STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Gary Lipton picked up a 10-inch vase featuring an iris painted by Rookwood Pottery artist Charles Schmidt in 1908.
“Look at the lusciousness of this flower!” he said. “It captured my soul.”
Lipton has surrounded himself with a gallery full of pottery and American folk art furniture, all of which could easily grace museums around the world.
His Lipton Fine Arts next to Ketchum’s Leadville Espresso House on 4th Street currently features what is likely the largest collection of Rookwood Pottery in Idaho.
It also includes a rare tall-back leather-upholstered spindle bench created by American Craftsman proselytizer Gustav Stickley and a rare ornate desk on a swivel base created by furniture designer Charles Rohlfs in 1904. And there’s a bronze Tiffany candlestick with iridescent inlaid jewels and an extraordinarily tall cylindrical Tiffany vase with circular feet.
The show celebrating the American Arts and Crafts Movement features works from Gary and Melissa Lipton’s personal collection and will be on display from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 29, during the Christmas Gallery Walk.
This will be the swan song for Lipton Fine Arts, as Lipton plans to close the gallery following this exhibition.
“I’ve enjoyed every minute of the five years I’ve had this gallery,” he said. I just decided I want to retire.”
The vases, which include a three-horn bowl and an oversized bowl in the shape of an artichoke, include Rockwood Pottery from 1880 to 1940, Roycroft Art Metal from 1895 to 1938, Fulper Art Pottery from 1909 to 1929, Grueby Pottery from 1897 to 1909, Dirk van Erp works from 1860 to 1933 and Teco Pottery from 1881 to 1923.
Every piece is hand-thrown and hand-slipped with a glaze, and each piece is individually done by an artist, who dated, signed and stamped it, making them certifiable and collectible pieces of art.
“This is rare stuff. Each one is unique—you’ll ever see another like it,” said Lipton.
The Liptons were at home looking at their collection of pottery when Melissa, or Missy, Lipton suggested they do a farewell show featuring the pottery they’ve collected over 40 years.
“I was 22 when Missy and I bought our first piece. We saw it at a county auction in Michigan and we couldn’t pass it up. The way it was painted, it was exquisite, unbelievable. It just touched our souls—you know how things do that,” recounted Gary Lipton.
Over the years the Liptons have collected 200 pieces. Some of the pieces have been featured in art books.
“These items were collected by the wealthy in the early 1900s. They cost in the neighborhood of $100 in 1908. Some of them go for up to $30,000 today,” Gary Lipton said.
Rookwood Pottery was and remains one of America’s most significant American ceramics company. It was founded in 1880 in a renovated school house in Cincinnati, Ohio, purchased a t a sheriff’s sale by Miaria Longworth Nichols Storer, who was inspired by the Japanese and French ceramics she saw at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.
She named the pottery factory after her father Joseph Longworth’s nearby country estate.
Rookwood Pottery gained world prominence when it won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1889 where ceramic pieces became known as art pottery.
Today Rookwood Pottery, which is located in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, continues to be known for its impeccable design and craftsmanship. They’re as decorative as they are useful—one of Lipton’s pieces, for instance, was designed as the stand for a Tiffany lamp shade.
A variety of glazes make the beautiful paintings on the vases pop out. The glazes include a high-gloss clear glaze; a glaze named “Iris,” a green-tinted glaze named “Sea Green,” a blue-tinted glaze named “Aerial Blue,” a glaze named “Vellum,” through which slightly frosted-appearing decorations can be seen and “Ombroso,” a brown or black matte glaze.
“These glazes were new to the world at the time Rookwood Pottery introduced them,” Lipton said. “The glaze on the vase with the iris is a special formula—nobody knows what it was even today.”
Before artists ever painted a subject on the vases, they sprayed each vase so that the colors changed as they moved from top to bottom.
It’s similar, he said, to a scenic landscape like Silver Creek Preserve, where the colors might start with the dark green of water, changing to the lighter green of spring grass and eventually move up to a deep and then lighter blue sky.
“It’s not monochromatic,” he said. “And the composition goes all the way around,” Lipton added, pointing out a vase featuring herons flying around it. “These look as real as real can be.”
The vases, which represents the best of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, were not mass-produced, Lipton said.
“Each of these was made by hand, not by machine. And that fact can be seen in the detail, design and form in every piece in this exhibition,” he said.
Lipton picked up an 1899 vase by Matt Daly that features a portrait of Big Horn Bear, a frequent subject of photographer Edward S. Curtis and a subject that eventually wound up on a postage stamp.
He picked up another vase crated in 1903.
“The black sticker on the bottom represents that the artist created this for the Louisiana Purchase Show,” he said.
“And Look at the thistle,” Gary said picking up a 1902 vase. “Can’t you just see those walking through a field?!”
Lipton Fine Arts’ swan song show also includes works by a 1032 circus drawing by Calder, whose mate is hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Also, an Equinox by Joan Miro, who lived from 1893 to 1983.
The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and by appointment. Even after it closes, Lipton said, he will continue to feature art in public places like US Bank, Knob Hill Inn and the Ketchum mayor’s office. He will also be available to meet with collectors privately who make an appointment at 248-561-5120.