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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE NEW YORK COLLECTION (LOTS 1430 - 1436)
Myron S. Falk (c. 1878-1945) began his career as a civil engineer in New York City. In 1903 he married Milly Judith Einstein, daughter of Henry Einstein (owner of the NY Press), and from 1904-1914 he taught at Columbia University. The author of several important textbooks on mortars, cements and bridge designs, Falk served in the Army during World War I and acted as a consulting engineer to the Army in World War II. He developed an interest in and collected Chinese blue and white porcelains on the trips he took to China in his later international dealings in silk and other products.
The Falks had three children, and their son Myron "Johnny" Falk, Jr., along with his wife Pauline, assembled one of the greatest private collections of Chinese art in the West (sold in these rooms, 20 September 2001). Johnny's introduction to Chinese art came from his father Myron Sr., whose blue and white porcelains decorated the family's New York home. When Myron Sr. died in 1945, his collection, from which the following lots derive, was inherited by his three children.
Johnny Falk and his two sisters presented a number of their father's porcelains to the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, to adorn the newly restored Peacock Room in the 1980s. Part of an organized effort to recreate the original appearance of the room, as conceived by Thomas Jeckyl in 1876 to display the blue and white porcelains of British collector Robert Leyland, the Falk porcelains fit perfectly within the decorative landscape of the room.
A BLUE AND WHITE BOWL
KANGXI PERIOD (1662-1722)
Details
A BLUE AND WHITE BOWL
KANGXI PERIOD (1662-1722)
The bowl has deep rounded sides rising to a flared rim, and is decorated on the exterior with two prunus trees growing either side of a rock, as well as with a magpie. Prunus branches are repeated in a medallion in the center of the interior, and in a narrow band at the rim. A chi seal mark is on the base. Together with a powder-blue-ground pear-shaped vase, Kangxi period, which is decorated on the body with three quatrefoil panels of figures, and on the bulbous collar encircling the neck with three small panels of butterflies, all reserved on the powder-blue ground.
8 in. (20.3 cm.) diam; 8 3/8 in. (21.3 cm.) high
KANGXI PERIOD (1662-1722)
The bowl has deep rounded sides rising to a flared rim, and is decorated on the exterior with two prunus trees growing either side of a rock, as well as with a magpie. Prunus branches are repeated in a medallion in the center of the interior, and in a narrow band at the rim. A chi seal mark is on the base. Together with a powder-blue-ground pear-shaped vase, Kangxi period, which is decorated on the body with three quatrefoil panels of figures, and on the bulbous collar encircling the neck with three small panels of butterflies, all reserved on the powder-blue ground.
8 in. (20.3 cm.) diam; 8 3/8 in. (21.3 cm.) high
Provenance
Myron S. Falk, Senior, Greenwich, Connecticut.
Brought to you by
Michael Bass
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