San Francisco Ceramic Circle

Sunday, 23rd February 2003 Meeting

"Parlor Tricks: Girls, Gallants, Garnitures and Gewgaws"

Letitia Roberts

Independent Ceramic Scholar and Specialist

The February meeting of the San Francisco Ceramic Circle will be held on Sunday, 23rd February in the Florence Gould Theater at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, San Francisco. Entrance is from the main entrance. The lecture will start at 10.00AM.

About the Lecture: This talk will try to recreate historically, verbally and visually an image of the ornaments of an Colonial American "parlor," a term which by the late 1730s had been adopted to denote the "best room" in the house.

Since few visual records exist of Colonial American interiors through paintings, drawings or prints, other primary resources such as archaeological findings, house inventories, estate appraisals, merchants' records, advertisements, and even correspondence were researched. What emerged from the study of the driest of documents is a fascinating picture of a period whose ceramic artifacts are familiar to us all, but whose usage and placement is often surprising.

Today we understand and value 18th century pottery and porcelain as a documentation of the fashion and taste of its time, but in the search for Colonial American parlor pieces, there arises the broader questions of whether the objects define their place, or their place defines the objects? and were the ceramics the vehicle of social elevation, or were they the prize?

About the lecturer: In 1968 Letitia Roberts joined the auction firm of Sotheby Parke Bernet (Sotheby's) in New York after brief excursions into academic administration and banking. She worked in the Old Master Paintings, Appraisals, and American Furniture and Decorative Arts Departments prior to joining the European Ceramics & Chinese Export Porcelain Department in 1973. She became its director in 1978, a Senior Vice President of the firm by the early 1980's and in 1998 Senior International Specialist for Ceramics. Since 2002, Miss Roberts has been working as an independent scholar, author, lecturer, adjunct professor and collections advisor. She is currently collaborating on the catalog of the Stout Collection of Continental Ceramics at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis.

While at Sotheby's Miss Roberts was involved with many of the major pottery and porcelain collections sold in America, including the Garbisch, Mottahedeh and Van Slyke collections and those of Henry Ford II and Nelson Rockefeller. Her expert and scholarly catalogs are useful references for ceramic collectors. Miss Roberts lectures internationally on ceramic topics, and has contributed to the teaching of courses at New York University, the Parsons School of Design, Sotheby's Institute of Art, and Rosemont College. She has written articles for magazines and contributed to several books, was a specialist on the TV show "Caring for Antiques" and is a participant in the "Antiques Roadshow " on PBS.

Next meeting: Thursday, 20th March 2003. Margaret Connors McQuade, Assistant Curator of Ceramics and Furniture at the Hispanic Society of America, N.Y.C. will present a talk entitled "In Pursuit of Excellence: The Royal Factory of Alcora 1727 - 1858"