1279-1368) and a Wedgwood tea pot made 500 years later. Look again at that teapot and compare it with one from the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) that has the original, branchlike lid and handle.
Interesting lessons can be learned from the porcelains. The art of firing white clay at a high temperature to produce a translucent ceramic that is delicate and strong was known to the Chinese as early as the 7th century. Marco Polo is credited with its name, from porcellana, Italian for a smooth white shell.
Kutani bowl, Japan, Edo period (1615-1868), porcelain with colored enamels.
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From the moment the West discovered the porcelain process, potters tried to replicate it, succeeding in the early 18th century. Porcelain objects were referred to as "china." Displaying Qing dynasty plates with famille rose enamels next to a 19th century Coalport plate that emulates them shows that the English effort was a far lesser one. But nearby, a Worcester Royal Porcelain Islamic Revival vase redeems the Empire's honor, an exuberant Victorian work of trompe l'oeil so beautifully crafted that it looks like carved ivory instead of fired clay.
The colors and design of a bowl from the Kitani kilns during Japan's Edo period (1615-1868) demonstrate that beautiful glass objects by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Emille Galle owe much of their art deco forms to the Japanese.
A few of the objects are purely decorative -- the ivory "crab trap" is a beautiful beguilement -- but most are utilitarian, in the richest way possible.
"We have 700 decorative arts objects in the collection," Schloder said, "and we're going to get more of them out to see." So in addition to the east-west theme carried through in the Stenquist Gallery, Schloder has a satellite display of nonrelated objects in the Great Hall. Among them are more Wedgwood, a Faberge glue pot and a Royal Vienna monteith, or wine cooler.
They are reminders that, for all their preciousness, they were once household items used and enjoyed by families. Some are anachronisms. But some were great ideas that persisted, such as the Wedgwood pastille burner. See it and wish for a time when air fresheners were not made of plastic but of black basalt burnished with bronze and gold.
Review
"West Meets East: 1000 Years of Decorative Arts" is at the Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach Dr. NE, St. Petersburg through Nov. 10. Also on view: "Ansel Adams: Art and Nature." Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission: $6 adults, $5 seniors, $2 children older than 6. Free for younger children and members; free on Sunday. Call (727) 896-2667 or go to www.fine-arts.org.
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