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Written by Tom Hoepf
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Colorful Victorian majolica oyster plates are a prized catch
Of the many ways to prepare and serve oysters, purists prefer them at their simple elegant best: on the half shell. Leave it to the Victorians to devise an equally stylish way in which to present the delicacy to dinner guests: the oyster plate.
Oyster plates measure 9 to 11 inches in diameter and usually have four to six concave wells, each of which accommodates an oyster on the half shell. A cupped center space is usually added to hold sauce, a lemon slice or crackers. The most distinctive and popular of all oyster plates are those of Victorian majolica.
Click here to read the complete article in the May 2008 issue of Style Century Magazine.
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Written by Tom Hoepf
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Wedgwood’s Fairyland Lustre remains magical, illusive
Fairies, elves, gnomes and goblins are not the images conjured up at the mention of Wedgwood. Yet for a shining moment – between the Great War and the Great Depression – these creatures created magic for England’s foremost china company.
Long-time decorative classics, basalt and Jasperware are immediately identified with Wedgwood, but the otherworldly designs found on Fairyland Lustre are the stuff Josiah Wedgwood could only have dreamed about when he founded the company in 1759.
Read the complete story in the February 2008 issue of Style Century Magazine.
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Written by Eileen Smith
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A renewed appreciation for vintage art tiles
In an Oct. 29, 1930 letter to a friend and former employer, Albert Solon, founder of San Jose, Calif., tile maker Solon & Schemmel, wrote: "There is no more market for old tiles than for diseased tonsils."
Collectors weren’t always clamoring for California tiles. But today a growing and enthusiastic audience of admirers is embracing the supremely functional regional art form. |
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Christopher Radko: Czar of Christmas Present |
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Written by Catherine Saunders-Watson
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Those who collect Radko ornaments do so because they appreciate the Old-World quality and nostalgia inherent in each hand-crafted design
You can just imagine the sound – a majestic, 14-foot Christmas fir, loaded down with thousands of antique glass ornaments and lights, suddenly teetering off-center and then – with a lumbering, time-stopping swoooosh – crashing to the floor. That was the scene, Christmas 1983 in the Scarsdale, N.Y., home of Christopher Radko’s family. There was already enough guilt riding on the young Columbia grad’s shoulders, knowing it was he who had replaced the rusty but trustworthy old cast-iron tree stand with a new and obviously less-reliable aluminum model, but Radko’s anguish was further compounded by his relatives’ not-so-subtle reminders that most of the demolished ornaments had come from Europe and dated back to his great-grandmother’s time. |
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Written by Style Century Magazine Staff
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During the late-Victorian and Art Nouveau periods, skilled artisans revived a 2,000-year-old technique from the Orient and Near East to produce what we now commonly call cameo glass. Basically, it is a method of multiple-layering glass, with the top layer or layers cut or etched away to create a multicolor design in relief.
European designers rose to prominence during the cameo-glass era, and the demand has never waned for premium, hand-etched examples by Gallé, Thomas Webb and the unlikeliest of all, Daum Nancy. |
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