Last year the Museum of American Porcelain Art (MAPA) in Ohio opened a new exhibit featuring a subject that is dear to my heart: The contributions of the vast population of under-appreciated artists and artisans who actually created – on a daily basis – the beautiful porcelain art of past decades. The ‘Hidden Hands’ exhibit [...]
American porcelain art studios tended to offer larger limited-edition quantities than did their counterparts in England: An edition of 100 would be considered typical or average there, whereas here that same quantity was seen as being much more exclusive. Let’s take a look at that upper echelon of Cybis sculptures and see if we can [...]
After his first year in America (1940), our knowledge of Boleslaw’s paintings and drawings becomes very limited. It is understandable that he would have focused most of his creative energy toward his fledging art studio which was launched in early 1940 at the Steinway Mansion and produced (according to Marylin Chorlton, who was there from [...]
If you perused the photos in my ‘life at the Cybis studio’ post, you might perhaps have noticed what the various artists and artisans were wearing – at least, in the photos taken at the Norman Avenue studio. They are dressed in normal, everyday street clothes (shirts, blouses, sweaters, even a jacket or two) which [...]
In my December 2023 post, The Art of Making Art Porcelain, I described the ‘finishing and mounting’ process as Step #7. Depending on how many individual molds made up each component of a particular design, this could be quite a complicated process. Not only did each element need to be assembled (‘mounted’) but then that [...]
Although the vast majority of Cybis porcelain pieces were completely hand-painted, there were some exceptions to that ‘rule’ at various times during the studio’s existence. Interestingly, the exceptions are remarkably consistent in terms of genre. But first, an explanation of the processes by which a decal is used to decorate china or porcelain. All decals [...]
For this 250th post added to the Cybis Archive, I decided to do something special: A re-creation (as much as is possible) of the 1970-1971 New Jersey State Museum exhibit Cybis in Retrospect. However, I have also expanded the original exhibit contents to include what I believe to be some of the best representations of [...]
Well, after all of the hoopla surrounding the Cybis studio’s supposed (yes, there is definitely a question) Golden/50th Anniversary in 1989, it turns out that there was a little bit of revisionist history going on. Say what?!?? The Cybis Studio’s 40th Anniversary In 1980, the Cybis studio incorporated "40th anniversary" into their advertising campaign. Obviously, [...]
What was once a brief moment of idle curiosity several years ago has recently blossomed into a question that resulted in the title of this post. It was rather a surprise because, given the type of art created by Boleslaw Cybis himself, Staffordshire export china would seem a very unlikely genre to appeal to him. [...]
This post falls into the morbid-curiosity category, inspired by the flood of Cybis porcelain ‘variations’ and ‘resurrections’ that began during the 1980s and rapidly gathered steam through the next two decades. So, how should we define a 'new, original' Cybis design? A decorative variation is NOT a new design! Sticking a bowtie and two tiny [...]
THE CYBIS ARCHIVE 