Special exhibit booth at Wisconsin Antique Dealers Association show

The Wisconsin Antique Dealers Association generously invited me to present a special “Made in Wisconsin” exhibit booth at their winter show and sale in Waukesha. Rebecca Wangard (a part-time research assistant supported by the Chipstone Foundation) and I spent the first weekend in February at the Waukesha Expo Center, where we displayed an eclectic range of Wisconsin-made art and craft objects and shared information about the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database project.

Many thanks to WADA for this opportunity (and special thanks to show director Rick Kojis for coordinating the booth)! Thanks as well to all the WADA members who loaned items for the exhibit:  Ron and Debby Christman (R. Christman Antiques & Art), Steve Cypher (Sharron’s Antiques), Bob Markiewicz (Bob’s Antiques), Phillip R. Schauer (Pipsqueak & Me), Kathy Bruce (Willow Works), Pam Ewig, Scott Sieckman (Monches Farm), Jim Walter (Calamity House), and Judy Wucherer (Transition of Wales).

Local dealers and collectors loaned a wide range of Wisconsin-made art and craft objects for the booth, including work by Milwaukee metalworker Cyril Colnik, paintings by several important Wisconsin artists including F. W. Heine, a 1843 needlework sampler from Shullsburg, and a unique sofa collected in the southeast part of the state.

Many of the smaller items came from private collections, including decorated Milwaukee stoneware, coin silver from Milwaukee and Madison, and several pairs of delicate hand-knit stockings with elaborate beading made by a German immigrant girl in Menomonee Falls.

A tower of enameled tin breadboxes manufactured by Milwaukee's Geuder, Paeschke, and Frey was paired with a period catalog of the company's "Cream City Ware."

A striking cherry schrank or wardrobe collected in Germantown, Washington County, caught the eye of many visitors. I opened it up at least half a dozen times to show off its ingenious "knock-apart" construction.

–Posted by Emily Pfotenhauer

Now Online: Private Collections part 2

Ironstone plate manufactured by Joseph Clementson, Stoke-on-Trent, England and imported to Milwaukee by F. J. Blair, ca. 1840-1850.

Two more private collections posted recently…

The first is a large group from a private collector who’s kept an eye out for Wisconsin-related items for decades. A brief list gives a sense of the scope of just the small part of the collection that I photographed: earthenware from a Waukesha County pottery, stoneware from potteries in Wautoma, Portage, and Menasha, and marked coin silver spoons made by silversmiths in Milwaukee, Madison, Beloit, Janesville, and Platteville.

In addition to these important examples of Wisconsin pottery and metalwork, the collection also includes an intriguing group of flow-blue ironstone dishware. Although not made in Wisconsin, they reveal important evidence of life in the early days of settlement and statehood. Ceramics decorated with blue transfer-printed chinoiserie motifs were the height of middle-class fashion in Britain and America in the mid-nineteenth century. Staffordshire potters such as Joseph Clementson, who manufactured the plate shown above, shipped their wares to American distributors like F. J. Blair of Milwaukee.

Three miniature earthenware posnets (three-legged cooking pots) attributed to August Henschel, Colgate, Waukesha County, ca. 1880-1900.

Coin silver spoon, R. P. Hicks, Platteville, Grant County. Engraved with the initials "MDR"

Detail of crochet and beadwork on stockings made by Elizabeth Pauline Ebert, Menomonee Falls, Waukesha County, 1878-1879.

Another small collection was brought to my attention after my presentation at the Delafield Antique Show last spring. A unique group of handknit stockings embellished with delicate crochet and beadwork were gifted to the current owner by the granddaughter of the maker, Elizabeth Ebert. Ebert was born in Germany and came to Wisconsin around 1847, writing in her diary that she made the stockings because she wanted to look beautiful in her new country, America.

Posted by Emily Pfotenhauer.