Delhom Service League: The Ceramics Series – Rediscovering Classical Antiquity…and Beyond: Design Sources for Eighteenth-Century Basalt Sculpture, Brian Gallagher, Curator of Decorative Arts at The Mint Museum

Delhom Service League: The Ceramics Series –

Rediscovering Classical Antiquity…and Beyond: Design Sources for Eighteenth-Century Basalt Sculpture, Brian Gallagher, Curator of Decorative Arts at The Mint Museum

Black basalt, a fine-grained stoneware that was perfected by Josiah Wedgwood about 1768 and soon produced by other Staffordshire potters as well, was ideally suited for sculpture and other ornamental works in the neoclassical style so popular among the fashionable elite in late 18th-century England. This talk will discuss the diverse design sources of classical antiquity for basalt wares, ranging from prints and casts from London plaster shops to private collections of such artifacts. It will also illustrate how potters sought inspiration from artistic reactions to the antique in the 16th and 17th centuries, while at the same time copying from contemporary sources.

Brian Gallagher is the Curator of Decorative Arts at The Mint Museum. His recent projects include the publication, British Ceramics 1675–1825: The Mint Museum, which highlights over 225 examples from the Mint’s renowned British ceramics collection, and the reinstallation of that collection in a long-term display called Portals to the Past: British Ceramics 1675–1825. He is currently developing a special exhibition, Classic Black: The Basalt Sculpture of Wedgwood and His Contemporaries, which will open at the Mint in 2020.

Prior to joining the Mint staff, Brian was an assistant curator in the European Art Department at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He holds a M.S. in Library and Information Science from Drexel University, Philadelphia, and a M.A. and a M. Phil. from the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, New York.

Contact delhomserviceleague@gmail.com with any questions.

Sponsored by the Delhom Service League.

This event is located at   Mint Museum Randolph