A Touch of Elegance

 

QUESTION: At a recent antique show, I discovered a dealer with a display of unusual antiques. The sign on his booth said “Epergnes and Plateaus.” When I asked him what the many highly polished silver and silverplate and glass pieces were used for, he replied that they were centerpieces from the 19th century. While I couldn’t see a use for either type of ware in today’s casual lifestyle, I was intrigued. He couldn’t tell me very much about their history. What can you tell me about epergnes and plateaus? Are they still being used today?

ANSWER:  Nothing evokes the elegance of the Gilded Age as epergnes and plateaus. While the average person probably has never heard of them, wealthy hosts, who loved to show off to others in their class, would have seen them grace the tables at dinner parties in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The epergne became the highlight of these centerpieces. And to help reflect the candlelight on the table, it often sat on a mirrored glass plateau.

An epergne is a centerpiece which may be used to serve food, as well. At first they were long and low, with a bowl in the center and sweetmeat dishes on either end. Later models often had great height, with a fruit or flower dish in the center surrounded by hanging baskets. These hanging basket dishes could be used to serve nuts or candies. However, a piece like this would most likely have been used for decoration.

Epergnes came in clear glass, cut class in all sorts of colors and decorations, as well as both regular and Sheffield silver plate and, occasionally, sterling silver. 

Hostesses used plateaus, low, flat mirrored glass platforms, on the other hand, to serve light buffets, cookies and cakes, candies and hors d’oeuvres. They usually came with five serving bowls, often used for chips and dip. But the most important utilitarian use for plateaus was to reflect light from candles on the table.

Both plateaus and epergnes were symbols of wealth. Craftsmen used exotic animals to decorate them, fantasizing about what they looked like because they didn’t have prior knowledge.

Centerpieces for fruit and flowers were in great demand in the 19th century. Epergnes and plateaus allowed the designer to use his imagination and ingenuity both in the design and workmanship. Some featured Roman chariots drawn by cupids. Bas reliefs ornamented others. Craftsmen burnished the metal and touched the edges and rims with gold.  Bowls hung from trees and vines or were supported by classic male or female figures.

The typical epergne usually consisted of a tall fruit dish on a metal stand with two lower matching dishes. One by Reed and Barton had a peacock drawing a chariot which held a glass container for flowers. Another featured a rowboat holding children, while Meriden Britannia made a delicate sailboat set on a plateau. A bowl for fruit was set on a pedestal from which sprang a decorative vine-entwined arm holding a cornucopia-shaped glass vase for flowers. 

Craftsmen on both sides of the Atlantic fashioned epergnes, with the fanciest coming from France. Some featured a number of levels, with several shelves. Others had base consisting of a classic figure or exotic animal with dish or vases resting atop its head. Most silver companies made epergnes with sterling as well as gold decoration. 

The English made epergnes as early as the 1860s in Sheffield plate. To complement some of their most elaborate epergnes, manufacturers created plateaus of all shapes and sizes—oval, round, and rectangular—with gadroon or fluted borders in plain or satin finish. They also made them with repousse borders and fancy corners to complement the epergne designs.

The English made epergnes as early as the 1860s in Sheffield plate. To complement some of their most elaborate epergnes, manufacturers created plateaus of all shapes and sizes—oval, round, and rectangular—with gadroon or fluted borders in plain or satin finish. They also made them with repousse borders and fancy corners to complement the epergne designs.

By the mid-1870s, the introduction of silverplate by the Meriden Company stimulated the taste for beautiful pieces at a lower cost. Epergnes and plateaus produced in silverplate became popular on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the popularity of silverplate only lasted until the late 19th century when the falling price of silver made it possible for those who wanted silver epergnes to buy sterling. 

As ornate silver epergnes lost favor with the public for table centerpieces, the simpler glass epergnes came into style. After 1850, glass epergnes became popular, especially those made of frosted glass and opaque milk glass.

The Sandwich Glass Factory and the New England Glass Company, two American firms that both made epergnes. The former’s 1870 catalog offered dainty chalices of fragile glass springing up around a central vase and sometimes cone shaped glass baskets hanging from metal scrolls. Only the smallest flowers and most delicate ferns could be placed in these dainty baskets. While these companies usually made their epergnes of colored glass, in later years, they began to produce ones with clear glass etched bowls, highlighted in gold.

As the Victorian era came to a close, low bowls of ornamental glass, known as berry bowls, began to replace the larger epergnes, which seemed so high and spreading that they seemed more suitable for formal dinners or banquets. It was a matter of convenience, for one thing, which made hostesses decide in favor of these glass berry bowls. They could fill them with fruit or flowers and  leave them on the table throughout the meal. 

Ornamental glass manufacturers like Fenton made berry bowls in many colors and types of glass, with some having two colors of glass fused together so that the lining and exterior surface formed a contrast in color. For example, they lined white opaque glass bowls with green, pink, deep rose; blue, amethyst, brownish-orange, apricot, or yellow glass. They applied a frosted surface to red glass bowls, giving them a satin-like finish. 

Though many ruffled-edge epergne berry bowls can be from 9 to 12 inches in diameter, some companies made them as small as 4 to 5 inches across. Glassmakers made them in various shapes with a variety of edges to go with the overall design of individual epergnes. They gave some a wavy, plaited edge while on others they used large petals which had a twist in the glass near the point of each petal. 

Visitors to the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago could purchase ruffled-edge berry bowls as souvenirs and gifts to relatives and friends. Women also loved to give these colorful and ornate dishes as wedding gifts. Often, they came mounted in a silver plated frame and made a striking table centerpiece, though not as large and elaborate as the traditional epergne. 

After a decline in the use of epergnes at the turn of the 20th century, the makers of carnival glass revived an interest in them by contributing some colorful variations to the traditional epergne designs. The Dugan Glass Company of Indiana, Pennsylvania, made a fishnet epergne using carnival glass. At the same time, the Sowerby Glass Company of Gateshead, England, made a fountain epergne, with glass holders in a sterling frame. The clear glass lilies of this epergne had twisted bases with fluted tops that were marigold in color. One of the rarest carnival glass epergnes, a four-lily version worth over $1,000 in today’s market, was made by Fenton-Imperial Glass Company. 

While epergnes and plateaus may have generally subsided in use, caters to large events like cocktail parties and banquets often use berry bowl epergnes and mirror glass plateaus to display canapes on elaborate buffet tables. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 50,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Victorian America" in the 2026 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Forerunners to the Modern Bathroom

 

QUESTION: Several years ago, I purchased an antique washstand set at a local antique show. The pieces are marked “K.T.A.K. China,” but I’ve been unable to find the pottery that made it. I believe the set dates to sometime in the mid to late 19th century. Can you tell me who made this set and also about the origins of these sets?

ANSWER: Your washstand was definitely made between 1850 and 1860 by the Knowles, Taylor, and Knowles China Company of East Liverpool, Ohio. Isaac Watts Knowles and Isaac Harvey, who operated a store boat along the Ohio River selling pottery, established a pottery in 1854. Knowles bought out Harvey in 1856. He formed Knowles, Taylor, and Knowles in 1870 when his son-in-law John N. Taylor and his son Homer S. Knowles joined the firm. But the company didn’t become incorporated until 1891, at which time it employed 700 workers who operated 35 kilns.

Before modern plumbing, people washed themselves daily at washstands, using washstand sets. Typically, each bedroom contained a washstand cabinets or two-tiered table on which a person could set a wash bowl on the top and a water pitcher on the bottom. Commode washstands had a chamber pot stored in a small cabinet in the bottom.

Most early washstands, usually made of oak, had a round cut out in the top shelf in which a large ceramic basin rested. During the second half of the 19th century, manufacturers produced washstands with flat tops and by the 1880s, many came with white marble tops. 

Pottery companies around the world began producing wash bowls and pitcher sets around the last quarter of the 18th century. But the washstand sets, at least the ones seen in antique shops and shows, date from the early 19th to the early 20th century. Typically, these sets consisted of seven items—a large bowl or basin, a large pitcher, a small pitcher, a chamber pot with a lid, a cup with a handle for rinsing after brushing teeth, a cup without a handle to hold tooth brushes and straight razors, and a covered soap dish with ceramic insert to keep soap from getting waterlogged. Some sets also included a large covered container for waste water and a dish to hold combs or hair brushes. 

A person used the warm clean water in the larger pitcher to wash their face, hands, and even brush their teeth. The poured the used water from the basin into a bucket or large ceramic jar.

Potteries produced washstand sets in various colors, materials, and styles,  from plain white ironstone to decorative hand-painted sets.

Identifying the marking on an antique wash bowl and pitcher can help discover its  origin, manufacturer, and value. Potteries inscribed and embossed the markings on their pieces during the production process. So any manufacturer’s mark applied to a set is likely to still be visible.

Should a washstand set be devoid of a manufacturer’s mark, it’s possible to date it by the shape of its handles. Scrolled or high-arching handles with thumb spurs indicate mid-19th century Victorian styles, dating from to the 1840-1860s, while angular, bamboo-style handles indicate the Aesthetic Movement, dating to the 1870s and 1880s. A handle featuring organic, flowing “whiplash” curves that melt into the body of the cup or pitcher suggests the Art Nouveau style, dating from 1890 to 1910. And sharp, geometric angles, circles, and stepped designs indicate the Art Deco style, dating from 1925 to the 1935.

But before analyzing the handle’s shape, it’s important to see how it’s attached. Early 19th-century pieces generally had “applied” handles. The potter would hand-roll a strip of clay and attach it to the body of the cup or pitcher before firing. Applied handles with a small depression or “thumb-print” at the base of the handle suggests an earlier date, often pre-1860.

Conversely, if the handle has a visible seam line running down the center that matches the seam on the pitcher body, it had been molded as one piece. This mass-production technique became standard later in the Victorian era.

Handles produced from the 1850s to the 1870s were mostly in the Rococo or Gothic Revival styles. Potteries produced pitcher handles with elaborate scrollwork and often added a “thumb spur” or thumb rest at the top of the handle’s curve.

However, if a handle imitates a vine, branch, or stag’s antler, then it dates most likely to between the 1850s and 1860s. Segmented bamboo handles appear on pitchers from the 1870s to the 1890s. And rope-shaped handles have been found on pitchers made by potteries along the eastern seaboard.

Since these washstand sets were ceramic, they were open to breakage, even though most were made with thicker walls and handles, making finding a complete set more of a challenge.

For common pieces, broken handles and cracks can reduce the value of an entire set. However, even partial sets or just wash bowls and pitchers are often sold separately.

An antique washbowl and pitcher with matching patterns or in a set is more valuable than separate pieces paired together. This is because finding an antique matching set in recent times is quite tasking and almost impossible. Also, sets made by well known potteries are usually worth more.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 50,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Victorian America" in the 2026 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

From Art to Cheap Carnival Prizes

 

QUESTION: Recently, as I was helping my grandmother to downsize before moving to an assisted living community, I discovered several pieces of kitchy Plaster of Paris figurines, small lamps, and strange little pockets depicting animals with a hollow space behind them. My grandmother told me that my grandfather had won them for her at the annual summer carnival. What are these things? Can you tell me more about their history?

ANSWER: The items belonging to your grandmother are known as chalkware. Though popular during the mid 20th century, chalkware actually got its start in the 18th century as an alternative to Staffordshire ware. But most people recognize it as the cheap carnival prizes given away to winners of games. 

Chalkware is an American term for popular figurines either made of molded plaster of Paris or sculpted gypsum, and painted, typically with oils or watercolors. Often referred to as the "poor man's porcelain," chalkware was primarily created from the late 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, during the Great Depression, and during the Mid-Century Modern era. Created during the earlier period as a serious decorative art, often imitating the more expensive imported English Staffordshire figurines. Those during the second period were more typically satirical. 

Once it cured or hardened, a worker removed the plaster holder from the mold and painted to give it strong eye appeal. Chalkware became a popular item sold in five and dime stores, and the designs seemed endless. Most manufacturers, including Roseville, Weller, and McCoy potteries, produced a variety of wall pockets, designed to hang on the wall and hold a variety of items, such as stamps, matches, flowers, and letters. 

As the Great Depression took hold in the U.S. in the 1930s, chalkware shifted towards more whimsical designs. These items were both colorful and playful, providing a brief escape from the economic woes of the time.

Eventually, carnival operators begin giving chalkware figures as prizes, especially during World War II. By the 1960s, stuffed animals replaced them.

After the War, young homeowners sought out chalkware as an inexpensive and expressive decor for their homes, including table lamps, figurines, and wall decor. Attracting fine, mundane and comic artists, chalkware reached a broad audience from 1945 to 1965, providing everything from representations of European sculpture, to kitsch images of exotic travel and cartoonish characters.

By the mid 1950s in the United Kingdom, chalkware took the form of eggcups, match holders, and ashtrays. The earliest designers were Paoli Brothers and Hermann Lohnberg. By 1956, tastes changed with a move to animals. By 1957, figurines and statues of African-style ladies and gentlemen had become popular.  

Mid 20th century chalkware lamps were often romantic and exotic with a focus on the idealized beauty of historic, natural, and abstract designs. Common motifs included dancers, often sold as a male and female pair, innocent or sensual figures, trees, flowers, animals, zig-zags, waves and modern abstract sculpture typical of the period. One of the most popular motifs were of romanticized, stereotyped Asian, African, Native American, Hawaiian people in exotic and often inaccurate settings or costumes. Some of these lamps were made as nightlights with small bulbs. TV lamps, based upon popular chalkware radio lamp designs, quickly became replaced by ceramic.

Wall decor chalkware included bath motifs like fish or mermaids, kitchen motifs like fruit, and 'wall pockets' that often were faces with small areas in the back suitable for air plants or plastic flowers.

People took to the highways in the booming post-war era, creating a need for tourist souvenirs, including ashtrays, figures, bobble-heads and destination-specific items. 

One of the overlooked markets for chalkware was the religious-based one. Manufacturers produced a large variety of statuary, wall plaques, and other religious objects for use in churches and the home. 

Some of the more popular American chalkware companies include Continental Art Company and Universal Statuary Corporation in Chicago, Alexander Baker Company and 'ABCO' in New York, Fine Arts In Plastics or F.A.I.P in Brooklyn, Jo Wallis Lamp Company, Miller Studios, and Reglor in  California, and Vaillancourt Folk Art in Massachusetts.

As the 1970s dawned, heavy, and easy to break or chip, chalkware eventually lost favor to ceramic and plastic alternatives in the 1970s. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 50,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Federal America" in the 2026 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

The Delicate Beauty of Russian Lacquer Boxes

 

QUESTION:  I have came across a box at a thrift store and after researching I am not sure it is or is not an authentic Russian Lacquer box. I was wondering what you thought?

ANSWER: According to my research, I believe your box was made in the village of Palekh, Russia, where similar boxes have been made. Also, the illustrations on the box seem to follow those on other Palekh boxes. Boxes exported out of Russia usually have a paper sticker on the bottom indicating that the box had been made in the USSR, or for later ones, Russia. These labels often fall off, but this box also has a mark in Cyrillic script. 

Russian lacquer art developed from the art of icon painting which came to an end with the collapse of Imperial Russia. The icon painters, who previously had been employed by supplying not only churches but people's homes, needed a way to make a living. Thus, the craft of making papier-mache decorative boxes developed. They lacquered the boxes, then artists hand painted them, often with scenes from folk tales, such as the tale of the Firebird, or of Prince Igor, or of Swan Lake.

Princesses dance, czars scowl, knights do battle, horses fly, suns smile, Father Frost puffs icy wind, and lovers embrace on glossy black backgrounds of lacquered papier-mache, surrounded by spectacular borders of gold filigree. Vivid reds and yellows dominated these scenes, with greens and blues and ivories typically reserved for highlights and details.

In finer boxes, artists often applied paint over gold or silver, producing a luminescence reminiscent of traditional Russian icon painting. The brushwork could be astonishingly intricate and detailed and beautifully rendered in the kind of stylized realism associated with European miniature paintings of the Middle Ages.

Artists in four villages—Fedoskino, Palekh, Kholui and Mstyora—made these lacquered boxes. All except Fedoskino lie in the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality, Ivanovo region of central Russia, and have been deeply rooted in the 17th- to 19th-century icon painting tradition, which lasted until the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The latter two villages, both north of Moscow, were for centuries an important home of traditional Russian icon painters, whose gilded portraits of-melancholy saints and dolorous Madonnas were the essential art form of czarist Russia. After the 1917 revolution, however, the new Bolshevik government banned religious art, and the icon makers turned to legends and folk tales and poems for their subjects.

The papier-mache process, used to make these lacquer boxes, took about six weeks to ensure that it wouldn’t warp, didn’t expand and contract with temperature, and had a linseed oil base which rendered it impervious to moisture. The papier-mache, itself, consisted of cardboard covered with flour paste which workers then shaped, coated with warm linseed oil, planed, and sanded. Artists applied clay, oil, and soot as an undercoating that they smoothed with a pumice stone, then lacquered and primed in preparation for the artist.

Although black was the most common color for a background, artists also used red, blue, green, and white backgrounds. Red was the most challenging background to paint on a lacquer box because the other colors don’t come forward. By contrast, a black background wasn’t only dramatic, but also the easiest color with which to work.

The crafting of Russian lacquer boxes dates back to the 18th century and the reign of Peter the Great. Originally used for holding snuff, these boxes have evolved into many different shapes and sizes for holding things like jewelry and money.

By the mid 18th century, tobacco became affordable for ordinary people, and the need for a box to hold the snuff became necessary. The wealthy had stored their snuff in boxes made out of ivory. gold, and other precious materials, but inexpensive lacquer boxes became a good alternative for poorer folk.

In 1795, while traveling to Germany, Pyotr Korobov came across the factory of Johann Heinrich Stobwasser in Braunschweig. Korobov became intrigued by the lacquer items produced there and took supplies back home to the village of Fedoskino to make his own. 

Decorated snuftboxes, made in Fedoskino in great quantities in the early 19th century by Piet:Vasieiievich Lukutin, were probably the finest of all old Russian lacquer boxes but today are extremely rare. Lukutin's boxes were durable, but the processes he employed in producing a perfect material for his lacquer work from compressed sheets of cardboard were lengthy and painstaking. Evidently Lukutin realized that the success of "japanning" depended upon the quality of the papier-mache itself. He gave his boxes numerous coatings of lacquer laboriously hand polishing them between applications. He obtained a fine patina by first soaking his boxes in vegetable oil and hardening them in low-heat ovens for a long time.

Artists decorated the earliest Lukutin boxes with themes similar to those used by English and German decorators at the time. They used landscapes and skylines as well as genre subjects. They also decorated boxes with mother-of-pearl. Toward the middle of the 19th century, they began decorating the boxes with Russian folk motifs. From 1828 on, the Lutkin family marked the boxes with the Imperial eagle and the various initials of the members of the family in charge of the factory at the time. They continued to run the business successfully until it closed in 1904.

The styles of decorations of papier-mache boxes in the village of Palekh differed from those decorated at the old Lutkin works. In 1917 some of the artists and craftsmen of the lacquer industry formed cooperatives and revived the art before it became lost. But it wasn’t until Ivan Golikov applied icon painting techniques to lacquered papier-mache in 1922 that many of the icon painters of pre-Revolutionary days began work in Palekh decorating lacquer boxes. Painted in egg tempera rather than the oils used in Fedoskino, the Palekh style is fanciful and somewhat less realistic than those of the original village. The artists of both Kholui and Mstyora also used egg tempera paint.

Another difference was the subject matter they painted and how they painted it. Fedoskino was known for realistic impressionistic scenes, while the other three focused on relic paintings that were less realistic. Originally, Palekh made relic paintings for the rich: Kholuy and Mstyora made relic paintings for the middle class and poor.

Palekh boxes appeared at the beginning of the 20th century almost always on a black background. Along with historical subjects, Palekh's artists also painted contemporary themes and scenes of rural life, such as threshing, harvesting, and hay-mowing. Their depictions of humans tend to have much longer bodies than those of Kholuy or Mstyora. Palekh lacquer boxes almost always have a hand-painted golden border design. But it was the artists Ivan Gofikov and his brother-in-law Alexander Glazunov who really made Palekh famous for its lacquer boxes which had the most sophisticated decoration, considered unrivaled in composition, color, and execution.

Tourist guides frequently tell their tour groups that a signature on the bottom of the box indicates that a master painted it. However, in reality most lacquer boxes came from small factories where signing another artist's name was no more difficult than painting in his style. Instead of checking for the signature of an artist, buyers should consider the quality and detail of the artwork_ Many of the lacquer boxes produced in the former Soviet Union have exceptional detail and command astronomical prices, yet have no signature. Box sellers rather then the artists themselves have perpetuated the signature myth of the signatures.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 50,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Federal America" in the 2026 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.