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THE LEO AND DORIS HODROFF COLLECTION
RONALD W. FUCH
Associate Curator of Ceramics, Winterthur Muse
It was a chance encounter at an auction in Miami, Florida almost fifty years ago that led to the creation of the Leo and Doris Hodroff Collection of Chinese Export Porcelain. Leo Hodroff, unable to play his scheduled golf game due to inclement weather, decided instead to attend an auction. He was drawn to several pieces of Chinese export porcelain, and bought them. Though several proved to be less than great, Leo was intrigued rather than discouraged. This tenacity and curiousity have led him and his wife Doris to search out, study, and acquire more. With dedication, an uncommon eye for quality, and quiet Midwestern reserve, they have created one of the largest and finest collections of CHinese export porcelain currently in existence.
Over the years, the Hodroffs acquired many of the finest pieces to come on the market, showcasing them in breathtaking displays that fill entire rooms in their homes in Minneapolis and Palm Beach. Carefully arranged in specially-designed cabinets with an eye for color and form, their collection provides a nearly-comprehensive overview of the history of Chinese export porcelain. Like other important twentieth-century collectors such as H.F. du Pont, Helena Woolworth McCann, and Rafi and Mildred Mottahedeh, the Hodroffs have been especially drawn to the fine famille rose-enameled wares of the eighteenth century.
The Hodroff Collection is rich in porcelain made for the Private Trade, which was the means by which individuals commissioned special orders for things like armorial porcelain through China Trade merchants and sea captains. So rich in Private Trade porcelain is the Hodroff Collection that it became the focus of the catalog of part of their collection, The Choice of the Private Trader: The Private Market in Chinese Export Porcelain Illustrated from the Hodroff Collection, which was written by one of the leading scholars in the field, their long-time friend David Sanctuary Howard.
While the Hodroffs have taken, and continue to take, great pleasure from living with their porcelain, they have also been passionately committed to sharing the fruits of their collecting labors with others. Motivated by a desire to help others better understand and appreciate its beauty and history, they have made significant gifts of export porcelain to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Norton Museum of Art, the Peabody-Essex Museum, the Mayo Clinic Art Collection, and Winterthur. Their gifts to Winterthur alone have been among the largest and most generous the museum has received since its founding by Henry Francis du Pont in 1951.
Not content merely to give objects, the Hodroffs have ensured that the field of export porcelain remains active by supporting research through the publication of two catalogs, The Choice of the Private Trader published in 1994, and Made in China: Export Porcelain from the Leo and Doris Hodroff Collection at Winterthur, published in 2005. They have also supported a curatorial position at Winterthur dedicated to export porcelain, and a traveling exhibition, Made in China, that will share the collection with seven museums throughout the United States and Canada.
Leo and Doris Hodroff continue to refine their collection and to give generously, ensuring that the field of Chinese export porcelain remains as active and vibrant in the 21st century as it was in the 20th.
THE HODROFF COLLECTION: Porcelain and Provenance
A visit to Leo and Doris Hodroff's beautifully installed collection has been a coveted treat for scholars, dealers and collectors in the field of Chinese export art for many years now. And one of the special pleasures of looking through the carefully selected wares the Hodroffs have gathered together has always been discovering the many links back to famed collections of earlier eras.
Choice pieces, familiar to all from well-thumbed, landmark publications like China for the West or the Hervouëts' La Porcelaine des Compagnie des Indes have resided on the Hodroff shelves beside treasures from private collections like Bullivant, Benjamin Edwards III and Martin Hurst, like so many intertwined branches of a Chinese export family tree.
At Christie's, where we're privileged to have a 240-year history of one-owner collection sales, we particularly cherish this illustrious provenance. We can trace pictures like Sir Robert Walpole's, sold by Christie's to Catherine the Great, or the great Velasquez sold by Christie's twice, first for Sir William Hamilton in 1801 and then again in 1970, finally landing at the Metropolitan Museum.
The Hodroff collection encompasses pieces from as Tang dynasty pottery to modern Chinese painting. In the present selection of Chinese export we find pieces that, for as long as three or four centuries, have been passed down from collector to collector. We're honored be handling this Chinese export porcelain from the Leo and Doris Hodroff collection, pieces whose collection labels will be prized for generations to come.
Becky MacGuire
Senior Specialist, Chinese Export Art
AFTERNOON SESSION
Auction at 2.00 pm
Chinese Export Porcelain (lots 1-255)
A LARGE BLUE AND WHITE DISH
KANGXI
Details
A LARGE BLUE AND WHITE DISH
KANGXI
Decorated with a man playing qin in a pavillion, his attendant resting before him, and two ladies conversing outside, the well with a trellis pattern and four cartouches of ribbon-tied auspicious objects, the rim with bamboo and prunus
13½ in. (34.2 cm.) diameter
KANGXI
Decorated with a man playing qin in a pavillion, his attendant resting before him, and two ladies conversing outside, the well with a trellis pattern and four cartouches of ribbon-tied auspicious objects, the rim with bamboo and prunus
13½ in. (34.2 cm.) diameter
Provenance
The Mildred R. and Rafi Y. Mottahedeh Collection, Sotheby's, New York, 19 October 2000, lot 90