San Francisco Ceramic Circle Illustrated Lecture 

Flour Power: the Warda S. Stout Collection

of German Porcelain

by

Letitia Roberts, Independent Ceramic Researcher, Author and

Collections Advisor to Museums and Private Collectors

10.00 AM Sunday, September 19, 2010

Florence Gould Theater, Palace of the Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, San Francisco

Enter from the main entrance. Doors open from 9.30 AM. SFCC lectures are complimentary for Museum visitors

About the talk: The talk will chronicle the development of a significant collection of 18th-century Meissen, Höchst and other Continental porcelain acquired by Mrs. Charles B. Stout during the burgeoning quarter century following World War II. Now at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, along with carefully preserved documentation comprising the collector's annotated records and correspondence, this collection sheds light on the ceramics market of the period and shows the degree to which scholarship has advanced during the subsequent half century.

About the speaker: At the age of fourteen Letitia Roberts received a National Scholastic Art Award and never looked back. Educated at Miss Porter's School and Smith College, from which she received a B.A. in Art History, in 1968 she joined the staff of Sotheby Parke Bernet Galleries in New York (officially renamed Sotheby's in 1983), initially to help create their new PB-84 Division. In 1973 she became a member of the Department of European Ceramics and Chinese Export Porcelain, and in 1978 she was appointed its Director, a position she held until 1998, when as a Senior Vice President, she also was named Senior International Specialist. During her 33 years at Sotheby's she was responsible for securing consignments, writing scholarly catalogues and conducting the appraisals of late seventeenth- to mid nineteenth-century Continental, English, American and China Trade pottery and porcelain. In 1998 she was chosen as one of the six specialists to appear in "Caring for Antiques," produced by Hudson Film Works for the Public Broadcasting System; and she also was an early participant in PBS's popular "Antiques Roadshow."

Since 2002, Miss Roberts, a resident of Manhattan, has been working independently as a collections advisor, researcher, author, editor, lecturer, teacher (primarily for New York University's Appraisal Certificate Program) and occasional appraiser. She is a longtime member of numerous ceramics societies internationally, including the French Porcelain Society, of which she is the Liaison and Secretary-Treasurer in North America; and has served on the Board of Directors of the American Ceramic Circle and the Wedgwood Society of New York, of which she currently is the Recording Secretary.

Next SFCC Programs

Sunday, October 17, 2010 Aileen Dawson " Worcester Porcelain in the Collection of the British Museum"

Sunday, November 21, 2010 Charlotte Jacob - Hanson " New Attributions: Fidele Duvivier in the Netherlands"