Books Received

by M.A.D. Staff

These are reviews of books recently sent to us. We have included ordering information for publishers that accept mail, phone, or on-line orders. For other publishers, your local bookstore or mail-order house is the place to look.

Zinc Sculpture in America: 1850-1950 by Carol A. Grissom (University of Delaware Press, distributed by Associated University Presses, 2009, 706 pp., hardbound, $65 from Associated University Presses, [www1.bucknell.edu/ aupresses] or [609] 655-4770).

Collectors of American folk art have long prized zinc sculpture, most familiar to us as garden statues, cigar-store and other trade figures, architectural elements, gravestones, and Civil War monuments. Zinc sculptures became very popular immediately after the Civil War, until the 1920's, in part because they could be produced at a tenth the cost of bronze. Zinc has a much lower melting point than bronze or cast iron. Ingot zinc was much less expensive than bronze and much easier to cast. Zinc sculptures looked like stone from a short distance away, which was an attraction for monuments and grave figures. They were produced and/or sold by at least 20 American foundries, including Fiske, Mott, Demuth, Kirtland, Seelig, Mullins, Monumental Bronze, and Benziger.

Zinc figures are at a fascinating junction between art and industry, as sculptors and manufacturers tried to produce art for the middle class, just as John Rogers did so successfully with his plaster groups. Their ease of casting and the low cost of the metal, though, tended to place zinc sculpture outside the definition of fine arts, both then and now, unlike sculptures cast in bronze.

Because of its status as less than fine art, and its usual placement in the very broad category of folk art, there has been very little study of zinc sculpture. Dealers have probably done much of the research up to now, prior to this new book by Carol Grissom, a senior objects conservator at the Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute. She has been studying zinc sculpture for nearly 30 years and has authored several papers on the conservation of zinc objects. In 2002 she was awarded a fellowship to study the development of zinc sculpture in Europe and its influence in America.

Zinc Sculpture in America is a remarkable accomplishment, clearly the product of many years of research and travel. It is truly encyclopedic, beginning with a series of chapters on history and technology, sources and sculptors, fabrication, producers and purveyors, and conservation. Grissom's sources and sculptors chapter documents the profound influence of European sculpture and foundries on the secular and religious figures produced in America. The first use of zinc for architectural sculpture was in Prussia, in the early 19th century, and Prussian foundries continued to be an important source of American models for complex sculptural groups.

Her fabrication essay is fascinating, and it discusses sand casting, slush casting, and stamping. Most figures larger than statuettes were cast in sections, and Grissom discusses how these were joined. Various solders or cast zinc were used, depending upon whether the seams were lapped, butt jointed, or stamped. With low labor costs, it was cheaper to cast small sections and solder them. Good photos illustrate her points. (This reviewer had seen a cast zinc sleeping dog at a recent show. When the dealer turned it over, I was astonished to see that it consisted of at least a dozen pieces that had been soldered together. Initially I thought it had been repaired, but we were actually looking at original soldered seams.)

Grissom also discusses various surface treatments in this chapter, including bronzing, sand blasting, painting, etc. Most of the graveyard and public monument figures were sandblasted to resemble stone, but trade figures were nearly always painted. If you cannot get close to a figure, such as those on buildings, it is sometimes difficult to know whether a sculpture is cast in zinc or another metal, especially if it is painted or coated. The term spelter is archaic and was not used by the foundries.

The producers and purveyors chapter begins with the major New York firms, such as Fiske, Beebe, Mott, Seelig, and Demuth. Grissom confirms that M.J. Seelig & Co. actually made most of the non-religious zinc figures, which were distributed by many firms, especially Fiske and Mott, often with a Fiske or Mott plaque attached. It appears that most Demuth figures were produced by Seelig as well. Grissom discusses the Catholic statue makers Benziger Bros. and Daprato Statuary, which made church and graveyard figures into the 1930's. She also discusses Monumental Bronze Co. and its midwestern subsidiaries, which made nearly all of the zinc gravestones and figures that we see in cemeteries. "White bronze" was their trade name for zinc, which gave their product an air of superiority.

The producers chapter is supplemented by a lengthy appendix that lists and discusses the known American and European firms. This in itself is enormously useful. Further, Grissom lists the known catalogs of each firm and notes the libraries that have copies.

The conservation chapter is particularly valuable for its detailed discussions of conservation and repair problems and the preferred solutions. Zinc is a tricky metal; it is brittle at normal temperatures, malleable at higher temperatures, and then reverts to a brittle structure above 250° C. This complicates repairs, as very careful fluxing and soldering is required for successful restoration. Cold methods include various fiberglass and resin repairs, which she also discusses. The destructive practice of filling outdoor sculptures, particularly the bases, with concrete, has badly damaged many figures. The voids between the zinc and the sculpture fill with water, which freezes in the winter, thus wrecking the adjacent metal. For most dealers and conservators, this chapter alone will be worth the price of the book. There are thorough notes at the end of each chapter, often with excellent commentary.

The chapters discussed so far are only the first 114 pages of this 700-page book. The remainder of the book is an immensely useful catalog of the sculptures themselves, divided into 12 categories of figures: trade figures, Indians, civic personifications, gods and goddesses, candelabra, fountains, animals, famous men, soldiers and sailors, firemen, tomb statues, and saints and crucifixions. Each figure is illustrated, described, and attributed, with a list of known locations. Some figures, such as the classic Civil War soldier at parade rest (by Monumental Bronze), seen in so many New England and midwestern town monuments, have multiple locations noted. Another appendix sorts this list by state and city, so if you are going to be in Dayton, Ohio, for example, you can know what is extant there and exactly where.

There are certainly surprises in this list. For instance, this reviewer recently photographed some major figures on top of Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, one of the few remaining buildings from the U.S. International Centennial Exhibition of 1876. All have what appears to be a verdigris surface. This reviewer was convinced that they were bronze and was surprised to find all seven of them listed (Commerce, Science, Art, Industry, Mining, Agriculture, and Columbia) and photographed in the gods and goddesses section. In fact, all are painted cast zinc figures, modeled by A.M.J. Mueller. It is not known whether they were cast in New York or Philadelphia.

The section on fountains also contains many surprises. Fiske and Mott, and presumably other foundries, often used zinc figures on cast-iron fountains. Mott used the figure of the goddess Hebe, taken from a marble sculpture by Bertel Thorvaldsen, the famous Danish Neoclassical sculptor, for many of its major fountains. The figure is repeatedly illustrated in the Mott catalogs, and 14 locations are listed. This reviewer saw one for sale at a New York City show many years ago, without any idea that it had originally been a fountain figure. Many other fountain figures are shown as well. So the next time you see a good 19th-century fountain, look carefully; the figures (not the structure) may be zinc.

Many of the figures in all of the sections were personally photographed by Grissom, which must have taken years and thousands of miles of travel. Other figures are illustrated by catalog cuts from each foundry. Often the same figure is illustrated in several different companies' catalogs, since, as mentioned earlier, most were actually cast by M.J. Seelig.

Carol Grissom's book is an enormous accomplishment, and it is clearly now the standard reference on American zinc sculpture. The 554 illustrations are of good quality, mostly photographs (350 in color), including many fascinating period photographs of foundries and pieces long gone. Her writing is precise, yet easily read without the burden of academic jargon. University of Delaware Press has done a good job of layout, printing on heavy gloss stock, and binding.

This book will be very useful, indeed indispensable, for anyone seriously interested in zinc sculpture, from collectors to dealers to art historians to conservators. It is refreshing to see a major book about American objects that is more than the usual decorator or collector book, which are so often poorly edited and essentially vanity publications. Kudos to the author for an outstanding book that will be an important reference for years to come.

Ian Berke

American Ceramic Circle Journal: Volume XV (American Ceramic Circle, 2009, 188 pp., softbound, $30 plus S/H from American Ceramic Circle, PO Box 224, Williamsburg, VA 23187-0224; [www.amercercir.org]).

The biannual American Ceramic Circle Journal is a compendium of scholarly papers given at symposia or resulting from grant-sponsored research and contributions submitted by independent scholars. The nonprofit American Ceramic Circle, founded in 1970, has around 400 members—curators, collectors, institutions, and a limited number of dealers—committed to the study and appreciation of ceramics. Articles in the journal relate to the history and use of post-medieval European pottery and porcelain, Asian ceramics of all periods, and ceramics made, used, or owned in America.

It is not necessary to be a member of the American Ceramic Circle to buy its journal, and back issues are available. Members may attend a yearly meeting and hear papers on the newest research, but only some of the papers are published in the journal.

The first three short articles in Volume XV focus on Chinese export porcelain. Shirley Maloney Mueller explains that the teapots found in the Ca Mau shipwreck off the coast of Vietnam, discovered by Vietnamese fishermen in 1998, show that two types of teapots were made simultaneously. The findings clearly demonstrate for the first time that teapots with a single opening on the interior where the spout joins the body and with no perforation in the cover to allow for the intake of air to facilitate pouring continued to be made after teapots were made with the improvement of three small perforations, or strainer holes, in the interior body at the base of the spout to prevent the tea leaves from clogging the spout and after the cover perforation was uniformly present.

The ship that was wrecked, a Chinese junk fully laden with cargo en route to Jakarta from Canton, met a dramatic end sometime between 1723 and 1735. The recovered cargo tells the story of Chinese export porcelain teapots during the first decades of the 18th century, the golden age of the China trade. By 1735, the newly improved model with the perforated spout base and vented cover had become the standard model for all shapes of Chinese porcelain teapots. The shipwreck contained teapots that show the different stages of the innovation, demonstrating that neither Chinese producers nor Asian and European consumers made a sudden break with tradition. Both types of teapots continued to be made and exported to Asia and Europe in the first third of the 18th century.

In the second article Josh Yiu examines the origin of the garniture de cheminée, an interior decoration that usually comprises three baluster-shaped jars and two beakers placed on the mantel shelf or cupboard. Although some believe that these were derived from Chinese temple altar sets, Yiu demonstrates how the garniture de cheminée evolved during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. The author contends that there are no references to Chinese altar sets in Europe until 1738, and by that time the garniture de cheminée was already in vogue. Designs by architect Daniel Marot (1661-1752) show a cluster of ceramic vessels of various shapes and numbers around the fireplace. Yiu believes that the five-piece set is a Western idea. He states that the vases and baluster shapes were mass-produced, not made in matched sets, and that Westerners arranged them in sets of two, three, five, or seven vessels.

Yiu goes on to demonstrate how European ceramics factories created five-piece garnitures for local consumption. Factories in Delft and Saint Cloud in the 17th century and Meissen and others in the 18th century made them of various shapes that are datable. They were clearly made as a set, not assembled as the early China trade garnitures were. Yiu illustrates a Dutch Delft plaque advertising such a garniture along with tea wares. He does not pin the originals to a specific date or assortment of components but says they were available from the 1600's onward. He takes a Darwinian approach, suggesting that the baluster vase and beaker combination emerged gradually as a popular combination among others.

In her paper Carolyn Hartmeier suggests that some pieces of a China trade porcelain service produced about 1750 and decorated with the coat of arms of the Fauntleroy family may have been owned in Virginia before the American Revolution. Currently, fewer than ten armorial services are identified as associated with that period in America. There are many Colonial bookplates with coats of arms but few Chinese export armorial services, and most of those identified were made for northern families. Examples of the Fauntleroy service have descended in the English and American branches of the family, so they may have been divided among the various branches in the 18th century. The author has not yet found documentation that the service was in Virginia before the Revolution, but since silver with the same Fauntleroy arms was owned by the Virginians, she hopes she will.

Patricia A. Halfpenny teamed up with Jennifer L. Mass to show that the enamels on a Meissen tureen decorated with chinoiserie scenes in the style of Johann Gregor Höroldt, in the Campbell collection of soup tureens at Winterthur and cataloged as circa 1740, contain elements not in use at Meissen in the 1740's. Decorations on the tureen's lid, stand, and body were found to contain chromium-based green enamels. Other 19th-century or later technologies include the use of a bismuth flux in gilding, the use of zinc flux in the yellow and violet enamels, and the use of cobalt, chromium, and nickel in the black enamels. Now that the decoration has been proven not to be 18th century, more analysis, including Raman microspectroscopy, is underway to determine whether the body of the tureen is of 18th- or 19th-century origin.

Nicholas Zumbulyadis, Bernhard von Barsewich, and Hermann Reiff teamed up to write a paper on blue and white underglaze Chinese fantasies on a most unusual chinoiserie Meissen dinner service. They identify two blue painters (Blaumaler), Johann Carl Möbius and Peter Kolmberger, and trace their sources of design to preparatory drawings by Höroldt.

A paper by Robert Harrison about an 1816 lusterware presentation jug with the brickmakers' arms shows why he thinks it was made in northern England, not Staffordshire. An article by Paul Atterbury on the origin and styles of Victorian majolica suggests that in "its extraordinary diversity and in the wealth of its detail and color," majolica "represents the greatest expression of originality, imagination, and creativity, not just in the Victorian period but in the whole history of ceramics." A short biography of Sadie Irvine by Adrienne Spinozzi documents the work of one of the most prolific decorators at the Newcomb Pottery in New Orleans. The story of the revival of a pottery tradition in 20th-century Lithuania is told by Anthony E. Stellaccio, a ceramic artist and scholar.

In the final article, Ronald W. Fuchs II and Jennifer L. Mass of Winterthur discuss pieces of Chinese export porcelain decorated with a scene depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Such pieces have long been among the talking points for guides at the Winterthur Museum. In recent years these plates, platters, tea caddies, tureens, and a table screen have been dated to the time of the American centennial in 1876. Fuchs and Mass say these pieces of porcelain with imagery loosely based on the painting that John Trumbull completed in 1818 were actually made in the 20th century.

Henry Francis du Pont bought 56 pieces of Chinese export porcelain in December 1948 for $7000 from Dr. James McClure Henry, a Presbyterian missionary who lived in China from 1909 until 1948. Dr. Henry worked at Lingnan University, a missionary school in Canton, and when he retired he moved to Scarsdale, New York, and sold porcelain to benefit his retirement fund. About a dozen other pieces exist: a teacup and a saucer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; a cream jug and a teacup in the Reeves collection at Washington and Lee University; a punch bowl at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts; and a pitcher at the Department of State in Washington, D.C.

Fuchs and Mass say the porcelain was not very old when Dr. Henry bought it. They note that there is no reference to porcelain decorated with the Declaration of Independence before 1950, and it does not appear in any advertisement in The Magazine Antiques before 1953. Fuchs and Mass support their documentary evidence with physical evidence. Although the shapes are superficially those of the late 18th and early 19th century, the proportions and details, such as rim thickness, finials, and handles, compare more closely to 20th-century pieces.

L.S-C.

Tramp Art: Another Notch, Folk Art from the Heart by Clifford A. Wallach (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2009, 272 pp., hardbound, $99.99 from Schiffer Publishing, [www.schifferbooks.com] or [610] 593-1777).

Clifford Wallach and his wife, Nancy, have been collecting and dealing in folk art for 20 years. This is his second book on tramp art: the boxes, frames, clock cases, chests, and many other useful fantasies made of layers of cedar, pine, or mahogany cigar boxes and plywood crates.

Wallach's first book, published in 1998, had 300 illustrations and explained tramp art's history and techniques. This book has 600 illustrations and repeats the fact that most tramp art was not made by itinerant tramps. It was a solitary occupation, and much of the earliest tramp art was made in almshouses and jails. Tramp art did not originate in Germany, though some who practiced it came from Germany or eastern Europe. Wallach writes that he has come across tramp art made by people of 40 different ethnic nationalities. In one chapter he illustrates examples made today, accompanied by interviews and photographs of the makers, some of them women.

Wallach has identified some makers of tramp art, beginning with John Zadzora, who carved the first documented piece of tramp art, a kissing doves wall pocket that was described by Frances Lichten in an article called "Tramp Work: Penknife Plus Cigar Boxes," published in volume 10 of Pennsylvania Folklife, Spring 1959. Lichten noted that the wall pocket was made in the Lehigh County jail by a man imprisoned for not supporting his wife. Apparently, the fellow had time for repentance, and he made the wall pocket with five heart-shaped mirrors topped by kissing lovebirds. Over the years dozens of similar kissing doves wall pockets were made. Wallach illustrates nine of them, all similar. He points out that those made by Zadzora, the maker of the one Lichten illustrated in her article, can be identified by notches on the bracing that holds the central mirror, a characteristic not found on other kissing doves wall pockets.

Zadzora is just one of many makers identified by Wallach. Some were steelworkers, carpenters, fishermen, or just retired folks, but all were whittlers consumed by their hobby. Since tramp art is made today, Wallach sees it as a folk tradition, like scrimshaw and quilting. He could have added shellwork, ironwork, pottery, and all the other crafts showcased at craft shows.

The gallery section of the book comprises 207 pages of pictures of tramp art pieces in private collections. Most of the collectors are identified, and most pieces are given a number from 1 to 50 to indicate their rarity. Although Wallach calls this a value guide, there are no prices. The book, unfortunately, has no index of makers or forms.

Wallach occasionally points out regional characteristics. For example, elaborate pedestal boxes were made with upstate New York cigar boxes. Boxes, banks, wall pockets, and the ubiquitous picture frames and mirror frames are among the most common tramp art forms. The most impressive and rarest pieces are the cabinets, clock cases, china cupboards, dressers, wardrobes, and desks. Especially charming is a three-panel screen with pointed pediments decorated with large roundels. It is from the collection of Clifford and Nancy Wallach, and its rating is simply "rare."

L.S-C.

Adventures in Modern Art: The Charles K. Williams II Collection by Innis Howe Shoemaker (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2009, 336 pp., softbound, $35, or hardbound, $45, from Philadelphia Museum of Art, [www.philamuseum.org] or [215] 684-7960).

Every collector wishes for a book like this one. It is a catalog picturing nearly 100 paintings, sculptures, watercolors, and drawings with short essays about each artist and a sympathetic description of each work, noting where it fits into the artist's oeuvre, all arranged alphabetically. This useful compendium, full of facts and handy for any researcher, student, or journalist, was published as a catalog for an exhibition of the Charles K. Williams II collection, a promised gift to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA). The exhibition is on view through September 13.

Charles K. Williams trained as an architect, became a distinguished archaeologist, and was director of the Corinth excavations at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. He began collecting American art in 1990 after collecting prints for about a decade. An accomplished watercolorist himself, he began buying watercolors by such well-known artists as Joseph Stella, Charles Demuth, Charles Burchfield, George Grosz, Max Weber, and Emil Nolde. In 1992 he decided to focus on American oil paintings from the first half of the 20th century, with many from the period of the Great Depression plus a few later works.

Because Williams lives with his collection in a small apartment, some of the small pictures do not carry well in the museum galleries; they appear to be more successful compositions unframed on the printed page. The four sculptures, on the other hand, are highlights of the museum show. The sculptures are Resting Stag by Elie Nadelman, Study in Form by John Storrs, Rain Forest Column XXIV by Louise Nevelson, and, straying from his American focus, a Giacometti bust of the artist's brother Diego.

The other exception to Americana is a portrait of Carlo Cirelli by Giorgio de Chirico, already a gift to the PMA. It was painted in 1915 in Ferrara, Italy when de Chirico was in the army. He found Cirelli doing complicated embroidery and was fascinated by his long fingernails, which were "lustrous and extremely well cared for," and de Chirico painted them that way in the foreground of his strange portrait.

Williams collected the big names in American Modernist painting, such as John Marin, Arthur Dove, Ralston Crawford, and Charles Sheeler, and he did not overlook Philadelphians Hugh Henry Breckenridge, Arthur Carles, and Earl Horter, all teachers at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He also bought a Cubist landscape by Morton Schamberg, painted 1913-14.

"The Williams collection fills some gaps in the museum's collection," said Innis Shoemaker, the PMA's curator of prints and drawings and an advisor to Williams. "For example, we did not have oil paintings by Grant Wood or John Marin," she said.

In his introduction Williams thanks his mentor, Jonathan Greenberg, former head of prints at Kennedy Galleries and now at Sotheby's. Shoemaker said Richard York, Meredith Ward, and Susan Menconi and Andrew Schoelkopf are among Williams's dealers. This exhibition and book about collecting American art should inspire others and serve as an example that could help revive the USArtists show, which will not be held in Philadelphia this fall, a victim of the economic meltdown.

L.S-C.

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