Product Description
Rose Cabat/American Studio Ceramics “Feelie” Porcelain Vessel, circa 1980-85

ROSE CABAT (1914-2015) USA
“Feelie” c. 1980-85
Thin walled porcelain vessel with a silky satiny matte drip glaze
Signed: incised CABAT on bottom
For more information on Rose Cabat see: Rose Erni Cabat Retrospective 1936-1986 (Tuscon, AZ: Tuscon Museum of Art, 1986)
H: 4 3/4″
Price: $2,500
Rose Cabat is an American studio ceramicist living in Tucson. Considered one of the most important ceramic artists of the Mid-century Modernist movement, Cabat is best known for her innovative glazes on small porcelain pots called “feelies” which she developed in the 1960s. Her organic forms often resemble the shape of onions and figs, and her glazes range from organic to jewel tones. Cabat was born in 1914 in the Bronx, New York, began to work in ceramics in the late 1930′s, and moved to Arizona in 1942, where she continued to make innovative ceramics.
Feelies:
Feelies are described as onion, fig, cucumber, and saucer-shaped ceramic vases terminating in an upward closed neck. Bruce Block, an avid collector, has described them as sensual and tactile with a very specific unforgettable texture, spiritual seeming to contain a type of energy. Rose Cabat had developed a silky satiny glaze, and it wasn’t until around 1960 that she had hit upon the first of the appropriate form, svelte and sleek to match the glaze. She exclaimed, “Now this one’s a feelie.”, coining the term. Upon developing the new glazes, she felt that she needed new forms to apply the glazes to, different from what she made before, “craft fair” style coiled heads and wind bells. She is quoted as saying, “The old things did not look good … I wanted simpler shapes that went with the glazes.”They are typically globular in shape, tightening down to a minuscule neck glazed to a satin surface. The tactile experience is most important. The nature of the neck is such that it is closed, so narrow that it cannot hold anything. Cabat would reply when asked why the necks of her feelies are so narrow, “A vase can hold weeds or flowers, but can’t it just be a spot of beauty?”
Rose Cabat/American Studio Ceramics “Feelie” Porcelain Vessel, circa 1980-85
ROYCROFT COPPER SHOP East Aurora, N.Y.
Pair of candlesticks c. 1915.
Hand wrought and textured copper, silver-plated.
Marks: impressed R, in orb with cross, ROYCROFT
For more information see: The American Arts & Crafts Movement in Western New York 1900-1928, Bruce A. Austin (Rochester Institute of Technology, 1992); Arts & Crafts Movement in New York State 1890’s – 1920’s, Coy Ludwig (Hamilton, N.Y.: Gallery Association of New York, 1983).
H: 6″ x W: 6 7/8″ x D: 2 5/8″
TIM LIDDY
“Oy Vey” (1979) The game where you become a JEWISH MOTHER! Get your sons to become doctors—Get your daughters married to doctors! If not, OY VEY! 2008
Oil and enamel on copper, plywood back
Signed in script: Tim Liddy, red circular ring, “circa 1979”, 2008
Provenance: William Shearburn Gallery, St. Louis, MO
H: 10 ¼” x W: 20 ½” x D: 1 ¾”
With his recent paintings, Liddy has both reasserted the construct of hyperrealist painting and developed a thoroughly unique advancement of that mode by extending the cultural reality of the indexed original. Based on the illustrated box lids of vintage board games, Liddy has recontextualized a subject, which evokes the underlying rules of life. Painted on copper or steel in the precise dimensions of the original, the metal is then manipulated to demonstrate the exact rips and tears from years of usage and includes trompe-l’oeil renditions of the scotch tape that might be holding the cardboard box together, the assorted stains, or the various graffiti of time. Liddy leaves no possibility of ambivalence, these works speak to a concurrent understanding of their original object identity and to themselves as works of art engaged in historical and psychological dialogue.