Date: Fri 16-Jul-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: JUDIR

Quick Words:

Hanes

Full Text:

How I Went From Dealer To Collector In One Little Jug

By Joyce Ruskin Hanes

WESTBROOK, CONN. -- For almost 20 years I was exclusively an antiques dealer.

My primary goal was to buy and sell antiques -- trying hard to keep to a

standard of objects that were 1: old, 2: in decent condition, and 3:

presumably rare enough to tempt collectors. Of course, I kept things; after

all, Lee and I had a home to furnish, and we loved the material that we dealt

with.

One of my many theories in this crazy business is that most dealers' homes

look like their booths. And I would say that that is the case in the Hanes

household, although we were never the type of dealers who kept the best things

for ourselves. We only would keep what appealed, or fit into our teeny abode,

or, unfortunately, our mistakes.

So here we were in our little house in Westbrook with a few good Windsor

chairs, a tavern table with the wrong top, a couple of decorative paintings

and samplers, and a leather sofa. Did we collect anything? Not really. Nothing

had ever captured our imaginations enough, nor could we really afford to

collect anything expensive, especially with all the hungry collectors beating

down our door for the best stuff.

Then it happened. I bought the jug. It was at a summer show in Bridgehampton,

run by Morgan MacWhinnie. Morgan also had a booth, mostly furniture, with a

few accessories to dress it up - fireplace tools, a couple of paintings,

candlesticks, and the jug. Just a harmless little jug, pearlware, with

underglaze chinoiserie decoration. Not unlike many other pieces of pearlware

I'd bought and sold in the past. Only something about this one was special.

Was it the simplicity of the design? The use of color? The funky little boat

floating under the funkier bridge? And what was that tall silo-like building

with a top that resembled the dome on the Colt building in Hartford? (It was

even the same color.)

Who can explain why we fall in love with someone? Or why we have the friends

we do? Or why one woman wears Talbot's clothes and another wears Flax? Who can

explain why, when I put that little jug out for sale in my booth and someone

almost bought it, I almost cried? As soon as the potential buyer left the

booth, I looked at Lee and said, "I can't sell it!" I quickly put it in a

drawer, and that was the beginning.

Now I had one piece of pottery. I think collecting begins in one of two ways.

Either a person sets out to collect after learning about or seeing something

new, or it begins when she sees the second piece.

The fever didn't really begin until I saw the second piece. That's when you

know you've got it. I was so excited. It was in the booth of John and Robin

Sittig - I think John said it had been in his mother's collection. It was

another little jug, smaller than the first, with slight variation in the

design. Of course I bought it, brought it home, and spent hours comparing the

two, trying to make sense out of the design, wondering what inspired this

unusual arrangement of simplified Chinese style elements.

I had recently become friendly with Mickey and George Dieke, who collect

peafowl pottery, and are in the process of documenting all of the variations

that exist. They are also examining related pearlwares, which include both

flower basket and house decoration. Although my two pieces weren't exactly

"house," they felt that the design fit loosely into this category. As time

progressed, I found several more pieces. Lee found a coffeepot at the

Portsmouth, N.H. market, which he presented to me as a birthday gift, and

Mickey found several pieces as well. Lew Scranton had a plate that was cracked

so badly it was almost in two pieces, but I didn't care. I wanted it all.

And when I couldn't find more pieces, I started branching out. I began buying

a few pieces of "house" in its purer form. Similar to the blue and white,

"Fence-tree-house-tree-fence" known as china glaze, this was in the underglaze

palette, and therefore related to my stuff. Of course we needed a name for it,

and I put my other "dish friends" to work. Jonathan Rickard, the mocha

collector, came up with the term we use now - he dubbed it "Balloon tree." As

I recall there were several other entries, but balloon tree seemed to fit the

best.

Now we have about a dozen pieces. And the collecting frenzy gets worse,

because now we want to know the design source. So I spend the next few months

looking through books on Chinese porcelain, English transfer printed wares,

chinoisserie decoration and Delft. And what do I find? Almost nothing. The

closest I can come up with is that it is a stylized willow pattern. And I find

that willow as we know it was first transfer printed by Spode around 1790. So

my date of 1800-20 seems about right in that context. I found a little

porcelain saucer in underglaze blue decoration that seemed related - the trees

were balloon-like - and probably dated earlier than the pearlware.

But it gets worse. At Wilton I find a pair of plates with fence (related to

"house") and the funniest woman in profile holding a flower. The two plates

had apparently been in a fire, and someone had then tried to clean them in

Clorox (a real no-no, as the bleach gets under the glaze and damages the

body). I quickly brought them to Jim Elliott, who plopped them into solution

to further clean them and get the Clorox out. He couldn't remove all of the

burn marks, but it didn't really matter.

The decoration also included the squiggly ground found on balloon tree, as

well as on most house, and many examples of peafowl. I brought the plates to

Jonathan, who at that time was in the New Britain Hospital for Special Care

being treated for MS. Fortunately the disease didn't quell his love of

ceramics, and he thought my new plates were most unusual. Then he said a

wicked thing to me. He said, "Wouldn't it be interesting to study all of the

decorations with the squiggly ground?" When the visit was over, I drove home

as fast as possible to examine all of my squiggly grounds. I had been trying

to figure out which of the balloon trees had been painted by the same hand,

and now I had the extra onus of comparing all the squigglys. There were

obviously different techniques of depicting said ground - the decorator

usually went back and forth with her brush very quickly. But some made the

brushstrokes in only one direction. Some used a thicker brush, or had more

paint on it. Some worked from bottom to top, others from top to bottom. The

more I looked, the more confused I became.

So the questions that remain for me are: Where did the actual design come

from? Did the decorators in the pottery work with a drawing in front of them,

or were they just told to draw a bridge, boat, turret, and squiggly ground?

Were these balloon tree pieces produced in only one pottery, or were many

different makers using the same design?

We know that there are more elaborate renditions of the balloon tree, having

many of the same elements, but highly embellished. We know that in Chinese

Export similar although far more intricate scenes appear, which were

undoubtedly the inspiration for blue Willow. We also know that shards of

balloon tree have been found in Alexandria, Va., and Albany, N.Y.

All of the pieces were purchased in this country, although the more elaborate

versions have also come from England. Recently I attended "Dish Camp" at

Eastfield Village, where the topic was archaeological discoveries. Can anyone

but another collector know the excitement I felt when George Deike pointed out

the balloon tree shard from Albany that had just been unearthed? And the fact

that it exactly matched one of my pieces, and was certainly painted by the

same hand, made my heart skip another beat.

So the collection continues to grow, and continues to give me great pleasure.

It started with an emotional reaction, which continues, with the added

academic curiosity that surely must grow in every collector's heart.