? Features around 700 pieces from one of the finest international collections of Meissen porcelain ? Publication represents the most recent and most significant scholarship on the collection and is being launched as the Cummer Museum celebrates its fiftieth anniversary ? A specialist book that is important for dealers, scholars and collectors from around the world The Cummer Museum of Art rGardens in Jacksonville, Florida owns one of the finest and most comprehensive Meissen collections in the world, outside those of the Porzellansammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden and the Arnhold Collection in New York. Donated to the Museum by Ralph H. and Constance I. Wark in 1965, it features nearly 700 pieces of Meissen porcelain, including rare pieces from the earliest years of the royal factory, established in 1710. Author Ulrich Pietsch uses the fascinating history of the foundation of the Meissen factory in order to et the background for his essay on Wark's collection, and the surprising story of how it survived the Second World War in a Hamburg cellar before being shipped to America. The catalogue features notable examples by the leading sculptors and painters of early Meissen production including Böttger, Johann Joachim Kändler, and Johann Gregor Höroldt. Contents: Introduction by Hope McMath, director of the Cummer Museum of Art uGardens Eighteenth-Century Meissen Porcelain by Ulrich Pietsch Ralph Henry Wark-A Passionate Porcelain Collector by Ulrich Pietsch Catalogue Bibliography Photography credits AUTHOR: Urich Pietsch is the director of the Porcelain Collection, State Art Collection, Dresden. A leading expert on Meissen porcelain he is the author of most recently Passion for Meissen: Marouf Collection (2010) and Die Figuerliche Porzellanplastik Von Gottlieb Kirchner Und Johann Joachim Kaendler (Hirmer Verlag, 2006). *
