MOCHAWARE - THE COLLECTION OF GLORIA AND CHARLES L. MANDELSTAM Lots 158 - 224 A HISTORY OF THE COLLECTION In the mid 1970's we purchased a renovated 1834 house in the remarkably rural town of North Salem in the northeast corner of Westchester County (New York). We were then both working long hours in New York City, Gloria as a lawyer for the largest world-wide music performance licensing company, and Charles as a partner in a smallish New York City law firm he had co-founded a decades earlier. The house, bought for the main purpose of providing us with a weekend place of tranquility, proved to have many more benefits. Our Mocha collection was one of those benefits. Here is how it happened: At that period of time, we shopped for groceries in the nearby Connecticut town of Ridgfield where we soon stumbled onto the remarkable shop of antiques dealer Florene Mane. Several years later, when she went out of business, Gloria attended the auction of all of the shop's gatherings of Americana and other antique pieces. Gloria's eye was drawn to the many pieces of pottery identified as 'Mochaware'. She bid on a few pieces at prices we could afford, and managed to be the successful bidder for one, a beautifully colored and appealingly designed mug the main motif of which, we later learned, was called the 'earthworm' pattern. "So much for Mocha pottery", we thought. We admired the piece, but never thought to buy any more. Years passed. Gloria became CEO of that world-wide music licensing company, and Charles' law practice grew larger and more diverse, including clients with operations in Europe. We both now had professional reasons to travel extensively, and much of it was to England and France. In the non-working moments in these places, beginning in London, we began to go to antique shops where, to our uneducated amazement, we saw even more interesting pieces of Mocha. The variety and appeal of the colors and shapes and designs took our breath away. We were off to the races - not in the sense of a rush, but in the sense that we always made it our business whenever we traveled to England and France to find some time to search out Mocha offerings. And we began to buy it. The quality and interest of the pieces were far superior to what we were then seeing in the United States. We began to look for English Mocha in earnest, and we bought what we both liked. The result is this Collection. We gathered it in the course of three decades of wonderful experiences. We began to know the dealers in London and Paris and here in the United States, too. And we became knowledgeable about the importance of avoiding damaged pieces, and buying those with interesting colors, shapes, designs - those with handle terminals of artistic quality, with so-called Leeds borders , and on and on. Interestingly, the U.S. dealers in recent years have far exceeded non-U.S. dealers in the quality and variety of Mocha. Moreover, our devotion to Mocha and our fairness with dealers paid special dividends: unusual pieces that British dealers found in, say, country estate sales around rural England would be held for us; in our many business trips to London and Paris we followed up with these thoughtful actions. We also found time to look into the more adventuresome Paris antique dealers' shops where, from time to time, we found some remarkable French Mocha. And wherever and whenever we saw quality pieces, we stretched to buy them. Oddly, some of these Paris dealers did not know that the pottery pieces they had in their shops were part of what American collectors called Mocha, but they did know that what they had was colorful and interesting. So, here at Christie's is the bulk of our collection. We are selling now because Charles, who specializes in the law of estates, knows from extensive experience that children, or other heirs, whose legacy includes a collection of this size almost never know what to do with it or how to dispose of it in a fair and sensible way. If those recipients are lucky enough to know that places like Christie's will do the right thing, then the estates work out. But we felt it was our responsability to spare our descendants this burden, so we went to Christie's ourselves while alive. We did give some pieces to our children who loved Mocha, and we saved a few pieces for the continued pleasure of looking at them. Among those few we did not include in this collection for sale is the Florence Mane piece - not by any stretch our best, or even one of the more beautiful pieces, but easily the most sentimental one. Gloria and Charles L. Mandelstam January, 2005 MOCHAWARE Note to come: short definition of the term and explanation of the techniques used BIBLIOGRAPHY Carpentier, Donald and Rickard, Jonathan, "Slip Decoration in the Age of Industrialization", Ceramics in America, The Chipstone Foundation, 2001, pp. 115-134 Di Noto, Andrea, "Collecting: Mocha Madness", Connoisseur, September 1991, pp. 126-128 Rickard, Jonathan, "Mochaware: Slip Decorated Refired Earthenware", The Magazine Antiques, August 1993, pp. 182-189 Slesin, Suzanne, Rozensztroch, Daniel, and Cliff Stafford, Kitchen Ceramics, 1997 Van Rensselaer, Susan, "Banded creamware", The Magazine Antiques, September 1966, pp. 337-341

AN ENGLISH MOCHAWARE MUG

CIRCA 1800

Details

AN ENGLISH MOCHAWARE MUG
CIRCA 1800
The creamware body alternately banded in yellow and cream-coloured slip, the yellow bands edged in brown and with horizontal dendritic decoration, the cream bands rouletted, collection no. 88
6 in. (15.3 cm.) high

Lot Essay

For other mugs with similar horizontal dendritic decoration, see, Kitchen, p. 125.

More from Important American Furniture, Folk Art, Silver and Prints

View All