Displaying items by tag: jugs

When Henry Clay Frick set out to furnish his new residence at 1 East 70th Street, his intention was to replicate the grand houses of the greatest European collectors, who surrounded their Old Master paintings with exquisite furniture and decorative objects. With the assistance of the art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen, Frick quickly assembled an impressive collection of decorative arts, including vases, potpourris, jugs, and basins made at Sèvres, the preeminent eighteenth-century French porcelain manufactory. Many of these objects are featured in the upcoming exhibition "From Sèvres to Fifth Avenue," which presents a new perspective on the collection by exploring the role Sèvres porcelain played in eighteenth-century France, as well as during the American Gilded Age. While some of these striking objects are regularly displayed in the grand context of the Fragonard and Boucher Rooms, others have come out of a long period of storage for this presentation. These finely painted examples will be seen together in a new light in the Portico Gallery.

On March 19, 2013 Sotheby’s London held a sale of important ceramics by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) from a private collection, which included a wider selection of additional ceramics and prints. The auction, which included 100 of Picasso’s plates, jugs, tiles, vases, and bowls, garnered $2.2 million, exceeding the auction’s high estimate of $2.1 million. All of Picasso’s works sold and 94% of the pieces went for well above their high estimates. The highlight of the auction was Picasso’s vase Gros Oiseau Vert, which sold for $157,732, nearly three times its high estimate.

Picasso’s experimentation with ceramics started in 1946 when he was introduced to the Madoura Pottery workshop in France. He began working with the shop’s owners, Suzanne and George Ramie, and embarked on an exploration of the new artistic medium, which he would soon master.

During his career, Picasso produced several thousand ceramic works and continued to experiment with the medium until his death. The works offered at Sotheby’s were part of a single-owner collection and provided a substantial overview of Picasso’s ceramics and illustrated the full scope of his exploration with the medium.