Early America was a cosmopolitan place. Mrs. M. ———— discovered this as a young girl mud larking along the James River in Virginia. Growing up in the mid-nineteenth century, she knew from her history lessons that Virginia had been an English colony. Yet, again and again, she pulled colorful ceramic fragments from the silt that she knew had journeyed from Montelupo in Italy and Iznik in Turkey, lustrous wares created in North Africa and blue and white shards from China, Japan, and Amsterdam. The objects she found posed questions that others were not answering. Mrs. M. ———— started on a personal quest to understand early America in her own way through material things.
She designed her home in the latest international style to house her collection. There, she examines the story of English ceramics, dating back to the Roman Period. Her handsome and diverse English things stand alongside items created across the globe, yet linked to early America. Typical collectors' categories fall apart when studying the beauty created centuries ago from Jingdezhen to Lisbon. Some of these items may be as American as the Chippewa snowshoes she is known for wearing around town in the winter. Mrs. M. ———— prefers to move under her own steam whenever possible as it aids her thinking.
Mrs. M. ———— is constantly traveling to expand her collection and is currently away from her Cabinet. Her personal ledger and her scrapbook are available for your perusal. She hopes you will find her collection informative and that you will see that a curious mind is all one needs to wonder at the complexities of the past and its connections to the present.
Mrs. M. ———— employed the services of an extraordinary group of craftspeople to create her Cabinet.