By Suzanne Sprague
DALLAS – Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 Reporter and substitute host of KERA 90.1's Morning Edition: This is 90.1's Morning Edition. I'm Suzanne Sprague. Take a good look at the dishes you're using for breakfast. Ever think they'd wind up in a museum? Or how about that glass pitcher you inherited from Grandma? Do you consider it a work of art? Charles Venable does. The chief curator at the Dallas Museum of Art has organized an exhibit of more than 500 plates, cups, celery boats, wine glasses, shot glasses and nearly everything else you'd find on the dining room table, except the silver. It's called "From Tabletop to TV Tray."
Charles Venable, Chief Curator at the Dallas Museum of Art: We've tried very hard to make this relate to people's lives. This is, in my mind, as much if not more about the people who designed it, made it, used it, as it is about what these things look like, including this wonderful plate showing rocket ships which was from Jackie Onassis' personal dessert service.
Sprague: Or a pink glass place setting given to actress Grace Kelly from her parents when she married Prince Rainier in 1956.
Venable: They're all glass. They're done in a Venetian style of glass, but these porcelain plates are from the White House, over different periods of time. And then this great yellow goblet down here is one from the pattern Elvis Presley chose for Graceland in the early 1970s.
Sprague: It glows like a neon banana. But put all celebrity aside. The exhibit at the DMA is really about a century, beginning in 1880, and how average Americans used china and glass in their everyday lives.
Venable: The nineteenth century, where we begin our story, is an era of high etiquette. There's a fork and knife for everything under the sun, and there's a plate and a bowl for everything under the sun too. So you've got a platter for just serving corn on the cob. A dish for only holding butter. A platter for serving fish. Pickles came in certain types of containers. Celery used to lounge in that canoe-shaped object.
Sprague: The designs on dishes of this period are traditional: small flowers on a white background, for example. This style, called Colonial Revivalism, echoes back to what was popular in the 1700's. But it was bought from foreign manufacturers more often than domestic ones. That began to change in 1876 at Philadelphia's Centennial Exhibition. American ceramic manufacturers there organized to tout the perhaps unrealized quality of domestic products. And they soon began to take advantage of new lifestyle trends in American homes. K.C. Grier, a history professor at the University of South Carolina, says the trend started with the decline of servants in middle class households.
K.C. Grier, Professor of History, University of South Carolina: What that means is the very elaborate dinner parties of the late 19th and early 20th century, the ones where there'd be 150 or 160 dishes to serve dinner for six people, that kind of elaboration starts to disappear because women are doing their own work, for one thing.
Sprague: And they moved into smaller homes. A so-called national cuisine also developed at the turn of the century, one that came out of corporate food labs, such as Campbell's Soup.
Grier: The casserole really takes off in the 1920's and 30's, and when Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup is invented, I would have to say that that is the apotheosis of the casserole in the 1930s.
Sprague: So there was no longer the time, the space nor even the need to deal with special serving platters or individual finger bowls. As the DMA's exhibit shows, the trend continued through the 1980's with the advent of TV dinners and microwave ovens. But modern technology has not spelled the demise of the decorative arts.
Grier: Ironically, I would say collecting dishes is more of a mania now than it was 100 years ago. People collected dishes to use them, but now there are enormous groups of tableware collectors who have conventions and special sales, and you can get on the Web and find all kinds of websites devoted to different kinds of tablewares.
Transition to man in his house pointing out objects and saying: "Here are some very hard- to-find Fiesta bowls. Covered bowls. They're called covered onion soups...."
Sprague: Many china and glass enthusiasts, like Dallas financial analyst Andy Kraus, loaned or donated pieces of their collections to the DMA's exhibit.
Andy Kraus, collector: It is art. We don't know too much about other kinds of art, and this is the one we like in our house.
Sprague: Kraus and his partner have been collectors for about 10 years. They have loaned a green Raymor water pitcher to the DMA. But they began their collection with Fiestaware, brightly colored dishes dating back to the 1930s. Some Fiesta pieces will even set off a Geiger counter because they're made with a uranium by-product.
Kraus: Fiesta is easy to collect. There's a lot of it around. It's easy to identify. You know it when you see it.
Sprague: And when you walk through the Dallas Museum of Art's collection of china and glass, you're sure to recognize at least some of what you see from your own family.
Sprague (with Venable): I see those Christmas plates over here. We've had those in my family for four generations, we've been serving Christmas dinner on them.
Venable: Well, this particular pattern was developed by Spode in 1938, specifically for the American market.
Sprague: The design on my great-grandmother's holiday dishes is a Christmas tree surrounded by colorfully wrapped presents.
Venable: Many, many countries warped their production and marketing to the American tastes. This is a great example. The English don't have Christmas trees with presents all over the bottoms of them, and yet Spode, a very notable English firm, was producing this pattern since the late ?30s for Americans; and this whole case is really about specialized rituals Americans have that very few other people really indulge so heavily in.
Sound from 1950's film: One woman says, "You mean china is a girls' best friend?" Another woman laughs and answers, "Well, one of the best."
Sprague: And what greater American ritual than the bridal registry, featured in a 1950s industry film at the DMA.
Venable: And as we walk in, we see this great image of a 1950s bride and groom...
Sprague: ...With the aisle of the church turning into a great dining room table showcasing wedding china designs from around the world. The bridal registry was invented in the 1930s at Marshall Field's department store in Chicago. It transformed the china market by making it more affordable. Ellen Denker is a museum consultant and a historian with the Lenox Company.
Ellen Denker, Museum Consultant and Lenox Company Historian: What the bridal registry did was to divide the purchase of the set among many attendees at the wedding, and that made it much more likely that the bride in any economic level of society would be able to get a set of china.
Sprague: Lenox became one of the leaders in marketing to young brides with such ad campaigns as "You get the license. I'll get the Lenox."
Denker: Lenox was the first company to advertise in Seventeen magazine, and all their competitors at the time (this was in the 1950s) thought they were crazy to be advertising to teenagers; but the point was to put the name of Lenox in front of young women so they would learn it before they needed to buy the china, instead of having to learn it in the china department when they were picking out their fine china.
Sprague: The DMA's collection of china and glass is foremost among American museums. The curators spent nearly four years amassing the more than 500 objects, using private collectors, traditional auctions, even eBay. Compared with paintings by Monet or sculptures by Rodin, glass and china are inexpensive expressions of art. But it will be hard for those who see their own history reflected in the DMA exhibit to put a price tag on family sentiment. "From Tabletop to TV Tray" opens Sunday and runs through December 31st at the Dallas Museum of Art. For KERA 90.1, I'm Suzanne Sprague.