In the realm of ceramics, porcelain occupies a place of honor. Its manufacture, traceable for well over thirteen centuries in China and cultivated in the Orient, in Europe, and in England, has been the focus of scholarly and public attention for many generations. In America, however, the delicate medium has been overshadowed in importance by the stoneware and red earthenware made in rural potteries throughout the nineteenth century and, more recently, by the individuality of the objects produced as a part of the Arts and Crafts movement. The exhibition devoted to American Porcelain that this catalogue accompanies brings together a selection of treasures that spans a century and a half of native achievement and reflects the influence of concomitant historical, stylistic, and technological developments. Though the wares made at the major potting centers (the cities of New York, Trenton, Philadelphia, and East Liverpool) are the primary theme, objects from other regions today virtually unknown are also presented.
American Porcelain: 1770–1920, both as an exhibition and publication, is a whollly appropriate exemplification of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s prevailing concern for the display and study of the finest examples of American decorative art. This beautiful catalogue, offering a new and comprehensive examination of American porcelain, belongs to a sizable and growing series of publications on all aspects of American art, which will inspire the reader not only to explore the field of American porcelain but go further into the other realms of American art. [This book was originally published in 1989 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]
