San Francisco Ceramic Circle

Thursday, 15th May 2003 Meeting

"Stranger than Fiction: the Real Utz "

a slide lecture by

Sebastian Kuhn

Director, European Ceramics and Glass Department, Sotheby's, London

The May meeting of the San Francisco Ceramic Circle will be held on Thursday, 15th May in the Florence Gould Theater at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, San Francisco. Entrance is from the west terrace entrance. The lecture will start at 8.00PM.

About the Lecture: Many will have read Bruce Chatwin's 1988 novel Utz and some may have seen the movie made from it directed by George Sluizer. Both dealt with the life of a fanatic porcelain collector during Nazi and communist regimes in eastern Europe. Less well known is the fact Baron Kaspar Joachim von Utz of the novel was modeled on the collector Rudolf Just whom Chatwin met in 1967 while working for Sotheby's. In the book Utz destroyed his collection in real life the Just collection vanished from sight. This talk will cover the collection and how it was rediscovered by Sebastian Kuhn and others from Sotheby's and sold among great excitement in London in December, 2001.

About the lecturer: Sebastian Kuhn is director of the European Ceramics and Glass department at Sotheby's, London. He joined the Ceramics department in 1990 having graduated from the Australian national University and completing the Works of Art course and has cataloged every ceramics sale since then. Among them are several important single owner sales including Thurn and Taxis (Regensburg, October 1993), Baden - Baden (October 1995), Style for a Nation, Porcelain from the Prussian Royal Manufactory, Berlin, 1800 - 1850 (London, July 1997) and Rudolf Just (London, December 2001). Mr. Kuhn has also contributed sections on European pottery and porcelain in the Encyclopedia of Antiques and Miller's Antiques Encyclopedia.

He is a member of Les Amis Suisse de la Ceramiques and of Gesellschaft des Keramikfreunde und Freundeskreis der Porzellansammlung im Zwinger. He lectures regularly internationally and to students from the Sotheb'ys Institute.

Next meeting: Saturday, 21st June 2003. San Francisco Ceramic Circle summer social for SFCC members only.

Next regular meeting: Saturday, 17th July 2003. "A Royal Menagerie: the history and technology of Meissen porcelain animals" by Jane Bassett, associate conservator, decorative arts and sculpture, the J. Paul Getty museum