San Francisco Ceramic Circle April 23rd Meeting
"HYACINTH-MANIA"
The April meeting of the San Francisco Ceramic Circle will
be held on Thursday, 23rd April beginning at 7.30pm in the Trustees
Auditorium of the ASIAN ART MUSEUM in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.
Entrance is by the Asian Wing doors of the de Young Museum. The
lecture will start at 8.00pm.
Our speaker will be Patricia Ferguson, Assistant Curator,
George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, Canada. Her
lecture is entitled "Hyacinth-mania: the 18th century fashion
for bulbs and ceramic bulb holders".
The mini-exhibit will be "Bulb pots, flower vases and
wall pockets" Set up is at 7.30pm
About the lecture:
Since the late 17th century, hyacinths and other spring bulbs
planted in pots of earth have been 'enticed' or forced into bloom
in late winter as a delightful adornment for otherwise flowerless
interiors. However, the discovery in 1749 by a French scientist
that bulbs could be grown in water alone, without the aid of soil,
altered the history of floral display.
It soon became fashionable to display growing bulbs in glass
carafes on warm mantelshelves. This trend was not lost on French
potters who developed inventive ceramic forms that allowed the
bulbs to be displayed as they would have been in the flower border
of a garden.
Ms. Ferguson will trace the development of bulb pots from
their beginnings as humble faience basins to specialized pottery
and porcelain containers inspired by contemporary furniture and
architectural styles such as those produced by Josiah Wedgwood,
who by 1780 had captured the blossoming market for bulb pots and
was supplying them to the nobility and gentry in England and throughout
Europe. Wedgwood's designs were both technically and stylisticly
innovative and were copied by many leading ceramic mamufacturers
and remained popular into the Regency period.
About our speaker:
Patricia Ferguson studied Fine Art History at the University
of Toronto and Archeology at London University where she was awarded
an M.A. specializing in Chinese and Islamic Ceramics. She worked
in the Antiques and Auction businesses for 12 years prior to joining
the staff of the Gerge R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art as Assistant
curator in 1995. Her current project is cataloging the part Dr.
Hans Syz collection recently transferred to the Gardiner Museum.