Some reviews of Volume II

“A stunning array of folk masterpieces”
— Paul S. D’Ambrosio, Antiques and Fine Art

“A richly visual, painstakingly assembled tribute to the accidental genius of vernacular art.”
— Laura Beach, Antiques and the Arts Weekly

“...keeps words and pictures in balance, offering further excursions into an outstanding private collection
...the essays proceed in close-up, singling out individual objects and the people who made or used them,
often with fresh and revelatory specificity.”
— Roberta Smith, New York Times (Holiday Gift Guide selection)

“A journey through one of the most exquisite collections of Americana . . . a monumental achievement
. . . a volume that all serious books about the decorative arts should aspire to.
Its visual narrative and written cadence create a sentimental journey accompanied
by the most necessary of traveling companions: thoughtfulness and critical reflection.”
— Joanne Molina, The Curated Object

“This book, like its companion volume, is essential for anyone interested in
American folk art, Shaker craft, early American furniture, and Native American artistry.”
— San Francisco Book Review

“Splendid . . . essential to any serious library of Americana and decorative arts.”
— Barrymore Laurence Scherer, The Magazine Antiques

“Full of nuggets of information that make for good armchair reading . . . [and] brilliant photographs.”
— Lita Solis Cohen, Maine Antique Digest

“Intriguing . . . fascinating . . . will satisfy even the most astute folk art collector and stoke the curiosity
of any history buff. . . . An essential volume for a library of early Americana.”
— Julie Carlson Wildfeuer, American Fine Art

Please click on an article below to read some reviews of Volume I.

Litchfield County Times
“All-Americana in Woodbury”
By: Richard W. Stevenson
November /2006

Antiques & Fine Art
“Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence
Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana”
By: Ruth Wolfe
Autumn / Winter 2006

Maine Antique Digest
“A Folk Art Museum Without Walls”
By: Lita Solis-Cohen
December 2006

Antiques and The Arts Weekly
“Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence”
By: Laura Beach
01/15/2007

Art + Auction
“The Collector’s Eye”
By: Marie Proeller Hueston
February 2007

The New York Times
“Antiques”
By: Wendy Moonan
February 9, 2007

 New Haven Register
“Yale art gallery exhibit shows what we do for love”
By: Register Staff
February 13, 2007

Yale Daily News
“Art gallery keeps love in mind”
By: Dana Wu
February 13, 2007

Hartford Courant
“Decorative Expressions of Love in Various Media at Yale Art Gallery”
By: Adrian Brune
March 10, 2007

The New York Times
“How They Lived and Loved”
By: Benjamin Genocchio
March 25, 2007

Antiques & Fine Art
“Made For Love
Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana”
By: Erin E. Eisenbarth
February / March 2007

 

Litchfield County Times
“All-Americana in Woodbury”
By: Richard W. Stevenson
November 2006
[This] hefty and elegant volume is the work of many hands, authoritatively written by a phalanx of appropriate experts, with striking and informative photography by Gavin Ashworth.
 

Antiques & Fine Art
“Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence
Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana”
By: Ruth Wolfe
Autumn/Winter 2006
Several years ago Jane Katcher, a collector and longtime student of American folk art and Americana, was asked to prepare a magazine article about some of her favorite objects. As she discussed this project with David Schorsch, the folk art specialist who has been the principal advisor on her Americana collection, the idea of producing a major book emerged, and the result is Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence, to be published this December by Marquand Books in association with Yale University Press.

The book features more than 200 works—many never before published—from Katcher’s  extensive collection, which is rich in portraits and carvings, quilts and needlework, weathervanes and whirligigs, family records and calligraphy, boxes and baskets, toys, painted furniture, Windsor chairs, and a variety of objects created in the Germanic regions of Pennsylvania and Virginia and in the Shaker communities of New York and New England. In addition to these frequently collected categories of American folk art, the Katcher collection holds some notable surprises: mocha ware and spatter ware—colorful English pottery that was wildly popular with nineteenth-century Americans—and an often overlooked wealth of ephemera that includes handmade valentines, friendship albums and memory books, keepsakes woven from the hair of loved ones, and other fragile and intensely personal tokens of love and affection.

 In her introductory essay, “Some Thoughts on Collecting,” Jane Katcher expresses her “heartfelt desire…that this book will be an inspiration for both those who have had years of experience in this area of art and antiques as well as for those who are reading about objects such as these for the very first time.” To fulfill her vision, a group of distinguished scholars was assembled to explore different aspects and themes of the collection in thought-provoking essays: Jean M. Burks, Paul S. D’Ambrosio, Erin Eisenbarth, Robin Jaffee Frank, Robert Hunter, Patricia E. Kane, Richard Miller, Charles Santore, Robert Shaw, Scott T. Swank, and Philip Zea. The photographs, featuring multiple views and dramatic details, are by distinguished fine arts photographer Gavin Ashworth. A comprehensive catalog by David A. Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles includes detailed descriptions of each object, as well as the most complete information available on provenance and exhibition and publishing history; this section of the book will prove a valuable new resource in the field of American folk art.

In conjunction with the book’s publication, the Yale University Art Gallery will present “Made for Love: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana,” from February 13 to August 26, 2007, featuring works created as tokens of affection or commissioned to reflect the loving bonds between families and friends in early America. A major scholarly symposium is scheduled for the weekend of March 30-31, 2007, in New Haven. For more information visit www.artgallery.yale.edu or contact Yale University Art Gallery at 203-432-0611. To order a copy of Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence (ISBN: 0-300-11965-8; cloth, 428 pages, 510 color illus.; $75.00), visit www.yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks.

 Ruth Wolfe is an editor, writer, and independent curator in the field of American folk art and the principal editor of Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence
 

Maine Antique Digest
“A Folk Art Museum Without Walls”
By: Lita Solis-Cohen
December 2006
The latest big hardcover illustrated book on a major collection of American folk art, Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana, edited by Jane Katcher, David Schorsch, and Ruth Wolfe, follows in the tradition of Little by Little, the collection of the late Bertram and Nina Fletcher Little, published in 1984, Spiritually Moving, the collection of David Teiger assembled with the help of his friend Harvey Kahn, published in 1998, and American Radiance, documenting Ralph Esmerian's promised gift to the American Folk Art Museum, published in 2001 by the museum in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence illustrates, documents, and discusses a collection of American folk art collected in the last decade by Jane Katcher, a retired pediatric radiologist who depended largely on the advice of Woodbury, Connecticut, dealers David Schorsch and his partner Eileen Smiles. (Now we know for whom they were buying all those record-setting masterpieces reported in the pages of M.A.D.!)

The book also serves as a catalog for an exhibition of a selection from the collection that will open at the Yale University Art Gallery on February 13, 2007, and continue through August 26.

Although the book is far too big and heavy to carry into the galleries, it is a visual treat with the majority of the photographs by Gavin Ashworth, a master photographer. It is full of enlightening information. Edited partly by Ruth Wolfe, a longtime associate of the late Jean Lipman and editor of The Flowering of American Folk Art, it contains essays by a group of distinguished scholars who write about various parts of the Katcher collection.

Every student of American cultural history should read Philip Zea's essay, "Jacob Strickler's Cupboard," documenting the hanging cupboard found under the stairs in a house in the back country of the Shenandoah Valley and sold at a small sale in that region. The essay is a prime example of how to write about objects and put them in context. Zea points out the relationship between woodworker and decorator and relates the little cupboard to other work in the region, while demonstrating how a powerful object is "energized by the artistic decisions of the ornamental painter."

Paul S. D'Ambrosio's "Two Masterworks by John Brewster, Jr." discusses the deaf painter's large portrait of Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt, 1799-a detail is on the front of the book's dust jacket-and underscores the masterful composition of a father and daughter in a stark interior that portrays their tender interaction.

Brewster's little-known half-length individual portraits of Six Children, painted about 1810, all on one 25" x 30" canvas, is another folk art masterpiece, and D'Ambrosio tells why, suggesting that Brewster's artistic career can be defined by these two works.

In the very first essay in the book, Katcher gives us her thoughts on collecting, explaining that art has been an imposing presence in her life since she was a teenager growing up in New York City, spending time at the Museum of Modern Art. When she matured, she developed a passion for tribal art, American folk art, and Americana as well as a preoccupation with acquiring great objects. She continues her search for objects with the qualities of "…nobility, economy of means, power, grace, spirit, and unique vision of the artist."

Katcher prefers folk art made without the self-conscious attitude of the academically trained artist by people "freed from the restrictions of adhering to an established standard." She seeks "objects…produced as an act of faith, both in the all-powerful, supportive forces of religious beliefs and in one's own abilities to perform." She finds these works "imbued with an expressiveness that is forceful, direct, clear, and often stirring."

Clearly, Katcher is moved by the objects she has acquired. To help us understand her sensibility, she compares an African pipe from Mozambique and American anthropomorphic calipers, pointing out their kinship in simplicity of form and old worn surfaces.

Although aesthetics seem to be her major interest, she said she also focuses attention on how the objects fit into a hierarchy of known works, how an object was used, and why it was made in a particular style. Answers to these questions are found in the essays.

The essays are arbitrarily arranged in thematic sections that don't always make sense, but then the discipline of art history often pushes art into constricting grids. In an introductory essay, Robert Shaw, former curator of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, writes about "Humanizing the Mundane," a chapter that is a catch-all for objects both useful and beautiful, such as a whale ivory bodkin in the form of a clenched fist, an escutcheon in the form of a profile of an Indian, a slaw cutter with a profile of a man as its handle, a game board, an album quilt, and a busk. All provide nourishment of sensual pleasure.

In the section called "Family and Friends," Paul D'Ambrosio, chief curator of the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York, contributes an essay on folk portraits.

Richard Miller, former curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum at Colonial Williamsburg, writes about penmanship and calligraphy, family records, and leisure activities in his essay on "Records of Life." Miller also writes about four portraits by Sheldon Peck, showing how the artist changed from the time of his early work in New York state and his later work in Illinois.

In an essay titled "United As This Heart You See: Memories of Friendship and Family," Robert Shaw discusses hand-painted rewards of merit, valentines, tokens of affection fashioned from locks of hair, friendship albums, and memory books, in what is probably the most thorough examination of this category of collecting to date.

Two of the three essays in the section called "A Child's World" are by curators at the Yale University Art Gallery. Robin Jaffee Frank, senior associate curator of American paintings and sculpture, writes about "Portraits of Children," many of them watercolors. Erin Eisenbarth, acting assistant curator of American decorative arts, covers furniture "Made for Children's Use" and includes a miniature checkerboard, kaleidoscope, and a miniature liberty cap along with chairs, tables, and chests. Robert Shaw covers "Academy and School Work," including painted boxes, rewards of merit, needlework, and theorems.

The section "At Home" begins with collector, author, and illustrator Charles Santore's discussion of Windsor furniture. Yale's curator of decorative arts, Patricia E. Kane, writes on painted furniture, a big subject that begins with a Taunton chest attributed to Robert Crossman and includes a worktable possibly done by a schoolgirl in Maine as well as stenciled Windsor chairs. Robert Shaw covers boxes and baskets, subjects he has written about before.

Ceramic historian Robert Hunter introduces mochaware and spatterware, one of Katcher's early interests. Richard Miller covers folk sculpture, one of his specialties, and Jean M. Burks, curator of decorative arts at the Shelburne Museum and a Shaker scholar, writes about "Shaker Products and Principles: A Study in Beauty and Belief." She points out that an elegant tripod walker pictured with the essay (that is, in fact, a piece of abstract sculpture) would support a person in frail health and is an example from an up-to-date 19th-century Shaker infirmary, noting how Shaker products are enduring symbols of the Shakers' faith in equality, order, self-sufficiency, and innovation.

Scott T. Swank, director of the Heritage Museum and Gardens, Sandwich, Massachusetts, discusses "The Art of Becoming Americans: Observations on Pennsylvania German Folk Art." In his section on painted tin, he uses the latest but little-known research on the work of Oliver Filley, Sr., one of the largest Connecticut producers of painted tin, who sent his son Harvey to Philadelphia in 1818 to open a tin shop. Harvey brought women decorators from Connecticut to work in the Philadelphia shop where, from 1818 to 1825, they developed a regional style of decorative painting that was at once simpler and bolder than the style popular in New York or New England. Swank describes the freehand technique that used bold brushstrokes for stylized floral patterns. Its most prominent feature was a bold orange-red background with yellow as the common accent color for fruit, and flowers in black, blue, and white.

The Filley shop flourished until 1853, and Filley tinware was sold to merchants outside the city. Because there were many imitators, and Filley did not sign his wares, Swank will not say with certainty who made the tinware in the Katcher collection, but the decoration bears great similarity to known Filley work.

A catalog of the collection at the back of the book by David Schorsch and Eileen Smiles is most revealing; it not only describes each object, its method of manufacture, and its relationship to other examples known, it lists the full provenance, giving dealers and auctioneers credit for finding it. Schorsch handled about three-dozen objects multiple times.

The design of the book gives each object its own space, even the objects such as woven hair love tokens. The book is truly a museum without walls.

There is a companion Web site (www.janekatchercollection.com). Schorsch said he hopes the Web site will become a forum for research that will provide a place for new information about objects in the book and for any corrections. There is also a section on new acquisitions, proving that Jane Katcher has not finished collecting. Among the recent acquisitions are a Shaker sewing desk and a weathervane in the form of a figure of Fame.
 

Antiques and The Arts Weekly
“Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence”
By: Laura Beach
01/15/2007
New York City
The world first came to know John Brewster Jr's hushed, ethereal painting of Comfort Starr Mygatt and his young daughter, Lucy, when Sotheby's auctioned the late Eighteenth Century portrait in 1988 for $852,500, then a record for American folk art.

The painting was consigned by New York dealers David A. Schorsch and his mother, Marjorie, who just a year earlier uncovered the canvas, one of the deaf-mute artist's most important commissions, in Ohio, still with descendants. The Schorsches had long handled the best American folk art, but "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt" was the most significant discovery of their career.

Another leading dealer, G.W. Samaha, bought the picture and in 1991 lent it to the traveling exhibition, "Ralph Earl: The Face of The New Republic." Early in 2006, "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt" resurfaced in the New York State Historical Association's traveling exhibition "The World of John Brewster Jr, 1766–1854." Jane and Gerald Katcher were listed as the painting's new owners.

For all the collectors who enjoy the fraternity of the marketplace, there are others who pursue their passions privately. Beginning in the 1980s, Jane Frank Katcher, a pediatric radiologist and mother of three from Coconut Grove, Fla., quietly put together one of the best collections of American folk art in the country.

Katcher broke her silence this fall with the publication of Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections From The Jane Katcher Collection of Americana. Published by Marquand Books in Seattle in association with Yale University Press, the book features "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt" on its cover

Two pieces from the collection, a J.L. Mott Goddess of Liberty weathervane and a Baltimore album quilt, the cover lot of the 1987 Jill and Austin Fine sale at Sotheby's, have already been promised to Yale University Art Gallery, prompting speculation that additional pieces from the Katcher collection may ultimately go to the New Haven, Conn., institution, known for American painting, furniture and silver, but not for folk art. In 2004, the couple established the Jane and Gerald Katcher Foundation for Education at the gallery.

"Jane has a very strong visual sense and a remarkable ability to put objects together in aesthetically pleasing and powerful ways," says Patricia E. Kane, the Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts at Yale.

From February 13 to August 26, Yale is presenting "Made For Love: Selections From The Jane Katcher Collection of Americana." "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt" will be the centerpiece of the display, which features tokens of affection such as a miniature heart-shaped box of 1847, a variety of handmade paper valentines, a puzzle purse and Sarah Sawyer's friendship album.

 "Hand and Heart: Collecting, Curating and Creating American Folk Art," Yale's annual Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque Memorial Lecture and Symposium on March 30–31 will offer a keynote address by Steven Mintz followed by presentations by Erin Eisenbarth, Catherine Kelly, Sumpter Priddy III, Stacy Hollander, Stuart Frank, Elizabeth Stillinger, Paul D'Ambrosio and Jane Katcher.

Extravagantly produced but understated in its account of Katcher's journey from novice to connoisseur, Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence arrays 203 objects, each exquisite in its own way. About half of the pieces are published for the first time. Detailed entries feature a bibliography and extensive provenance, mapping the movement of objects from families through the trade.

"One of the most important things Jane did was for dealers," says Camden, Maine, ceramics specialist Rufus Foshee, who advised Katcher on her large collection of English pottery. "To my knowledge, there is no other book that honors dealers in this way."

One of the book's most lasting contributions may be as a record of the collaboration between Katcher and her chief advisors, David Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles, Schorsch's business partner since 1995.

Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence provides a window onto the field. In its general conception and design, the book resembles American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to The American Folk Art Museum, no coincidence, perhaps, given that Schorsch played a significant role in building that collection as well.

The dealer credits his mother, Peggy Schorsch, now retired and living in Texas, as his first and finest teacher. He lists other great tastemakers: Mary Allis, Roger Bacon, Robert Bishop, Robert Carlen, Henry Coger, Barry Cohen, Robert E. Crawford, Ralph Esmerian, Austin Fine, Avis and Rockwell Gardiner, Theodore Kapnek, Robert Kinnaman, Joel and Kate Kopp, Judy Lenett, Alistair B. Martin, David Pottinger, Marguerite Riordan, Albert Sack, Harold Sack, G.W. Samaha, Bert and Gail Savage, Stephen Score, George Schoellkopf, Peter Tillou and Don Walters.

Katcher, Schorsch and Smiles spent three years working on Expressions of Innocence and Experience, recruiting a talented team to the project. Gavin Ashworth's photography is flawless. The book was artfully conceived by John Hubbard, who also designed American Radiance.

Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence began with the casual suggestion that Katcher write a magazine article. It grew into a complex, interdisciplinary study of aesthetics and material culture. Edited by Ruth Wolfe, the book features essays by Jean M. Burks and Robert Shaw of the Shelburne Museum; Paul D'Ambrosio of the New York State Historical Association; Erin Eisenbarth, Robin Jaffee Frank and Patricia Kane of Yale University Art Gallery; Richard Miller of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum at Colonial Williamsburg; Charles Santore, author of The Windsor Style in America; and Philip Zea of Historic Deerfield.

Given stacks of transparencies, contributors were invited to write about what interested them. As a result, the essays are a series of scholarly impressions, observations and insights that speak to the subjective, inherently personal, experience of looking at art.

"This book is not about me. It's about the objects, chosen and dearly loved by me," Katcher, an elegant, meticulous woman, said emphatically over a recent breakfast in Manhattan. If Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence has a single theme, it is love: the love of parents and children in early America; Katcher's love of refined, nuanced art that acutely records universal but transitory human emotion; the artist's love for his craft; and Schorsch's prodigious, and perhaps equal, love for art and the business of art, a profession he embarked on at age 14.

Katcher identifies intellectual and spiritual growth as the most compelling rewards of collecting. She was in her teens when she made her first purchases, a pair of watercolors, on a Greenwich Village street. Originally a New Yorker, she spent weekends in the city's great museums, admiring Gauguin, Rousseau and Picasso. She completed her medical studies in Chicago before beginning her career in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s.

On weekend rambles in the country, she bought pottery, textiles and small folk art objects. The 1984 Museum of Modern Art exhibition "Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art" opened Katcher's eyes to the "power and majesty" of African art, which she began to seriously collect along with Northwest Coast and other tribal art in the 1980s. Her interest in contemporary art, which she also collects, abated as she learned more about untutored, unselfconscious works made for personal use.

"I never set out to build a collection," notes Katcher, who describes her growth as the unexpected consequence of many hours spent talking to experts. Raymond Wielgus, a fellow collector of African art, taught Katcher "the basics of how one evaluates any object. These lessons have proven invaluable, and I perpetually hear Raymond's voice reminding me of the tough and discriminating rules of connoisseurship by which I must play."

Beginning in 1987, Katcher started acquiring handmade and hand painted American love tokens, remembrances and valentines, many of them from Carlson & Stevenson in Manchester Center, Vt.

"Her genius," says Tim Stevenson, "was in completely focusing on schoolgirl art, not only for its aesthetic beauty but also for its importance in women's history in this country. She wanted material that was in outstanding condition and contained written verse and the artist's original information."

The Katchers enjoyed long weekends in New York as often as their busy schedules allowed. Around 1990, Jane Katcher visited David Schorsch for the first time. The first important piece she bought from the dealer, now in Woodbury, Conn., was a dramatic spatterware teapot from the Deyerle collection. A schoolgirl-decorated worktable with a rare scenic view of Mount Vernon was the turning point in her relationship with Schorsch and Smiles.

"Eileen said unhesitatingly that we should offer the table to Jane. She bought it and that was really the beginning," says Schorsch.

"It got to a point where it didn't make sense to go elsewhere. David represented me so well. He has a remarkable and brilliant mind," says Katcher.

Katcher uses the words nobility, economy of means, power, grace, spirit and unique vision to describe the art she finds compelling. Decorated with hypnotic swirls of paint, an otherwise crisply tailored bucket bench fits her criteria. The bench was a highlight of the Don and Faye Walters Sale in 1986. Similarly bold in conception is a Lancaster County slide-lid box. Known since the 1920s, it was auctioned by Freeman's last year. A hanging wall cupboard by Johannes Spitler is strikingly original in its design and decoration. It made headlines when it was discovered in an under-stairs closet in 2004.

"I admire powerfully packed things that communicate in economical ways," says Katcher. Forced to pick one piece, it would be "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt," which Katcher first saw around 2000. "Six Children," a Brewster oil on canvas of circa 1810, is a close second.

Katcher's intellectual bent is reflected in her website, www.janekatchercollection.com, which provides new findings on objects as information becomes available. Says the collector, "One of my dreams is that the family depicted in 'Six Children' will be identified. We've been hard at work and have come up with nothing to date."

Schorsch's favorite works include "Mary Gay and Lucy Gay," an arresting, circa 1780 portrait of two Suffield, Conn., girls, shown as if through portholes, and "George Weld Hilliard," a severely abstract portrait attributed to Sheldon Peck. Of sentimental interest is a small yellow trinket box that Schorsch, exhibiting for the first time, bought at the Connecticut Antiques Show from Ann Timpson, who got it from Wayne Pratt.

"They sold it to me for $175. A week later I was in Ralph Esmerian's office, showing him the box. He put on his jeweler's loupe and a huge smile came across his face. He was smitten. Through a series of circumstances I was able to buy it back," says Schorsch.

With the help of David Schorsch and Eileen Smiles, Jane Katcher did the all but unimaginable: assemble a breathtaking collection in a well-trodden field over a short time.

Is Katcher's collection mature? "There is probably no such thing, although I am to a degree limited by space," she says, leaving open the possibility that she will continue to collect at the same pace.

Eileen Smiles says ruefully, "The number of Jane-quality pieces that come along each year is getting smaller, but her enthusiasm is undiminished."

Will Katcher sell? "It's not even remotely on my mind. I hope that I have many more years to enjoy these beautiful things with my family," says Katcher, adding, "It would please me immensely if my children wanted to live with some of these objects."

"Zest and enjoyment are the marks of a great object," Robert Shaw writes in an introductory essay, "Humanizing The Mundane." Zest and enjoyment are also the hallmarks of Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence, offering these splendid treasures for all to share, at least on the printed page.
 

Art + Auction
“The Collector’s Eye”
By: Marie Proeller Hueston
February 2007
Jane Katcher cites “an element of ingenuousness present in every piece” as the unifying factor in her collection of Americana, gathers over a lifetime and encompassing objects as diverse as finely crafted Windsor chairs and friendship albums embellished with whisper-thin braids of human hair. The observation aptly explains the enduring appeal of a genre characterized by an intensity and sincerity of purpose among its practitioners, many of whom never received formal training in the mediums in which they worked.

Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana not only presents a sumptuous survey of more than 200 prime examples of furniture, folk art and decorative arts; it also helps readers understand how a private collection of this scope comes together. Katcher’s opening essay, “Some Thoughts on Collecting,” proves especially enlightening in this respect, leading readers on her journey from a young girl taking in the great museums of New York City to an “ardent collector: covetous, longing, dreaming of superb examples to own.”

Katcher’s appreciation for Americana blossomed in the 1970s, during her years as a pediatric radiologist in Washington, D.C., when she discovered centuries-old textiles, pottery and folk art on weekend rambles along the country roads of Maryland and Virginia. She became fascinated with the pieces’ makers and the times in which they lived.

“It was as much a curiosity about the history of the country and its citizenry that captivated my interest as the products of their labor,” recounts Katcher, a resident of southern Florida since 1979. It is in this spirit of contextualizing the decorative and utilitarian objects she amassed that the book unfolds. Essays by noted scholars cover such topics as painted furniture, folk sculpture, boxes and baskets, Shaker objects, schoolgirl art, and mocha and spatterware.

Published late last year, the book strikes just the right balance between broad overviews of subjects and more intimate analyses of single objects and smaller groupings. A pair of essay by Paul S. D’Ambrosio, chief curator of the New York State Historical Association, in Cooperstown, New York, amply demonstrate the breadth of American folk portraiture. One of them delves deep into the life and artistic evolution of John Brewster Jr. (1766-1854), a deaf-mute painter active in Connecticut in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The description of his artistic accomplishments and easy rapport with his clients despite what must have been considerable hurdles in communication (no standardized sign language existed at the time) makes for a fascinating read. Brewster’s 1799 portrait of Comfort Starr Mygatt with his daughter Lucy (the book’s cover image) is particularly significant in that it represents the artist’s maturation from a somewhat derivative style to an ethereal vision all his own. Katcher acquired it in 2003 from Woodbury, Connecticut, dealers David A. Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles. (In 1988, the portrait fetched $863,000 at Sotheby’s, then a record price for an American folk art painting.)

So engaging and endearing is the Mygatt portrait that it serves as the centerpiece of the exhibition “Made for Love: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana,” opening February 13 at the Yale University Art Gallery, in New Haven, Connecticut. Curated by Erin E. Eisenbarth, a contributor to Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence, it showcases 39 works featured in the book, each one capturing gestures of affection between parent and child, husband and wife, teacher and student. Among the articles on display are an intricately painted 1731 lift-top chest (likely a dowry gift) attributed to Massachusetts craftsman Robert Crossman; an 1848 set of four miniature watercolor-on-ivory portraits, attributed to Mrs. Moses B. Russell, depicting the family of Boston sea captain Hiram Stinson; and an 1853 doll’s quilt inscribed in ink with a prayer, a poem, the date and the maker’s and recipient’s names.

Noticeably absent from the book (if not from the Katcher collection in its entirety) are Early American textiles, with the exception of two stunning Baltimore album quilts, the aforementioned doll’s quilt and a handful of smaller creations. The reader is left to imagine how Katcher approaches this branch of Americana. Fortunately the collection continues to grow and expand (recent acquisitions can be viewed at janekatchercollection.com), and perhaps one day comparable masterpieces made with needle and thread will be on view to the public.

Katcher’s desire that the book be an “aspiration for both those who have had years of experience in this area of art and antiques as well as for those who are reading about objects such as these for the very first time” succeeds on both counts.
 

The New York Times
“Antiques”
By: Wendy Moonan
February 9, 2007
Relics of the 19th Century, In a Sentimental Mood

Americans in the 1800s did not limit their tokens of affection to Valentine's Day. They produced poems and friendship cards all year long and often kept them in memory albums. These scrapbooks were painstakingly filled with letters, watercolors, ribbons, even hearts made from the woven strands of hair.

A few of these books are in the exhibition ''Made for Love: Selections From the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana,'' which opens Tuesday at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven. ''They are like the autograph books we used to have,'' said Erin E. Eisenbarth, a graduate fellow who organized the show. ''Friends would add a poem or drawing or lock of hair.''

Sometimes a single album holds decades of entries. ''Mrs. Sarah M. Tracy's Memory Book,'' for example, was assembled in Middlebury, Vt., from 1860 to 1890. Hand made, it has a sewn binding that anchors pages of written text decorated with brilliant watercolors of roses and butterflies, real lace and ribbons. Beneath one circle of woven human hair, it reads: ''This lock of hair I once did wear but now I trust it in your care And if we each other never see, look at this and then remember me.''

In the book that accompanies the show Robert Shaw, a former curator of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, writes about the importance of hair in these pieces: ''Because it does not disintegrate over time if it is properly protected, hair has been a symbol of both abiding love and deeply felt loss for thousands of years. Mothers kept locks of their children's hair, women often gave their suitors locks of their hair as tokens of their affections, and locks of the sitter's hair were often added to miniature portraits.''

Other objects in the show, many made as gifts, include carvings, paintings, schoolgirl needlework, children's furniture, toys and portrait miniatures. ''All of the art depicts or somehow represents human relationships, especially those dealing with family, friendship and love,'' Ms. Eisenbarth said.

The show coincides with the publication of ''Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections From the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana,'' a 428-page book edited by Ms. Katcher; David A. Schorsch, a folk art dealer from whom she often buys; and Ruth Wolfe, a writer on folk art. The book, which serves as the show's catalog, is published by Marquand Books of Seattle, in association with Yale University Press.

Ms. Katcher is a retired pediatric radiologist. ''Because of my interest in children, there is a significant attraction to children's things,'' she writes. ''An element of ingenuousness is present in every piece.''

Ms. Katcher said she lent the pieces to Yale (through Aug. 26) because she wanted to show a small part of her collection in an academic setting and because three of the book's essayists are from the Yale gallery: Ms. Eisenbarth; Patricia E. Kane, the curator of American decorative arts; and Robin Jaffee Frank, a curator of American paintings and sculpture. Ms. Katcher is also on the Yale art gallery's governing board and her daughter is a student at the university.

Yale has organized a symposium about the show on March 30-31 (registration: 203-432-0615).
 

New Haven Register
“Yale art gallery exhibit shows what we do for love”
By: Register Staff
February 13, 2007
New Haven –  The Yale University Art Gallery gets everyone in the mood for love with “Made for Love: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection,” a special exhibit of folk and decorative art from the 18^th and 19^th centuries that expresses love or friendship.

The exhibit opens today and runs through Aug. 26.

The 39 objects in the exhibit cover the bond of affection between friends, lovers, and parents with their offspring, including family portraits by John Brewster and miniatures by Mrs. Moses B. Russell set in a gold watch case that sea captains were said to take to sea with them to remind them of their families.

The works range from a sweetly crafted cut paper token of friendship to family portraits, handmade toys, needlework, a doll’s quilt inscribed with a lullaby and friendship albums created in New England, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The gallery, at 111 Chapel St., is open free to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, until 8 p.m. Thursdays and from 1 to 6 p.m. Sundays.

A lecture and symposium will be held in conjunction with the exhibit. Steven Mintz, author of “Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood,” is scheduled March 30.

On March 31, there will be a series of presentations on the ways in which decorative objects serve as representations of relationships and the associations that collectors and curators have with these objects.

For more information and to register, call (203) 432-0615.
 

Yale Daily News
“Art gallery keeps love in mind”
By: Dana Wu
February 13, 2007
Bitter at the sickening boxed-chocolate sweetness of Valentine’s Day? Curious about how they said “I love you” before Hallmark? For a less sugar-coated approach to making love, check out the new love-themed exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery opening just in time for Valentine’s Day.

“Made for Love: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana,” which opens today, provides a refreshing look at tangible expressions of the personal bonds holding people together in 18th- and 19th-century America.

The exhibition, located on the third floor of the Swartwout Building, features 39 works of folk and decorative art that express affection between friends, family and lovers. The wide variety of objects on display ranges from furniture and toys created for young children, to a tender portrait of a father and daughter, to delicate “friendship books” made by school-aged girls to preserve memories of their childhood friends.

“The selections [in the exhibit] revolve around the idea that material objects are often expressions of the relationships people have with each other,” said Erin Eisenbarth, a curatorial fellow at the YUAG who organized the exhibit.

The small special exhibition room, which previously housed “To Know the Dark: American Artists’ Visions of Night,” has brightened up with a coat of classic Valentine’s Day baby pink. But the sentiment in Made for Love strays far from anything you’ll find at Victoria’s Secret.

For intimate presents between lovers in early America, skimpy lingerie was completely out of the question. Although relationship practices were gradually evolving, history professor Cynthia Russett said, the culture of “courtship” during the 18th and 19th centuries was very formal.

“By the late 18th century, young people were beginning to have a little more say in their marriages, which, previously, to a large extent, had been arranged by parents,” Russett said. “But of course, when you were in any relationship, even in the 19th century … there was much more of an expectation that anything of the sort would turn into a marriage.”

The “intimate” gifts featured in “Made for Love” reflect this more rigidly structured courtship ritual. A large decorative fork and ladle hang on the exhibition wall near a dowry chest. Likely a husband’s gift to his new bride, these culinary tools, which were not meant to be used, represent a domestic tenderness between two new spouses.

Reflecting the bittersweet sentimentality of the time, “Made for Love” also features several pieces of miniature furniture made especially for children. Because of the high child mortality rate, Eisenbarth said, such items showed a parental tenderness toward children and their unique place in a difficult world.

“There was almost a ‘Cult of Dying Young’ in the 19th century,” Russett said. “Children were seen and valued as children, rather than assets, because many of them would not live on to become income-earning adults.”

The exhibit also features a small case of more familiar tokens that bear resemblance to today’s valentines. Small cards and books with pages decorated with colorful flowers were exchanged between girl friends. Many of these small items are embellished not only with ribbon, but also with real human hair. While this practice may seem unusual today, it was common during the time.

The objects in “Made for Love” also address the place of these historical crafts in the canon of art. While these objects may look out of place next to Hopper paintings, the attention given to them by the exhibit asks the viewer to reconsider his or her definition of art.

“This exhibit will be an interesting addition to a current hot topic in the art world: What is the role of craft items in the realm of high art?” said Alice Shyy ’08, a YUAG Gallery Guide. “From the YUAG’s inclusion of studio furniture and other decorative arts in its permanent collection, it seems that their answer is, ‘An important one.’”

“Made for Love,” which remains open through August 26, will be accompanied by the 15th Annual Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque Memorial Symposium, “Hand and Heart: Collecting, Curating and Creating American Folk Art,” which will be held on March 30 and 31 at the YUAG.
 

Hartford Courant
“Decorative Expressions of Love in Various Media at Yale Art Gallery”
By: Adrian Brune
March 10, 2007
By 1807 Robert Fulton had launched the first successful commercial  steamship and in 1825 the United States opened the Erie Canal --  both of which beckoned more and more men, such as Capt. Hiram  Stinson of Maine, to seek adventure on the seas.

Almost all of these seafaring men left behind families and loved  ones, but many of them figured out ways in which they could take  them -- or at least thoughts of them -- on their sometimes yearlong  voyages. For Stinson, that meant carrying a double-sided locket  designed like a gentleman's pocket watch that he could open to gaze  at tiny paintings of his wife, Aurelia, and children, Ella and  Adelaide.

The Stinson pocket watch locket, a doll's quilt inscribed with a  lullaby, an ivory trinket carved by a sailor far from home and many  other portraits -- these and other works of folk and decorative art  from the 18th and 19th centuries are exhibited at the Yale  University Art Gallery in ``Made for Love: Selections From the Jane  Katcher Collection of Americana.''

The thematic exhibition shows how early Americans expressed  affection between parents and children, students and teachers, and  between treasured friends.

``They're very well-done, sensitive pieces with lots of individual  charm -- the serious parents, the glowing treatment of the  children,'' said Erin Eisenbarth, a curator at Yale University Art  Gallery. ``Their ingenious casting and history make them especially  unusual.''

Created in New England, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the works of the  Katcher Collection were either hand-made or commissioned from  professional artists and artisans to showcase the ties that bind.

Besides an overall premise of love and a bent toward portraiture,  ``Made for Love'' prominently features, among other items,  children's furniture and toys engraved with imagery designed to  protect them and prepare them for hazards of adulthood. Much of it  reflects the pressures of raising the first generation of truly  ``American'' children in a young republic.

``Beginning around the time of the American Revolution and  continuing on throughout the 19th century, you see a movement  toward the romantic in all areas of society and culture,''  Eisenbarth said.

``The expression of emotions became more overt, and tokens geared  toward love and affection [are] more numerous, eventually leading  to the sentimentality that we often associate with the Victorian  period.''

It's this same nostalgia that drew Dr. Jane Katcher, a pediatrician  who became interested in the simple aesthetic of early American art  after moving to the Washington area in the early 1970s.

The countryside of Maryland and Virginia is where a good portion of  American culture came of age.

``I adored the adventure, the hunt and the drive ... to begin to  look at early American objects,'' Katcher wrote in an exhibit- accompanying book, ``Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence'' (Yale  University Press, $75). ``The more I read, the more I realized that  collecting early Americana afforded me the unexpected opportunity  of learning about the history of our beginning years as a nation.

``The people responsible for making potent and beautiful objects,  living in the simplest state of home and hearth, utterly fascinated  me. Who were these tough, proud, driven people? How did they get  along? How did they raise their children, maintain friendships and  marriages, express unrealized dreams and hopes?''

Some of the most striking exhibits in ``Made for Love'' are the  larger scale, early American portraits, such as the one of  established Connecticut shopkeeper Comfort Starr Mygatt and his  daughter, Lucy, done in 1799 by the deaf-mute painter John Brewster  Jr. -- possibly created to settle his account with the store Mygatt  ran. To Eisenbarth, the Mygatt painting stands out for its  austerity and symbolism.

``The Puritans were against extravagance and display to an extent,  but they also believed that those who were virtuous would be  rewarded, both in a heavenly sense, but also on Earth in a material  way -- they weren't quite as anti-wealth as we often make them out  to be today,'' Eisenbarth said.

``Also, while they might not have been overtly affectionate in ways  that would be obvious today, they weren't machines. Things like  child mortality and short life spans meant that it was to  children's advantage for them to grow up quickly and to the  parents' advantage to treat them like small adults.''

Besides the treasured portraits of children, which, depending on  the child's age, were painted in glowing color or with a halo  around the head (in case the painting needed to be kept as a symbol  of mourning), ``Made for Love'' includes many other reflections on  the developing notion of love in America.

``It's hard to pick a favorite, but I really love the friendship  books and albums,'' Eisenbarth said.

``A mix of the yearbooks and scrapbook albums that are popular  today, these albums were treated as precious treasures by their  owners.

``Marriage, moves and other life events could seriously impact a  woman's access to her friends, but with these books, they could  always keep their memories close at hand.''
 

The New York Times
“How They Lived and Loved”
By: Benjamin Genocchio
March 25, 2007
The Yale University Art Gallery’s exquisite new American folk art exhibition opened the day before Valentine’s Day with over-the-top pink walls and the title “Made for Love: Selections From the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana.” But it is much more than hearts and flowers.

Drawn from an important collection of American folk art, the show includes roughly 40 objects of folk and decorative art from the 18th and 19th centuries that were made as mementos for beloved family members or friends. Most items on display were created in New England, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and include carvings, books, watercolors, portrait miniatures, needlework, cooking utensils, furniture and several kinds of children’s toys. Some are handmade, while others were manufactured by professional craftsmen — the furniture, for instance, or several important 18th-century folk portraits by the first generation of American portraitists. And pretty much all of them are wonderful things, on a purely aesthetic level, that also tell lots of stories about how Americans lived and raised their children, particularly in the years after the Revolution.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the friendship albums — sort of combination yearbooks, diaries and photo albums. They were popular in the early 19th century, especially among women, and included drawings, poetry, signatures of friends and even locks of hair. In an era when it was not easy to get photographs or portrait likenesses, hair lockets were a lasting reminder of a family member or friend, and New Year’s, Christmas and Valentine’s Day were popular times for an exchange of hair lockets and other sentimental tokens.

Then there are more unusual items, like a pair of charming little watercolor miniatures on paper of an African-American couple. They are well done, probably painted by J. H. Gillespie around 1838, and show the couple in profile facing each other in an original mahogany-veneered double frame. We don’t know who this couple is, though we might surmise that they were very much in love when the painting was completed — they gaze fondly at each other, smiling.

Many displays here relate to children. There is a late 18th-century highchair, rare for this period, since children’s furniture did not become widely available until after the Civil War, and a lovely little doll’s quilt, of cotton and chintz, made in 1853 in Massachusetts by a loving aunt for Alma D. Crane. Names and snippets of poems are stitched into the quilt, personalizing it for the owner.

Portraits of children are in abundance, from circular pendant portraits of the young sisters Mary and Lucy Gay, painted circa 1780, the artist unknown, to Sheldon Peck’s odd, three-quarter-length 1849 portrait of George Weld Hilliard, perhaps 10 years old at the time, with a trompe-l’oeil frame painted over the canvas edges. Peck’s portrait, which depicts the young boy with an outsize right ear and holding a huge red apple, has immense charm, and a certain naïveté. Apples were traditional symbols of knowledge, though in this case the apple may hint at the family’s source of wealth — they owned orchards.

There are also portraits by John Brewster Jr., one of America’s most prolific professional portrait painters in the closing decade of the 18th century and early years of the 19th. Born deaf into a prominent family in rural Hampton, Conn., he worked as an itinerant portrait painter, traveling throughout New England in search of commissions among the wealthy merchant class that arose after the Revolution. “Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt” (1799), an unusual daughter-father portrait, is on display here.

In this vein are several other watercolors and pencil drawings of family groups, mothers with newborn babies and children playing, all from different times and periods and exhibiting different skill levels. Some of them bear personal inscriptions, like Joseph H. Davis’s watercolor of Martha Nelson Furber, 3 years old, holding a book in one hand and a bouquet of cut flowers in the other. It was painted, according to the inscription, as a gift for Martha’s favorite instructress — Miss P. Emily Parsons. It is a heartfelt symbol of gratitude and affection.

“Made for Love: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana,” Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Street, New Haven, through Aug. 26. Information: (203) 432-0600 or artgallery.yale.edu.
 

The bonds of love and friendship infuse a diverse array of American folk objects, revealing the material ways Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries expressed emotion. Portraits large and small depict loving family groups; children's furniture and toys reflect their parents' aspirations as they prepared their offspring for the hazards of the adult world; while exquisitely decorated albums reveal intense bonds of friendship, particularly among women and young girls at school. Some objects were commissioned from professional artists and craftsmen; others, like exquisite paper love tokens, were lovingly handcrafted.
 

Antiques & Fine Art
“Made For Love
Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana”
By: Erin E. Eisenbarth
Spring 2007
The bonds of love and friendship infuse a diverse array of American folk objects, revealing the material ways Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries expressed emotion. Portraits large and small depict loving family groups; children's furniture and toys reflect their parents' aspirations as they prepared their offspring for the hazards of the adult world; while exquisitely decorated albums reveal intense bonds of friendship, particularly among women and young girls at school. Some objects were commissioned from professional artists and craftsmen; others, like exquisite paper love tokens, were lovingly handcrafted.