In honor of Women’s History Month, the Museum of American Porcelain Art (MAPA) has mounted an exhibit recognizing seven women who made major contributions to the history of art porcelain. Five of them represent the Cybis studio; each has an Artist Profile on this site (bolded links).
Museum Curator Carey Barone designed the lovely wall-spanning exhibit within one of the rooms of the impressive circa-1920s Telling Mansion that is home to the MAPA.
The right-hand section is devoted to Helen Boehm.
A copy of her 1985 autobiography, With a Little Luck…An American Odyssey, is displayed on one of the risers.
Also displayed is the 1978 limited-edition Helen Boehm Yellow Iris, made by the Boehm of Malvern studio in England.
On the opposite side of the entrance, the other six honorees are displayed. The uppermost biographical timeline panel honors Marja Cybis, along with photographs of her from the 1940s. Diagonally and to the right is Marylin Chorlton’s panel, with photographs from the 1960s and 1970s; the photo directly beneath her panel shows her and Joe presenting the Saint Peter to Pope Paul VI in 1965.
At the bottom center is a panel honoring the ‘Top Three’ designers of Cybis porcelains, all of which are women: Lynn Klockner Brown, Susan Clark Eaton, and Gertrude Joan Fass. A complete list of each of their Cybis sculptures is in my recent Archive post announcing the Top Five. The photograph to the left of the panel is of Gertrude Fass, circa 1955.
The artist featured at the lower left of this wall is Dorothy Doughty. Although Dorothy never lived or worked in the United States, her art not only firmly established the concept of ‘limited edition’ art porcelain worldwide, but her bird and flower sculptures set the standard for all other artists to follow….way back in the 1930s, before any American porcelain art studio existed or was even thought of.
Dorothy and her sister Freda worked at the revered Royal Worcester porcelain factory in England during the early 1930s, when a series of bisque porcelain bird-and-flower studies depicting American birds was initially proposed. Although at that time Royal Worcester was using slip-casting for their bird figurines, Dorothy Doughty convinced the powers that be to allow a new method of hand-forming flowers and foliage to be introduced into the workflow for this series, in order to make the result far more realistic. The studio also agreed to produce the “American Birds Series” as a limited-edition project. The first sculpture (Redstarts and Hemlock) was introduced in 1935, and final design (Carolina Parakeets) in 1968. The series was a massive success, and several young artists who would later become famous in their own right and launch their own studios were personally trained by Dorothy Doughty – among them Ronald van Ruyckevelt and Diane Lewis who would become the Art Director of the Boehm of Malvern studio and later founded Connoisseur of Malvern. Royal Worcester launched a second series of Doughty sculptures, entitled “British Birds”, in 1964.
Displayed on the riser are three Dorothy Doughty sculptures. The uppermost one is the Indigo Bunting on Plum Twig, introduced in 1936 as the fourth in the American Birds series. It is 9” high; only six of these are known to have been sold, which makes this piece incredibly rare. The two other birds are a pair of Indigo Buntings and Blackberry Sprays, with the male having the blue plumage. This was an edition of 500 that Ms. Doughty designed in 1942 but was not released until 1947. They are just under 9” tall. All three of these examples are missing the round wood bases that they were originally sold with, and which the white bisque lower element fit into.
It is no exaggeration to say that Dorothy Doughty was the ‘mother’ of truly realistic bird and flower designs in art porcelain, regardless of which side of the Atlantic they were created on.
The 2024 MAPA Women’s History Month Exhibit
The museum first mounted a Women’s History Month exhibit last year (2024) which was located in a different part of the museum. Here are photos from the March 2024 installation; many thanks, as always, to Carey Barone for supplying the photos of the MAPA exhibits!
The vintage press photos were taken at Cybis (upper two) and Boehm (lower) studios. The sculpture on the riser is the Boehm Spotted Owls from 1988.
The next two sections along the wall focused on Marja Cybis and Marylin Chorlton.
A different portrait of Helen Boehm was used last year, although the biographical panel is the same.
An additional section honored Helen Boehm specifically.
No matter which of the American or British porcelain studios one looks at, one thing was consistent: The majority of the artists (sculptors and decorators) were typically women, even when the founder or owner of the studio was a man. For example, Helen Boehm ran the Boehm studio far longer than her husband did (and I suspect that she did so even while he was alive; she was a force to be reckoned with.) After the deaths of Boleslaw and Marja Cybis, when the studio passed to the Chorltons, Marylin was the one who had complete artistic control while her husband Joe took care of the public-facing PR and sales end. And while Terry and Diane Lewis nominally operated Connoisseur of Malvern ‘together’, it was Diane who was the designer; no Connoisseur sculpture has Terry’s name on it as the creator. In today’s depressingly-depressed art porcelain market, it is the sculptures created by Dorothy Doughty that still command prices commensurate with their level of artistry; the bidding for any Doughty piece is still fierce today.
Never underestimate the ladies. 😊
Name Index of Cybis Sculptures
Visual Index (for human figures/busts only)
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