The Art of Majolica: Edward Middleton Manigault

Edward Middleton Manigault, c. 1915

Edward Middleton Manigault was born in Ontario, Canada in 1887. As a young man he enjoyed drawing and was commissioned by his hometown of London, Ontario to create a series of postcards of local buildings. In 1905 at the age of 18 he moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League where he found success under the tutelage of Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Initially Henri encouraged him to paint the city as he saw it but other influences by Miller  and Albert Pinkham Ryder moved him away from the world of realism and towards the Post-Impressionist style of Modernist painting. He imbued his work with a spiritual quality that sometimes displayed the underbelly of a nightmare.

Procession, 1911

The Clown, 1912

Six Women–Adagio, 1912

In 1912  he began traveling and working in the U.S. and Europe. He was fortunate to have two paintings– including "Six Women–Adagio," shown above–selected as part of the infamous NY Armory Show of 1913 which introduced Modernism to the United States. By 1914 he had his first one man show in New York.

Catalog to the 1913 Armory Show

In 1915 he joined the British Ambulance forces as a driver to fight for his country during the Great War. Unfortunately he served only five months before he was exposed to mustard gas which resulted in a nervous breakdown and a medical discharge from the army. He settled with his wife Gertrude in California and began to experiment with sculpture and painting in abstraction and in the cubist style.

Landscape with Bridge, 1916

Vorticist Landscape, 1916

Finding the style unsatisfactory he destroyed most of this work–over 200 paintings–and returned to his pre-war work of dream-like surrealism.

Landscape with Field, 1918

Manigault's signature

In 1918, he painted “Still Life with Flowers.” It’s a highly stylized work owning much to the influence of his teacher Kenneth Hayes Miller. It consists of a table set in front of a dark drape; wine bottle; a vase of fanciful flowers; a bird perched on a basket of fruit; a dish and a majolica compote, all arranged carefully on Eastern textiles. The painting is meant to exist in a three dimensional world yet features a distorted, flattened, two dimensional perspective. This is no doubt a result of his experimentation with abstraction. The use of shadow and color has an other worldly quality to it—brilliant, unnatural color and shading that discards the laws of the realists. The items on the tablescape seem to be illuminated from within instead of by a conventional light source. Although brightly colored, the painting has a slightly sinister quality to it.

Still Life with Flowers, 1918

The majolica compote shown in the painting is of a begonia on wicker design. Potted by an English manufacturer, Adams & Bromley, it was part of an extensive line that featured bread plates, tea sets, a cheese bell, ice cream and dessert sets as well at cake stands, butter chips and mugs. To the best of my knowledge it is not a registered design.

Adams & Bromley majolica compote

Adams & Bromley majolica jug

Adams & Bromley cheese bell

Adams & Bromley majolica platter

Adams & Bromley majolica platter

Adams & Bromley majolica creamer

Adams & Bromley majolica jardiniere

Adams & Bromley majolica plate

Commonly found today, the pattern is inexpensive and a good candidate for those who would like to assemble a complete dessert service in majolica at a reasonable price.

Manigault's health was greatly weakened by his wartime exposure to mustard gas. He suffered from depression and often didn't have the energy to work on his art. He struggled with odd jobs in the last years of his life.

Bananas and Apples in a  Compote, 1922

He died in San Francisco in 1922 at the age of thirty-five. His cause of death was attributed to starvation from fasting and neurasthenia. He believed fasting brought about hallucinatory images he could incorporate into his artwork. He has been called the first martyr to Modernism.

He is buried in his hometown of London, Ontario.

Because of his short life span and propensity towards destroying art work with which he was not fully satisfied, Manigault's reputation faded in the years following his death. Very little of his post war work has survived. His inclusion in the 1913 Armory Show would forever label him as a Modernist though the reality is that he never developed a distinct style of his own, experimenting throughout his life with one influence and another during his most creative period. Manigualt's adult career never fulfilled the promise of his pre-war potential. Still, what remains is sought by savvy collectors of visionary modernist American 20th Century painting.

The Willets Manufacturing Company

In a follow up to our last post on new discoveries in American majolica, I thought we'd take a closer look at the Excelsior Pottery of the Willets Manufacturing Company.

The business that ultimately became the Willets Manufacturing Company began as the Excelsior Pottery of the William Young & Sons company. William Young was an English potter trained at Ridgeway who emigrated to the Trenton area in pursuit of fortune. In 1857 he established the Excelsior Pottery. He maintained it in operation under his name until 1879. That year it was sold to the three Willets brothers: Edmund, Joseph and Daniel, who established the Willets Pottery.

Excelcior Pottery

Willets was a large pottery employing 260 workers: 175 men, 35 women and 50 children. Willets Excelsior Pottery is best known for its production of American Belleek. Initiated in the U.S. in 1882 by the nearby Ott & Brewer Pottery, American Belleek was intended to bring the elegance of Belleek porcelain to the U.S. In 1886 the Willets brothers, hired William Bromley Sr. from Ott & Brewer to initiate their own line of Belleek wares which went into production in 1887. In addition to imitating the shell formed designs of Irish Belleek, he used the porcelain base for elaborate hand painted decoration. As described in a contemporary New York publication:

Their pottery and granite and opaque por­celain wares are most favorably known and justly celebrated through­out the trade of the entire country, comparing favorably with the finest imported goods. Their thin opaque porcelain goods are given the preference by the most prominent and critical dealers, while their special lines for hotel use in quality, finish, and adaptability cannot be excelled. In decorated wares their designs are both unique and original, combining grace and symmetry with a blending of shades rarely equalled and never surpassed. Their underglaze printed wares are produced in the latest and best style of the potter's art, so that in their entirety their entire line is not surpassed by any in the country, while their list of prices are uniformly low, quality and finish consid­ered... - The Metropolis Of To-day, 1888.

This art pottery remained in production at Willets until the company was sold in 1912. Willets' successor, The New Jersey Pottery company, continued its manufacture for another two years before ceasing production entirely at the beginning of WW1 in 1914.

Willets American Belleek pitchers

Willets American Belleek cup & saucer

Willets American Belleek cream soup

Willets porcelain orchid vase

Willets Aesthetic transferware platter

Willets Tropics pattern

Willets Belles vase painted by James Callowhill

Willets hand decorated American Belleek

Willets hand decorated American Belleek

Willets hand decorated American Belleek

American Belleek was not the only pottery created at Willets. They had a large pottery presence in Trenton, well known for their high quality art pottery, sanitary wares, dinner and dessert ware and white ironstone.

Willets ironstone basin and pitcher

Willets partial toilet set

Ad from Crockery and Glass Journal, February 1882

Willets advertisement from Crockery and Glass Journal 1883

What was not known until recently was the company's contribution to the dialogue on American majolica. Although their other work was marked, their majolica was not.

This is why their fan themed work was until recently attributed to Eureka. Let's take a look at the list of majolica wares from an ad in Dr. Laura Microulis' lecture that appeared in Crockery and Glass Journal as Well as another from the following year.

Most significant for our purposes is the presence of the "Fan Ice Cream Sets" described as consisting of a "large Double Fan dish and 12 small Fan Ice Cream dishes." These would certainly be the fan dishes until recently attributed to Eureka. The original design of all the majolica Fan pieces are attributed to Shorter & Boulton of Staffordshire with the American output copied from the English designs.

Majolica ice cream set designed by Shorter & Boulton

Majolica fan butter pat

In addition, the ad describes a "Fan Tea Set" consisting of a teapot, cream pitcher and sugar bowl. These could possibly refer to the fan tea set also previously attributed to Eureka.

Majolica Aesthetic tea set

These pieces have matching pieces in the same design. The jugs are mentioned in the ad as having been manufactured in four sizes and came in three different color grounds: grey, white and yellow. It should be mentioned that this jug design was registered by Shorter & Boulton so it may, or may not have been the design copied by Willets

Considering the high level of craftsmanship exhibited by the Belleek wares these majolica wares are considerably less well made. The designs however are innovative and a good representation of the then current fashion for the Aesthetic taste.

So, what about the other pieces mentioned in the ad? Until more substantial evidence surfaces that allows us to attribute the pieces we can only venture to guess what designs were manufactured by the company.

The company produced majolica for a short period of time, roughly 1881 to 1882 so most of the Fan wares attributed to Willets and Eureka were most likely made by Shorter & Boulton.