If you’re just right with the clay, somehow you feel kind of a music and something you really can’t explain, and then you know that piece is good … and this happens very, very seldom.
Toshiko Takaezu
Take a walk through center city Philadelphia, you’ll find evidence of Jane Korman’s vision all around you: on Arch Street, the innovative textile studios and galleries at the Fabric Workshop and Museum will be abuzz with creativity, with thought-provoking exhibitions on view. On Walnut Street, you’ll pass the Jane & Leonard Korman Respiratory Institute at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital—an initiative inspired by her own experience as a lung cancer patient who never took the ability to breathe for granted. Each November at the nearby Pennsylvania Convention Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show welcomes thousands of eager shoppers whose purchases support both the livelihoods of the artists displaying their work, and the Museum’s ability to acquire important works of contemporary craft. Korman was a longtime supporter and member of the Board of Directors of this annual event through the Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she also served on the Modern and Contemporary Art Committee. And if you venture a bit further afield to the northwest corner of the city, you’ll reach the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, where Korman was a Trustee and chair of the Fine Arts Committee. There, she spearheaded the creation of a permanent installation for children called Out on a Limb: A Tree Adventure Exhibit, complete with a nest of giant robin’s eggs and a Squirrel Scramble. It was designed as a fully accessible place for children and adults to explore and revel in nature, and to help them see that “we need trees, and trees need us.”
These efforts have something important in common...for Jane Korman, art, life and nature were not separate entities, but deeply intertwined facets of a life well lived.
These efforts have something important in common: breathing deeply and enjoying nature in every season, celebrating art and creativity in all its forms, and sharing the wonder of exquisite craftsmanship with the historic city she loved, all demonstrating that for Jane Korman, art, life and nature were not separate entities, but deeply intertwined facets of a life well lived. The diversity and exceptional quality of the works of art in this important sale speak to this sense of interconnectedness, and reflect her eye for idiosyncratic beauty and adventurous form. From the playful wit of Judy Kensley McKie’s furniture to the trompe-l'œil everyday objects created in clay by Marilyn Levine, Korman’s collection demonstrates reverence for material mastery, an appreciation for originality and non-traditional forms, and enjoyment of the unpretentious humor that animates craft’s whimsical side. It also offers proof of her artistic foresight: McKie’s Table With Dogs was featured in the American Craft Council’s exhibition New Handmade Furniture: American Furniture Makers Working in Hardwood back in 1979.
She believed that like food and nature, works of art, craft and design are part of our shared feast, and should be enjoyed, not tucked away for “someday.”
Korman was well known as a connoisseur and philanthropist, but she was also a gallery owner and published author. Her 2010 book Splendid Settings: The Art + Craft of Entertaining captured the spirit of her much-beloved collection. On the cover, a bouquet of peonies keeps company with a pair of elegant champagne flutes and three brilliantly glazed works by Toshiko Takaezu; this could only be Jane Korman’s table. Born in Philadelphia, she earned a BA in fine arts from Arcadia University, married Leonard Korman in 1957, and they raised three daughters together. In 1977, she established a gallery dedicated to contemporary American craft called Sign of the Swan in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood. She later opened Swan Gallery near Rittenhouse Square, overseeing both spaces until 1989. Her passion for craft and expertise only grew as she became a trustee of the American Craft Council, and the Museum of Arts and Design, both located in New York, among other organizations. Splendid Settings explains how her varied passions overlapped: nearly 70 recipes, both her own and those shared from friends and artists, are presented against the vibrant backdrop of tables featuring Korman’s collections. She believed that like food and nature, works of art, craft and design are part of our shared feast, and should be enjoyed, not tucked away for “someday.”
To build a collection that encompasses works from such a wide array of genres, time periods, and materials suggests that Korman was inspired by something akin to artistic hospitality. Her collection includes quite a few greats: delicate vessels by George Ohr, vibrant and modern forms by Lucie Rie and Ruth Duckworth, and luminous Toots Zynsky bowls that seem to radiate color and light from their fused glass threads. Rudy Autio’s Blue Horse and Rider shows a woman clinging to the side of a vessel as though it were a wild steed, linking the two distinct forms of pottery and sculpture as though they couldn’t live without one another. Also striking is the number of works obtained directly from the artist, or even commissioned specifically for the Kormans, like Wendell Castle’s sculptural sets of dining tables and chairs.
Jane Korman admired beauty, but didn’t insist on a narrow definition of it.
Jane Korman admired beauty, but didn’t insist on a narrow definition of it. She felt a kinship with artists, being one herself, and understood them through a shared language. Many of the works in her collection are straightforwardly lovely, like Wayne Higby’s serene Landscape Bowl from 1980 or Harvey Littleton’s nearly-edible Ruby Sliced Descending Form from 1985. Others possess a kind of rugged beauty that can only be truly appreciated with an understanding of artistic intent and preternatural skill. Observers might have glanced at Marilyn Levine’s 1984 KCP Bag and seen an ordinary useful object—sturdy, but worn a bit past its prime. Jane Korman saw Levine’s artistic devotion to capturing the contours and details of a personal item freighted with meaning, something that deserved to be realized through careful attention and virtuosic skill. Like nature, artistic inspiration takes infinite forms, and what strikes most people as traditionally beautiful represents just a narrow band of human creative endeavor. As long as a work of art was a triumph of technique, keenly observed, and authentically inspired, it was welcome at Jane Korman’s table.
Sarah Archer is a design writer based in Philadelphia who has authored several books and contributed essays to exhibition catalogs for the Print Center New York, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, the Portland Art Museum, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She served as senior curator at the Philadelphia Art Alliance from 2011 through 2014 and was the 2017 Jentel Visiting Critic at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana.
Toshiko Takaezu 1922–2011
Toshiko Takaezu, distinguished American ceramic artist and teacher, was born in Hawaii in 1922. She is celebrated as a driving force in the development of the modern ceramic art philosophy that seeks to elevate the product of a potter’s craft from utilitarian vessel to fine art.
The sixth of eleven children, Toshiko Takaezu (pronounced Toe-SHEE-ko Taka-YAY-zoo) was the daughter of Japanese immigrants who emigrated from Okinawa to Pekeekeo, Hawaii. Her art training began in the early 1940s with Saturday painting classes at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. During these early years, she worked with commercial ceramic firms producing press mold pieces. It was through this work that she met Claude Horan, founder of the ceramics program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. At Horan’s encouragement, Takaezu enrolled at the University – the first step in her formal artistic training.
In 1951, Takaezu was accepted to the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of the Arts in Bloomfield Hills, MI. In her third year, she accepted the position of teaching assistant to Finnish ceramic artist Maija Grotell. An excellent teacher with a knack for experimenting with glazes, Grotell had a profound influence on Takaezu’s work and encouraged her to find her own voice as an artist. After graduating, she went abroad in 1955 to explore her Japanese heritage, including the study of the tea ceremony and Zen Buddhism. While there, she studied the techniques and aesthetics of renowned artists Toyo Kaneshige and Yagi Kazuo, among others.
Takaezu’s clay pots evolved from functional vessels to abstract sculptural “forms” (as she called her works). An affinity for painting led the artist to create her first “closed form” works, as these vessels provided a larger surface on which to apply glaze. This became her signature: vessels with nearly closed-off tops, just open enough to allow gasses to escape during the firing process. Takaezu also began to add “rattles” to her pieces while they were still wet on the wheel before enclosing them completely. She would wrap each in a bit of newspaper first, which she thought of as “sending a message” to the inner space of the piece as she dropped it in. After the piece was fired, and one picked it up, it was Takaezu’s intention to give the handler an unexpected sensory experience.
Throughout her career, Takaezu continued to experiment. She threw squat ball-shaped vessels that she called “moon pots”; vertical forms, and ceramic “tree trunks”. In many of her later works, the artist closed the top of her vessels, removing the vent from view by placing it at the bottom of the form. Takaezu also experimented with the application of glazes, brushing free-hand and creating layers by employing a drip or spray method while she moved around the piece, producing painterly, abstract and serendipitous results. Further, she embraced the element of chance in the firing and believed her kiln was an important influence in the creation of the work, with a will or mind of its own that she couldn’t control and even liked to be surprised by.
Takaezu was a renowned teacher who worked in academia throughout her life, at Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and Princeton University, where she taught until her retirement in 1992. She approached art as she approached life, with a reverence for the natural world. For her, the practice of creating clay vessels was closely tied to everyday life: “In my life I see no difference between making pots, cooking, and growing vegetables,” Takaezu once said, “They are all so related… I get so much joy from working in clay, and it gives me many answers in my life.”
Auction Results Toshiko Takaezu
