Homenews

 

Erddig Hall is a stately country house located on the outskirts of Wrexham in Wales. It was built in 1683-1687 by the Cheshire mason Thomas Webb for Joshua Edisbury, High Sheriff of Denbighshire, whose building ambitions bankrupted him in 1709. John Meller, a successful London lawyer, bought up the debts of Joshua Edisbury. Once he had purchased Erddig, he set about furnishing his new house with the very best furniture and fabrics and added two-storey wings, his ‘rooms of parade’ between 1721 and 1724. With no wife or children, Meller looked to his sister’s son, Simon Yorke, to supervise the completion and delivery of his valuable new furnishings for Erddig. Upon Meller’s death in 1733, the house was inherited by Simon Yorke I. Erddig was owned by the Yorke family for 240 years, until the National Trust took ownership in 1973.

The Neoclassical interiors include fine examples of eighteenth-century Chinese wallpaper and a chapel with late eighteenth-century fittings. With a total of 30,000 objects, Erddig has the second largest collection of objects in the whole of the National Trust. It houses a collection of seventeenth through nineteenth-century paintings and important furniture. Some outstanding examples include gilt pier-glasses, gilt girandoles and a State Bed, all attributed to John Belchier from the 1720s; and dining room furniture by Gillows of Lancaster from 1827. Further, there is a collection of ceramics, such as porcelain from Chelsea and Worcester. The greatest of Erddig’s ceramic treasure is however a splendid seventeenth-century Delftware vase created for one of William and Mary’s palaces by De Grieksche A factory, under the ownership of Adrianus Kocx. The vase bears the royal arms above the Dutch royal motto “Je maintiendray.” Typical of unusually shaped ceramic objects, this garden urn was copied from an example made in precious metal. For most of the previous century, the vase has been housed in the Saloon, prominently displayed on a pedestal in the center of the room.

 

Skokloster Castle is considered one of the great baroque castles of Europe, situated on a peninsula in Lake Mälaren, 60 km northwest of Stockholm, the Swedish capital. Built between 1654 and 1676 for Count Carl Gustaf Wrangel, it is a monument to the Swedish Age of Greatness, the period in the middle of the seventeenth century when Sweden expanded to become one of the major powers in Europe. After the death of Count Wrangel in 1676, the castle was never fully completed. The banquet hall still stands unfinished and many of the original construction tools remain. The rest of the castle has also remained amazingly untouched for more than 300 years.

Margareta Juliana, Wrangel’s eldest daughter, married Count Nils Brahe, a member of Sweden’s most exalted non-royal family. On her initiative Skokloster was made an Entailed Estate in 1701, which is a form of ownership that prohibits the owner from selling or giving away any part of the estate. The estate and its collections have thus been allowed to grow through the years.

Carl Gustaf Wrangel created a stately home of European style. Like his contemporaries, Wrangel endeavored to understand the world by collecting art and antiques as well as specimens from nature. The castle’s detailed chambers are home to remarkable collections of paintings as well as furniture, textiles, silver and glass, and pottery. The castle armory and library are particularly noteworthy. Altogether there are around a couple of thousand items, for both practical use and ornament. The objects represent places of manufacture in several different countries as well as centuries. Wrangel not only commissioned shiny gilt leather hangings for the state apartments and tools for his lathe workshop from Holland, he probably also purchased Dutch Delftware from Holland as a cabinet filled with seventeenth-century Delftware chargers, bowls and boxes shows. A true highlight are two blue and white ring-jugs with pierced openwork and chinoiserie decorations made around 1665.

 

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) comprise two separate museums: the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. Together they form the largest public arts institution in San Francisco and one of the largest art museums inthe United States. Where the De Young Museum shows mostly American paintings, which feature more than 1,000 works dating from colonial to contemporary times, The Legion of Honor offers unique insights into the art historical, political, and social movements of the previous 4,000 years of human history.

The collection at the Legion of Honor comprises amongst others European painting, ancient art, photography, works on paper, and European sculpture and decorative arts. Where the decorative arts collection began with French eighteenth-century furniture, porcelain and other objects, it now ranges in scope from late medieval to modern times and covers many other regions of Europe.

The museum’s ceramics collection comprises several Delftware objects, from eighteenth-century ‘Peacock’ and ‘Tea tree’ plates and Orangist Delftware plates with the depiction of the Prince of Orange, to ewers, a garniture set, and a red stoneware teapot from Ary de Milde. The collection also houses a seventeenth-century tazza marked for Samuel van Eenhoorn, who was the owner of De Grieksche A (The Greek A) factory from 1678 to 1687, and a pair of blue and white flower vases, which are marked for Adrianus Kocx, the owner of the same factory from 1687 until 1701. The vases, which stand almost 40 in. (101 cm.) tall, are painted with representations of the virtues on the pedestal sides. The monstrous spouts of the tiers are decorated with putti or birds in a landscape. The unusual shape of the vases, their height and the decoration of European and oriental elements, make the pair of vases a true highlight.