Do you ever name any of your garden plants? I don’t mean in the hybridizing or cultivar-name sense, but as a sort of nickname or shorthand, based on either a characteristic or the plant’s ‘official name.’ I never used to do this before this garden, but now find that at least a dozen of my…
My face is scarlet with shame that I have not written a garden post for almost seven (!!) months, and there really are no excuses that wouldn’t sound horribly lame (despite being true.) I am terribly behind on both of my sites, to be honest. So, I will sit in a hypothetical corner and promise…
The porcelain sculptures depicting people (human figures) were the area in which the Cybis studio typically bested not only their cross-town rival, Boehm, but the other USA studios as well. A case can be made for Ispanky but, after all: Laszlo Ispanky was at the Cybis studio before he decided to launch his own. In…
Almost all of the porcelains shown in this second part of my Cybis retrospective date from 1960 and later. These all have the ‘look’ that most people associate with items from Cybis, Boehm, Ispanky, and the host of other studio names that populated the burgeoning 1960s-1980s art porcelain collector market. Cybis Birds (1950s through the…
The two largest art porcelain studios operating in the USA – both in Trenton, NJ, and both now defunct – were Cybis and Boehm. I’ve already profiled Boehm’s satellite studio (Boehm of Malvern) in this Lost Porcelain Studios series, and will be doing likewise for ‘Trenton Boehm’ later this year. I hadn’t originally planned to…
The spirited writer/socialite/artist Fleur Cowles, who died in 2009 at the venerable age of 101, designed several sculptures for Connoisseur of Malvern as well as for several other noted British firms such as Denby and Border Fine Arts. An American (a Brooklynite, her name was actually Florence Friedman) by birth, she combined her experience as…
I really hoped that I wouldn’t have to report on another house-vs.-water bout (Rounds One and Two having been decided in my favor), but the Forces of Nature had other ideas. Was the third time going to follow suit, or was the tide – no pun intended – turning? This bout took place in February…
Technically, this is Part 14 because I threw in a Covid-19 and a New Year’s 2021 edition, but who’s counting? (Well, I am, apparently…lol) \\ \\
The Chatsworth Lady 