From its invention by the Minton factory in the late 1840s, the taste for historiated and brightly glazed wares known as majolica quickly spread to other manufactories around the world, stimulated by their success at the international exhibitions. This conference sets out to examine the production of late 19th- and early 20th-century majolica as a global phenomenon and to explore aspects of its manufacture, marketing, consumption and taste from an international perspective. It is the intention of the conference that a comparative approach to majolica production in Britain, France, Scandinavia, Hungary, Portugal and America will illuminate not only the history of majolica itself, but its wider place within contemporary national and international cultural debates about design and taste in the age of industrialization.
May 15, 6–7:30 pm
Jeffrey L. Collins
Professor and Chair, Bard Graduate Center
Welcome
Keynote Lecture
Andrew Morrall
Bard Graduate Center
Majolica and Tradition
May 16, 9:30 am–5 pm
Susan Weber
Founder and Director, Bard Graduate Center
Welcome
Andrew Morrall
Professor, Bard Graduate Center
Introduction
Rebecca Wallis
Curator, Ceramics and Glass Section, Department of Sculpture, Metalwork,
Ceramics and Glass, The Victoria and Albert Museum
Majolica and the South Kensington Museum
Oliva Rucellai
Museum Curator, Museo Richard-Ginori della Manifattura di Doccia, Sesto
Fiorentino (Florence)
Maiolica Made in Italy: Renaissance Revival from Forgery to Eclecticism
Yassana Croizat-Glazer
Independent Researcher
Fueling the Fire of Invention: The Myths of
Bernard Palissy
Cristina Ramos e Horta
Senior Curator, Museu de Cerâmica, Caldas da
Rainha, Portugal
The Work of Portuguese “Neo-Palissy”
Ceramist Manuel Mafra (1831-1905) and the Great World’s Fair Exhibitions of the
19th Century
Panel Discussion
Susan Weber
Founder and Director, Bard Graduate Center
Swedish Majolica: Rorstrand and Gustavsberg
Orsolya Kovács
Curator, Collection of Applied Arts, Janus Pannonius Museum, Pécs, Hungary
The Imitation and Adaptation as Ground of Aesthetical Revival: The Zsolnay
Ceramic at the End of the 19th Century
David L. Barquist
The H. Richard Dietrich, Jr., Curator of Decorative Arts, Philadelphia Museum
of Art
American Majolica, 1870-1900
Arthur Mehlstäubler
Art Historian, Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe
The Majolica Manufacture of the Grand Duke of Baden in Karlsruhe, Germany:
The First 30 Years, 1901-1931
Panel Discussion
