Product Description
Pedro de Lemos / Art Deco Orange glazed American Pottery Clydesdale Horse Sculpture c. 1930
PEDRO DE LEMOS (1882-1945) Bay Area, California
Clydesdale horse sculpture c. 1930
Hand modeled orange glazed terra cotta.
Marks: De Lemos Palo Alto (sticker on the bottom), various pencil notations on the foot bottom
H: 9 1/8″ x D: 3 1/2″ x W: 9 1/2″
Pedro Joseph de Lemos (25 May 1882 Austin, Nevada – 5 December 1945) was an American painter, printmaker, architect, illustrator, writer, lecturer and museum director. He started his art career in the Bay Area. He studied under Arthur Frank Mathews at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art in 1900, later was a student of George Bridgman at the Art Students League in New York and of Arthur Wesley Dow at Columbia University Teachers College. The influence of traditional Japanese woodcuts is clearly seen in his work.
Pedro’s father Francisco, a cobbler, emigrated from the Azores in 1872, and settled in Oakland, California where Pedro was educated. Pedro and his brothers Frank and John all followed careers in art. Pedro was employed by Pacific Press Publishing Company between 1900 and 1906, afterwards starting the Lemos Illustrating Company with his brothers in 1907. Later this became known as the Lemos Brothers Art and Photography Studio, which offered art classes in copper, leather and landscaping as well as the traditional media of drypoint, etching and illustrating.
Lemos worked from a studio overlooking Lake Merritt and taught art at the University of California, Berkeley, working at the same time as illustrator and designer and giving classes in decorative design and etching at the San Francisco Institute of Art, where he had earlier studied when it was the Mark Hopkins Institute. He helped found the California Society of Etchers and an aqua print of his was acclaimed at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, for which he helped organise the California print exhibition. He filled the position of Professor of Design at Stanford University and became director of the Stanford University Museum of Art in 1919. Besides being the first president of the Carmel Art Association, he was an affiliate member of several art organisations such as the California Society of Etchers, the California Print Makers, the Palo Alto Art Association, the Chicago Society of Etchers and the Bohemian Club. In 1943 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.
Pedro de Lemos / Art Deco Orange glazed American Pottery Clydesdale Horse Sculpture c. 1930
MARCELLO FANTONI (1915-2011) Italy
Starburst mirror 1950’s
Torched bronze and original white plaster painted finish.
Marks: Fantoni, Firenze, Italy (hand script)
***This mirror has great style and character.
Overall dimension: H: 26″ x L: 33″ x D: 4″
Mirror dimension: H: 12″ x L: 17″
Price: $17,500
Born in Florence on October 1, 1915, Marcello Fantoni registered at the Institute of Art at Porta Romana in 1927 to attend the course The Art of Ceramics, which at that time was taught by the ceramist Carlo Guerrini, artistic director of the Cantagalli factory. Other teachers also contributed to his artistic formation including Libero Andreotti and Bruno Innocenti in sculpture and Gianni Vagnetti in the figure. He graduated in ’34 as a ‘maestro’ of art, and began working as a ceramist. In 1936, after having worked for a few months as the artistic director of a factory in Perugia, he established himself at Villa Fabbricotti in Florence and founded the Fantoni Ceramic studio. It’s production of serial and unique pieces had remarkable success at the Florentine Arts and Crafts Exhibit in ’37, revealing itself in line with the most recent tendencies, so much so that at the beginning of hostilities his production had already received notable artistic and commercial attention in Italy and abroad. After the war years, when Fantoni was involved in the resistance, in ’46 he began the creative and productive fervor that will allow him to enlarge his company, reaching at the beginning of the next decade the impressive size of over fifty collaborators. Among his employees were many students who, in ceramics and other fields, would become excellent artisans and even famous artists. In the following decades, especially between 1950 and the 70’s, the success of his work continued to increase, his unique pieces of sculpture and sculptural work, characterized by a design in step with the contemporary artistic currents, like archaic stylization inspired by Etruscan models, rendered modern because of their modern handling of materials, glazes and colors. For this original spirit of modernity, his works are in many private collections and in some of the most important museums of the world: in the United States his works can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Art of Boston, the Currier Gallery, the Syracuse Museum. In Britain they are in the Victoria and Albert Museum of London, the City Art Gallery of Manchester, at Royal Scottish Museum of Edinburg. In Japan they are present at the Museum of Modern Art of Tokyo and Kyoto. In Italy they are represented at the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, the National Bargello Museum and at the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi. In his long and versatile career, Fantoni has completed works for churches, public and private buildings, schools, cinemas, theaters and ships cementing himself in both figurative and abstract ceramics and various metals, and qualifying himself also in the field of medalism. In 1970 he founded the International School of Ceramic Arts at his laboratory in via Bolognese in Florence. Fantoni died at the age of 95 in 2011.