Our entry point into transferware for the September/October 2024 issue of the Magazine Antiques was a dinner party we were not invited to. The morning after dining with Andrew Raftery, a printmaker and Professor at RISD, my parents told us that we’d missed a grand time. I reminded them that it wasn’t that we missed it — we had never been notified of the occasion. To be fair, they were in Providence, Rhode Island and we are 3 hours away in Germantown. Too far a distance for spontaneity, apparently.
Learning about Raftery’s work transferring engravings onto porcelain led us down a rabbit hole we hadn’t entered since writing about the iconic Willow Pattern a few years back. Transferware, we were reminded, is a tool for world-building. It offered 19th-century families an access point to art and ornament while conveying stories, both real and imagined, that helped make sense of the world. From memorializing historical moments to idealizing landscapes, transferware plates, dishes, bowls, coffee pots and teacups were a storytelling mechanism parallel to being a surface to set the table with.
For our article in the magazine, we spoke with top dealers of transferware, including Bob Zordani and Heidi Kellner of Z and K Antiques, passionate collectors, like Jacqueline Wein, interior designer Susan Brinson, and Raftery himself, all to find our way into a form that is so broad and deep that it can feel like an ocean with no shore in sight. This is part of its beauty, Wein and Raftery both insisted. You will always have more to discover and learn, and another piece to find.
As always, we have a small pile of hard copies of the issue in the store for avid readers who have yet to subscribe (tsk tsk), and a digital version of the article is readable here.
Unfortunately, this beautiful issue is also bittersweet. Amidst closing the issue, Mitchell Owen’s first as Editor-in-Chief of the magazine, he suffered a massive stroke. He is on the road to recovery, but it will be a long and winding one. Our thoughts are with Mitch, his husband Matthew, his children, and with the team at the Magazine who are keeping the wheels turning.
