How hot is pop culture? ABC News’ digital news arm, ABC News Now, wanted to know, and invited LiveAuctioneers’ CEO, Julian Ellison, to discuss the topic. Julian appeared on the network’s What’s the Buzz program and provided the answers to a number of compelling questions about “Hollywood’s most iconic artifacts.”
Julian spoke about collectors who buy pieces as investments and stressed the value of provenance, noting that enthusiasts research items through past auction prices realized. Several important objects soon to be offered through LiveAuctioneers were featured in the segment, including Indiana Jones’ fedora from Temple of Doom, Christian Bale’s Batman cowl, and the late Heath Ledger’s suit of armor worn in A Knight’s Tale.
Julian also plugged his personal favorite item from the upcoming sale: a vintage Mercedes-Benz automobile from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
BENTONVILLE, Ark. (AP) – Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has acquired a 19th century Francis Gay painting showing the landscape of one of New York’s boroughs in the grip of winter. Winter Scene in Brooklyn shows a snowy view of Front Street between Main and Fulton streets, an area now under the Brooklyn Bridge. The painting has a large pile of wood sitting in its center, as men in top hats and women in shawls walk along a snowy street under a gray winter sky.
WEST MILFORD, N.J. (AP) – Mystery solved in Passaic County.
A historian believes he has found the source of inspiration for an 1846 painting titled Janetta Falls, Passaic County. The site is likely Clinton Falls in West Milford.
Artist Jasper Cropsey was known for paintings which depicted the natural beauty of Passaic County and the Highlands. But he also got the names of places wrong.
NEW YORK – On Wednesday, Dec. 17 Swann Galleries will offer an outstanding private collection of 11 posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and seven by Alphonse Mucha as part of their annual auction of Rare & Important Art Nouveau Posters. The posters are from the collection of Bob and Peggy Marcus, who assembled their collection over the course of 30 years. They continually sought out the finest examples, always with an eye on condition.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire these extraordinarily rare and important works in exceptional condition, ” said Nicholas Lowry, Swann president and poster specialist.
Hector Aguilar designed a group of floral brooches. This silver blossom pin on arched stem signed with initials “HA,” “Taxco,” and “990,” circa 1940. Courtesy Cincinnati Art Galleries.
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At the same time, the artists and artisans working there took a new direction in design that mixed age-old motifs from native cultures with 20th-century Modernism. The objects and jewelry they produced have become extremely popular with discerning collectors. Each piece provides a hands-on aesthetic appeal when used or worn. In other words, this silver makes daily life a little more beautiful.
Cincinnati Art Galleries offered in 2009 a large group of Mexican silver at auction, many of the pieces from a single collection. Karen Singleton, normally the firm’s art glass expert, explained, “This was the first time we had a round of Mexican silver. I accepted the lots because I keep telling them that we could sell more than pottery and glass.” The pieces were signed by many important makers in this field including William Spratling, Frederick Davis, Hector Aguilar, Los Castillo, and Margot de Taxco.
Part of the sale was devoted to hollow ware of silver and mixed metals, including a teapot, coffee pot and chocolate pot by Spratling. There was also a selection of jewelry, some set with Mexican amethyst, malachite, and onyx. Singleton told Style Century Magazine, “I appreciate the jewelry. I put some of the necklaces on and was amazed how comfortable and light they were…They contoured themselves to the body.”
Any story of modern Mexican silver begins with the biography of artist and author William Spratling (1900-1967), who served as a catalyst for the industry’s revival. Born in New York state, he was an associate professor of architecture during the 1920s at Tulane University in New Orleans, where he shared a French Quarter apartment with author William Faulkner. He first traveled to Mexico to study architecture, then became enchanted with Taxco, and moved there in 1929.
Large silver bracelet with malachite stones, marked Spratling Made in Mexico. Courtesy Treadway Gallery.
Drawn by the inspirational scenery and post-revolutionary spirit of the country, many artists and writers lived and worked south of the border. Spratling met American writer Hart Crane, who finished one of his last great poems in Taxco, and became friends with Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, for whom he organized an exhibition in New York.
Looking for a way to support himself as an expatriate artist, Spratling noted the city’s silver-mining history (see sidebar) and opened a workshop, the Taller de las Delicias [Factory of Delights]. He would later write: “Nineteen-thirty-one was a notable year in modern Mexican silversmithing. A young silversmith from Iguala named Artemio Navarrete went to Taxco to work for a small silver shop, founded with the germ of an idea, where Artemio, as a nucleus, began to form silversmiths. The present writer, encouraged by his friends Moises Saenz, Dwight Morrow and Diego Rivera, had set up that little shop called ‘Las Delicias.’”
The major authority on Spratling’s work is Penny Chittim Morrill, Ph.D., who co-authored Mexican Silver: 20th Century Hand-wrought Jewelry & Silver with art dealer Carole Berk. Morrill served as Guest Curator for the 2002 traveling exhibition William Spratling and the Mexican Silver Renaissance: Maestros de Plata, organized by the San Diego Museum of Art.
In her catalog essay, Morrill wrote, “In establishing silver as an artistic medium, what Spratling achieved was a delicate balance, a synthesis of abstract tendencies in the existent folk art tradition and in contemporary fine art, resulting in a visualization of concepts and ideas. As importantly, the Taller de las Delicias, became the paradigm for other silver designers to follow. Las Delicias was a community in which imagination and innovation were fostered and encouraged as the men learned the art of silversmithing while producing for profit. In the hierarchy of the workshop, these silversmiths advanced according to their ability, enthusiasm, and technical expertise.”
Not all Mexican silver was marked by the maker. This 4 3/8-inch-wide silver cuff bracelet with a traditional feathered-serpent pattern is stamped 950 for the silver content. Courtesy Cincinnati Art Galleries.
Many alumni of Spratling’s workshop eventually “graduated” to set up shop on their own. Antonio Castillo, who became a master silversmith there, left in 1939 with his brothers to establish their own successful taller and shop, Los Castillo, on the Plazuela Bernal. Hector Aguilar, who had managed Spratling’s shop, also left in 1939 taking a number of silversmiths with him to found the Taller Borda.
One of the most important silversmiths from an artistic standpoint, Taxco native Antonio Pineda began his career studying painting at the Open Air School of Taxco, established by Japanese artist Tamichi Kitagawa who lived with his family. After further studies in popular arts and sculpture, he worked as an assistant in Spratling’s workshop and opened his own studio in 1941. A 1944 exhibition in San Francisco led to an early commercial coup, when his entire presentation of 80 objects was purchased by Gump’s, a prestigious northern California store.
Although he was born into the artistic tradition of Mexico, some of his most successful works of hollowware and jewelry are modernist, even futurist in concept. Examine the sculptural shapes of the circa-1960 tea service design, illustrated here as a set which sold in a 2005 Sotheby’s Modernism auction for $39,000. Morrill and Berk commented on this design in Mexican Silver: “Antonio Pineda has molded and manipulated the material to effectively convey an aesthetic idea. The sugar and creamer and tea pot are no longer simply utilitarian vessels, but have taken on the qualities of works of art.”
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Most of the silver sought by collectors today was produced during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Spratling continued designing jewelry and serving pieces until his death in a car accident near Taxco in 1967. Books, such as the references mentioned above, are extremely useful because success bred many imitators; popular designs were quickly copied by competitors.
The Taxco output ranges from the dramatic silver necklaces and cuff bracelets of great weight made by Spratling’s workshop to less interesting trinkets made for tourists. Many travelers stopped at the silversmithing town, just off the main road from Mexico City to Acapulco. Pieces they brought back with them turn up at auctions and antique shows throughout the United States. Evaluating the quality and value of vintage Mexican silver takes considerable study. Sterling – 925 parts silver in a thousand – is the standard, but pieces in higher grade silver were made and may be stamped “980” or even “990”.
Mexican silversmiths produced tableware for all aesthetic tastes. This pair of sterling silver candelabra in traditional style (height 20 inches, weight 184 troy ounces). Courtesy Cincinnati Art Galleries.
Penny Morrill said at the time of the Spratling exhibition, “You have to envision this market that was created by Spratling; he created opportunity for thousands. At any one time, there were so many silversmiths working in Taxco itself and a number working in Guadalajara and Mexico City marking their pieces ‘Taxco.’ They were sending their stuff to Taxco because they knew that was where people were buying.”
Morrill noted that even works by unknown makers can have merit: “A lot of the material is in 980 silver, a lot of it is interesting, you put it on, and it makes this incredible statement. I tell people over and over again, if you like it, wear it. If it costs $150, go for it, if it makes you crazy. It may be that one stellar moment when this little silversmith had a wonderful idea.”
Kevin Tierney, head of the silver department at Sotheby’s in New York, has a great admiration for the best Mexican designers and their creations, which have made some memorable appearances in his auctions. In May 2005, for example, the firm sold an example a 1960s Spratling design, a five-piece tea and coffee service ornamented with jaguar finials on a tray for $24,000, and a 1950s set of silver flatware with rosewood handles by Hector Aguilar for $11,400.
In an interview with SCM, Tierney said of Spratling, “He woke them up, he combined American know-how with an appreciation of their cultural history. They had the silver, and he provided employment for artisans who needed it. I love the mix – a bit of European style with the motifs of Mexico enhanced by their superb ability to handcraft the silver.”
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Karla Klein Albertson focuses on the decorative arts, from excavated antiquities to contemporary pop-culture icons. She currently writes the Ceramics Collector column and exhibition features for Auction Central News, covers shows and auctions for the Maine Antique Digest, and authors the Antiques column in The Philadelphia Inquirer. She holds a master’s degree in classical archaeology from Bryn Mawr College.
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Rauschenberg in a personal moment, strolling Florida’s Captiva Beach with his dog, Sapphire, in the early 1990s.
Captiva Island provided the perfect refuge for the artist, and it is there that he chose to live out the last period of his life.
Photo Courtesy of The Guggenheim Museum, NYC.
He hated the term neo-dadaism, which all too frequently was used to describe his work. He was, perhaps, a father to pop art but certainly not of that school. Nor could he be pinned down on the canvas of abstract expressionism.
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To his legions of admirers and to the collectors who avidly seek his work, he stood alone, as Robert Rauschenberg. To his friends he was simply Bob.
In the wake of his May 2008 death, at the age of 83, he left a huge body of influential work that is as varied and seamless as was his tremendous creativity. Still, try to stick an “ism” on Rauschenberg and he simply slips free of it.
While it was Rauschenberg’s “combines” from the 1950s that earned him his reputation early on, his interest in art and creation was born long before that decade and continued to grow and shift in unpredictable and wonderful ways for another half decade. His significant work brought American art out of the intentional vagueness of abstract expressionism and paved the way for the sharp and colorful challenge of pop art. His work has been rightly studied, celebrated and exhibited – both in his long life and in the short time since his death – and scholars, critics and curators alike will likely continue to debate his relevancy for centuries to come.
“The future will be far more tolerant and engaged when it comes to his work,” said Susan Davidson, senior curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum. Davidson was also lucky enough to be numbered among Rauschenberg’s close friends in the last 20 years of his life. “Bob’s impact is yet to be really understood,” she said.
As a curator at one of the major Modern art museums in the world, Davidson is in a unique position to make such a prediction about the future impact of Rauschenberg’s various canvases. The real question is, would he even care to know what any critic – harsh or friendly, past, present or future – thought of his work?
Most likely not, especially as we’re talking about Rauschenberg the full-fledged master. Early in his career, in the 1950s and 1960s, Rauschenberg took a beating at the hands of critics – most of whose names are now lost to history – who took him to task for any number of issues, although it was his combines – multilayered with found objects – that really tweaked the New York City art establishment. Rauschenberg would wander the streets of Manhattan gathering detritus to be included in his pieces and, alchemically, turn them into art. There was no identifiable process or style to them, it was reasoned, and they could not be neatly packaged and put on a wall. For this, critics attacked him. In some art circles of the day it was said that he produced too much work for any of it to have lasting impact or value.
Rauschenberg’s Photograph, 1959, shows – through painting – the artist’s love of and respect for the art of photography, which deeply influenced him at an early age and remained a favorite medium throughout his life. It sold for $10,680,000, as part of Sotheby’s New York Contemporary Art Evening, May 15, 2007. Image Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
“It’s ironic that (critics) felt this way about Bob’s work,” said Davidson. “The interesting thing is that, now that all is said and done, Bob produced less than Warhol.”
It’s fair to say that not everything Picasso, Monet or Pollock put their brushes to came out immortal. Why, then, was Rauschenberg taken so strictly to task for his prolific output?
History – to a limited extent – has already been and will be the judge of Rauschenberg’s work. So far he seems to be holding up rather well. By the time he reached the late 1960s, with his name as widely recognizable as any in the art world, and his work consistently selling high, Rauschenberg moved past criticism completely and into the world of his boundless imagination. According to Davidson, in the last half of his life Rauschenberg was as immune to criticism as he was to talk of how important he was as an artist. When it came to creation, it was process and not product. Money and fame were incidental.
“Bob had a long career, and he spent a good part of it struggling and fighting against critics,” Davidson said. “In the end, though, he was just dedicated to making his art, to what he was doing now. He was well aware of what he achieved, ultimately, but he wasn’t living on it. He was so engaged in his work that nothing else mattered.”
Robert Rauschenberg, Overdrive, 1963 — Oil and silkscreen ink on canvas, 84 inches by 60 inches. When this silkscreen-on-canvas work sold for $14,601,000 on May 14, 2008 as part of Sotheby’s New York Contemporary Art Auction, its price set a record for a Rauschenberg at auction and confirmed that the artist had achieved top-tier status. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s.
To arrive at the place of total engagement with his art, Rauschenberg took a storied path. He is arguably the most famous resident to come out of Port Arthur, Texas – although fans of Janis Joplin might argue that point. Rauschenberg would take little of the coastal Texas landscape of his youth to the cosmopolitan, world-wise and well-traveled Manhattan of his art career. Ultimately, he would spend his twilight years quietly painting away on Captiva Island, off the shores of southwestern Florida.
Despite having minimal formal training, which came in the form of a brief stint as a student in Paris and a legendary year at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Rauschenberg was principally a self-taught artist. If not an outsider exactly – given his ability to switch his focus and his medium – he was certainly not an academic. Throughout his early years he was involved in theater at his high school, then, during a stint in the U.S. Navy, Rauschenberg started to draw in earnest. It was here that he realized what he was meant to do.
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“No, Bob really wasn’t a trained artist,” Davidson explained. “It just came naturally to him. He was certainly drawing in high school, and making costumes and being involved in the arts in a strict way. In the Navy, though, he really started to look at art. It was maybe a five-year journey, but he was set. I remember one Sunday morning, talking with him over breakfast, and he told me, ‘I didn’t have a choice. I had to be an artist.’”
From the Navy, Rauschenberg made his way to the Kansas City Art Institute on the G.I. Bill, and from there to the Académie Julian for a brief, but important, stopover in Paris. While he associated with many European luminaries from the scene, he quickly grew disenchanted with Europe and made his way to Black Mountain, where he would meet and work with artists as varied as Knox Martin, Merce Cunningham and John Cage. There he also met fellow artist, lifelong friend and sometime lover Cy Twombly. It was here he began his radical artist evolution into the role of master of minimalism. The full flourish of that brilliance, however, wouldn’t come until he left Black Mountain – as well as his marriage to Susan Weil, with whom he had a son, Christopher – and threw himself into the artistic entropy of New York City. Within a year he would start showing at the Betty Parsons Gallery, 1951.
By the time he had his first solo show in 1954 at the Charles Egan Gallery, Rauschenberg had produced his first radical departures in art in a series of 1952 and 1953 paintings called, respectively, the Red, White and Black paintings. He layered color and played with light in a way that was unheard of in his White Paintings, but it was the Red and Black paintings that showed the first collage-like combinations that would evolve into his groundbreaking combines. He began to wander the New York Streets and pick up found objects to incorporate into his work. In finding this freedom and spontaneity – the traits that so infuriated critics and frustrated sensibilities – he also inspired an entire generation of young artists seeking alternatives to traditional ways of creating art.
Robert Rauschenberg’s Primo Calle/Roci Venezuela — In this piece, the artist’s deep love of photography is evident. This work sold in November 2007 for $2,617,000 at Sotheby’s New York Contemporary Art Evening. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Throughout the 1950s Rauschenberg dedicated himself to his radically different combines. It was in 1958 that Rauschenberg created Erased DeKoonig for a show at the Leo Castelli Gallery, a work that Davidson points to as absolutely seminal – more so than his combines – in the evolution of his work. He literally erased a DeKoonig drawing and hung it in the show.
“It was a very important work for Bob, in that he was not only making homage to Willem, but also making a statement,” she said. “The fact that he could take a piece of art, erase it and make an entirely different artistic statement all his own was an incredible thing.”
In 1961 Rauschenberg created what provides a kind of artistic bookend to Erased DeKoonig in the form of Portrait of Iris Clert, for a show at her gallery, where he sent a telegram that read, simply: “This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.”
It was in these two works that Rauschenberg showed his supreme ability to turn convention on its head, to make art that was provocative and unconventional. Conceptually it was very simple, but philosophically it was richly and deeply complex, and completely new to the world of art.
Robert Rauschenberg, Half Dime (Urban Bourbon) — This is one of the artist’s more inscrutable paintings from the late 1980s, though it clearly shows his ever-increasing subtlety with color, and mastery over the lines and movement of his work. It sold for $684,000 as part of Sotheby’s New York Contemporary Art Day, May 16, 2007. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Rauschenberg continued to grow and evolve throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. Never one to rest on his laurels, Rauschenberg began incorporating photographic elements into his work, moving from three dimensions into two, and showing his lifelong fascination with, and love of, photography. He experimented with printmaking, sculpture and performance art. He even made an impact in the music industry in 1983 when he did the cover art for The Talking Heads album Speaking in Tongues, for which he won a Grammy.
In 2003 Rauschenberg finally retired full time to Captiva Island, where he would paint, entertain guests and live the rest of his remarkable life in peace, quiet and comfort. To the end, he eschewed labels, and by the time of his death there was not a critic alive who could question a move he had made in his long and fruitful career. There was never an “ism” to describe him, nor is there ever likely to be.
Through all the art movements, scrutiny and scholarship, in the end Rauschenberg’s work and life will always defy such labels. The only way to describe his art, really, is to say, “It’s Robert Rauschenberg.”
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Tiffany Studios’ stunning turn of the 20th century leaded-glass lamps appear frequently in the auction marketplace, but many collectors may not be aware of a contemporaneous but far-less-expensive alternative: Austrian Art Nouveau lamps, particularly the figural bronze-based versions.
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Made during the same time frame as their botanically themed Tiffany counterparts, specialty Austrian Art Nouveau lamps often incorporate bronze animal forms as their bases. They are almost always devoid of manufacturer or foundry marks.
Circa-1910 Austrian bronze lamp with demonic and winged-serpent figures, inset panels of mica and three light sockets. Image courtesy Morphy Auctions.
“These lamps have always flown under the radar,” said a New York collector of 30 years. “Not too many people know what they are. They’re very unusual and of incredible quality. From a design standpoint, they were ahead of their time, and are now rarer than Tiffany lamps – that’s something that always attracted me to them.”
Circa-1915 jewel-eyed frog and toadstool lamp with Austrian glass shade. Image courtesy Morphy Auctions.
The collector, who uses his lamps functionally and has kept them in perfect working order, says it is unusual to find an example for sale at a public venue. “It has always been incredibly difficult to find these lamps. The first one I ever saw was in the United States at a show, but over the past three decades I’ve obtained almost all of my lamps through private sources. Dealers have gotten to know me and will call when they find a lamp they think I would like.”
Rare bronze peacock lamp with inset iridescent jewels adorning the bird’s feathers, and with an enameled Mont Joye shade. Image courtesy Morphy Auctions.
Tiffany Studios lamps, by comparison, are much easier to source, the collector said. “If you wanted a Tiffany Magnolia lamp, for example, you could put the word out and probably find one within months. That’s not the case with these Austrian lamps. They’re extraordinarily rare and unique.”
Four-peacock lamp gracefully styled on variegated green-marble base, with reticulated bronze shade inset with jeweled peacock-feather glass shade. Image courtesy Morphy Auctions.
In his collection, one will see lamps replicating peacocks, a frog and toadstool, a dragon, alligator, and mythological Jugendstil-type fish, among many other creatures. Each features an enameled or faux-jewel-studded shade, as well as cabochons and other iridescent jewel accents, often serving as eyes. Throughout, the artistry is superb.
When Austrian Art Nouveau lamps appear at auction, it’s major news to collectors, said the interviewee. “There was a lizard lamp at Christie’s East, but that was many, many years ago,” he said. “Then recently a collection appeared at Hal Hunt’s auction house in Alabama. There must have been 700 people there.”
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Matko Peckay at home in his workshop in Ossining, N.Y. Phil Mansfield photo.
The 58-year-old Slovenian has been creating hand-carved armchairs, rocking chairs, loveseats and tables out of hardwood on and off for over 14 years, turning what is initially thought of as functional into a passionately embedded art form.
A year after moving to New York City in 1997, Peckay and his wife, Jeannette Gerber, settled 35 miles north on a 1-acre property in Westchester County’s Ossining, N.Y. While he pursues his passion one day at a time in his workshop, his wife now has a successful business as a tutor for standardized-test preparation. Taking breaks only to renovate their 125-year-old home and landscape their garden, his mind is on design and creating a new piece ever year.
“I’m stepping back and preparing myself,” said Peckay, in his thick Slovenian accent. Spurred on by an unstoppable urge to work with his hands, he bears no particular message other than the love of what he does and finding the harmony between what he feels and makes a piece “right.”
“We, as people, are different and see things differently. Otherwise, it all would be pretty boring,” he says. Accepting those different approaches means allowing a “live and let live” within woodworking, and yet he has to stay within the limits of what can be done with furniture. “I’m learning to stay open and go through a process.”
Selecting the wood lays the foundation for everything that follows. “The challenge is in finding wood where the grain works, inside as well as outside.” There is also the interplay of thickness and width, which determines which woods are more flexible. Peckay culls through local lumberyards for hardwoods – beech, curly and spotted maple and black walnut among them. He’ll even go to remote warehouses to select the appropriate kiln-dried woods with the straightest grain. He now sparingly uses Swiss pear, which is expensive in the United States.
Born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, formerly Yugoslavia, Matko Peckay made mahogany sailing boats as a young man. He became interested in design while studying mechanical engineering at the Stojna Tehnicna Sola. Following a trip to Scandinavia in the mid-1970s, he began exploring the elegant curves and lines of now-classic Scandinavian furniture designs. His personal mission: to create chairs and tables that are unique, but true to the wood’s nature.
After moving with Jeannette to California in 1983, Peckay pursued his creative path working as a carpenter and artist’s assistant while taking classes in drawing and watercolor at the Academy of Art University, formerly the San Francisco Academy of Art. Being the primary wage earner for the couple at the time, he couldn’t accept the full-time scholarship offered to him.
Rocking Chair. Peckay’s work pays homage to Sam Maloof with the inclusion of curved wooden seats and backs and arched coasters. This chair is 46 inches high by 26 inches wide. Anja Hinrichsen photo.
Peckay’s self-taught journey as an artist and woodworker largely mirrors, and was profoundly enhanced by, that of renowned Californian contemporary furniture craftsman Sam Maloof. Of Lebanese descent and known for his signature chairs and trademark rocker, Maloof’s work embodied the modern Danish/Scandinavian lines that Peckay relished. “When I saw Maloof’s work, knew I wanted to make this type of furniture.” To achieve this, he had to hone his drawing skills and took a pencil and charcoal class at the university.
Returning to his wife’s native Switzerland in 1990, Peckay received his first commission in a small village in the outskirts of Zurich, where he worked as a carpenter and leased a loft space in an industrial building occupied by artists and tradesmen. At first, it started out as a barter agreement with a potter for a 10-foot, narrow dining room table in maple. By 1996, the same potter ordered a custom-made double-sided desk. Using his connections with cabinetmaking, Peckay launched himself as a woodworker. He went on to make his first love seat and armchair, followed by a rocking chair and dining room table.
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“Chairs are my passion,” he declares. He also has a yen for rockers with long wings and curved backs. A serendipitous encounter with the elderly Sam Maloof in 2001 at the Renwick gallery in Washington, D.C., led to a one-day workshop at the master’s studio in Alta Loma, Calif. Peckay was captivated by how even an armrest shaped out of solid wood respected the flow of lines. “I could see 60 years of experience at the core of his designs.”
Peckay takes the rough-cut wood and selects what will work with the different parts of a chair. He’s familiar enough with the woods to know what colors – from light to reddish brown, or even purple brown – they will produce. Front legs need very straight grains to carry the weight and support the armrest. After hand-carving the different components, he assembles and glues the pieces together, filing them down with handmade rasps from France and doweling them together. He sands and finishes with oil and wax. He may spend upward of 350 hours to create a single armchair, a justification for the minimum $6,700 he asks for one chair.
Loveseat. Carefully molded seats, gently arched back and perfectly proportioned arms. The loveseat is 34½ inches high by 48½ inches wide by 24 inches deep. Anja Hinrichsen photo.
With a recent order destined for Aspen, Colo., Peckay was challenged with selecting and preparing wood for four matching black walnut chairs that all needed to be of the same proportions. He also discovered the importance of “zooming in and out” of his pieces. “It’s very important to see a chair from afar, to move from micro to macro.”
Peckay says that, while the physical demands of woodworking are stressful to his shoulders, he also finds it necessary to allow his mind time to relax, “otherwise, I get too focused and trapped in the repetitive phase of working each piece.” Three years ago, he began crafting wooden bowls and creating small sculptures from a variety of maples, black walnut, myrtle wood burl and ash. Peckay has found that working on smaller items allows him to “free mold and shape as I go.”
Matko Peckay’s clients include private residents in Westchester, interior designers and architects. His “circle of admirers” includes people who are “in the profession and appreciate my efforts and value what goes into each part of a furniture.”
Group exhibits and furniture shows are another source of encouragement. At the prestigious Philadelphia Invitational Furniture Show in 2005 and 2006, his work caught the eye of acclaimed furniture designer Mira Nakashima, daughter of the late Japanese-American furniture designer and craftsman George Nakashima. She invited Matko and Jeannette to take a private tour of the famous Nakashima studios in New Hope, Pa.
Bowl, 2006. Anja Hinrichsen photo.
Every spring for the past five years, the Peckays have transformed their living room area into a three-day arts and crafts salon. Here, area artisans join them in presenting their photography, jewelry and paintings in a relaxed atmosphere that is attended by a growing e-mail list of people.
These days, Peckay cultivates commissions both nationally and locally. His goal: to make his work known to those who can appreciate his personal quest to go with the grain. And it’s not uncommon for a client to visit his workshop for a “sitting,” as was the case for a very dear 93-year-old customer who is only 5 feet tall.
Make an appointment to visit Peckay’s showroom: 914-945-0706.
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Mandara. Blown glass with multiple incalmi and criss-crossed canes, recent work that demonstrates Tagliapietra’s creative vigor.
It was made using the multi-step Pilchuk ‘96 technique that produces lines of color running through the object.
Photo by Russell Johnson. Courtesy Renwick Gallery/Smithsonian Images
Italian designer Lino Taglipietra (b. 1934) emerged from the traditional Venetian glass workshops in Murano to become a catalyst for innovation in the international studio glass movement.
Lino Tagliapietra in his Murano studio around 1998. Photo by Francesco Barasciutti.
In 2009, the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., presented an exhibition titled Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Italian Glass. It brought together 140 examples ranging from simple early pieces to brilliantly complex works.
Tagliapietra is an artist who has increased in creative power over six decades. Already a maestro in Venice in his early twenties, he had a command of classic techniques, some of which date back to the Roman period. Rather than remaining in his homeland, the artist chose to share what he knew in other countries. The resulting cross-pollination not only enriched his students, but altered Tagliapietra’s approach to his own work.
Susanne K. Frantz, former curator of Twentieth-Century Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York, curated the Renwick Gallery exhibition and is the author of the accompanying catalog, a must for any glass collector. In a recent interview, she explained what happened when Tagliapietra first came to teach at the Pilchuk Glass School near Seattle in 1979: “Lino hadn’t met any of the Americans until he came to the United States. They were very creative and willing to take chances – they just didn’t have the technical know-how. It was pretty much trial and error.”
At first, she explained, “Italians came over and demonstrated their technique, not really even teaching. Lino didn’t speak any English at all. At Pilchuk, he would just make the things that he made. Someone would ask about a technique and he would demonstrate that and the others would watch. That was a huge eye-opener, just these very subtle movements.”
Frantz noted the results: “Over the years, he was able to help them. In order to accommodate Lino and the other artists who came over, they would improve the working environment and materials. It really did change international glass. If you look at American studio glass, most of it was so crude at that time. It raised the technical level not only in American studio glass but studio glass worldwide.”
Endeavor (1995). Inspired by Viking boats and Amazonian canoes, Tagliapietra began making elongated blown glass boats in 1995. This assemblage of 35 pieces is called Endeavor. Photo by Greg R. Miller. Courtesy of Lino Tagliapietra, Inc.
Just as dramatic was the effect that this marrying out of his gene pool had on Tagliapietra. Frantz continued, “They helped each other; it wasn’t a one-way street. It’s interesting how Lino gave so much, but he got so much too. He had all the instincts, but Lino had never been in an environment like he encountered in the United States. It encouraged him to develop his artistic ability.” [Ed. – Pilchuk was co-founded by renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly and patrons Anne Gould Hauberg and John H. Hauberghe.]
The Tagliapietra exhibition catalog explained important techniques that the Italian artist had mastered and was able to pass on, such as inciso, a decoration of narrow parallel lines cut into the surface of cooled glass. Incalmo is a tricky process where two or more bubbles of molten glass that have been opened are aligned and joined. He also came up with new methods, such as “Pilchuk ’96,” a multi-step technique which allows the worker to produce lines of color running vertically or diagonally through the blown glass.
Once stimulated, Tagliapietra’s design innovation has never stopped. The curator pointed out, “In the past 10 years, he has really exploded. I even asked him what happened. Some people when they hit a mature age, the creativity just explodes.” Her words are strongly supported by works from this decade in the exhibition, such as Nubia (2000), a blown triple-incalmi glass piece with white and black canes, or the colorful blown and cut Stromboli (2004). Tagliapietra continues to divide his working life between Italy and the United States.
Nubia (2000). Blown triple-incalmi glass with black and white canes. Photo by Russell Johnson. Courtesy Renwick Gallery/Smithsonian Images.
Although much of his output has already entered public and private collections, Tagliapietra’s works occasionally appear at auction. In 2006, for example, the Chicago auction house Wright sold a 1991 vase from the glassmaker’s “sgraffito art” period for $10,200. Talking recently with SCM, Richard Wright praised the artist as the top living master from Murano, after the Venetian district’s reemergence as a great glass center in the 1950s.
Wright pointed out his ability to go beyond what had been done previously: “Lino takes that great tradition and the techniques that are there, and gets it away from the functional – he elevates it to art. He does some very large sculptural pieces. The boats are amazing. It’s clearly true that he gets better as he gets older. The way he’s improved over his career is the idea of taking traditional techniques and pushing further, pushing further.”
Mark Hill has been a specialist at both Sotheby’s and Bonham’s, and is currently a contributor to Judith Miller’s series of Collector’s Guides, including the one on 20th-century glass. Above all he is an avid collector of studio glass. He spoke with SCM about what makes Tagliapietra’s glass exceptional. “In glass, no techniques are new as such. The core-forming of vessels all the way down to the use of colored glass in rods was practiced by the Romans. But it’s what you do with those techniques that brings in the novelty in glass.”
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“His pieces are staggering,” Hill continued. “The thing that really gets me when you look at a Tagliapietra piece is the incredible size; it’s something you can only really appreciate when you’re standing in front of the object. It’s the scale of the piece, handling such a sheer mass of glass to create such an elegant object, as he does, is a demonstration of great virtuosity and experience.” Hill praised Tagliapietra’s “incredible use of color…He’s very Italian in that way. These vibrant colors, organic forms – they look almost as if they’ve grown on the end of an alien plant. There’s so much of Italian glass in Tagliapietra’s work, but at the same time, the studio side of it freed him up from carrying on more traditional styles.” His forte, according to Hill, is his use of classic techniques in new ways to produce the most amazing optical effects.
“The studio glass market in general is thriving,” Hill observed. “It’s an area I feel that’s very strong for the future. It’s not a case that the oldest is always the best. A piece produced yesterday might have much more interest and fetch more. There has been a development of skills over the last 10 or 20 years. The great thing about studio glass is that every single object is unique, an artwork in glass. And with studio glass, the artist invariably puts his mark on it.”
Endeavor (1995). Inspired by Viking boats and Amazonian canoes, Tagliapietra began making elongated blown glass boats in 1995. This assemblage of 35 pieces is called Endeavor. Photo by Greg R. Miller. Courtesy of Lino Tagliapietra, Inc.
Before Lino Taglipietra in Retrospect opened, Robyn Kennedy, Chief of the Renwick Gallery, stated: “This exhibition is a wonderful chance to highlight the work of one of the elder statesmen of glass. Lino is not only an educator and exquisite craftsman but one of the most innovative glass artists today. His work continues to develop and push the boundaries of the medium.”
She later observed in an interview with SCM, “The show has been terrifically well received – people love it. Some have said it is the favorite show they’ve seen at the Renwick.” Kennedy was surprised to find on meeting the artist, “He’s almost nonchalant about some of the techniques he uses, like the incalmi works where he’s putting two pieces of glass together. He was always an advanced craftsman, and he has revived techniques that were lost.”
Most important, she said, “Lino was very pleased with the installation here. And our lighting designer had the time of his life.”
The exhibition was organized by the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Wash. (www.museumofglass.org), where it first appeared. Another great destination for collectors is the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, N.Y. (www.cmog.org), which has an ongoing Masters of Studio Glass Series.
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Karla Klein Albertson focuses on the decorative arts, from excavated antiquities to contemporary pop-culture icons. She currently writes the Ceramics Collector column and exhibition features for Auction Central News, covers shows and auctions for the Maine Antique Digest, and authors the Antiques column in The Philadelphia Inquirer. She holds a master’s degree in classical archaeology from Bryn Mawr College.
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