Mary Morgan's Peach Bloom Vase

"Three-String" Vase ("The Peach Bloom Vase") purchased by William T. Walters from the Mary Morgan auction of 1886.

New York Time's headline, March 12, 1886.

Page from the illustrated Mary Morgan catalogue showing the Walter's purchase of the Peach Bloom Vase, item no. 341.

Original cover of the hard-bound Mary Morgan auction catalogue (non-illustrated version), 1886.

Illustration of Peach Bloom glazed items from the Mary Morgan catalogue, including item no. 341, 1886.

 

Peach Bloom Vase purchased by William T. Walters from the Mary Morgan sale; Illustration from the catalogue, 1886.

The William Randolph Hearst Archive at Long Island University contains a selection of the most famous sales catalogues from New York’s Gilded Age. Among them is the catalogue of the Art Collection formed by the late Mrs. Mary Morgan, New York, 1886 (The Frick Art Reference Library holds an illustrated copy of the catalogue). Mary Jane Sexton Morgan (d.1885) was the wife of Charles Morgan (1795-1878), a transportation tycoon and a cousin of J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913). Kept on a strict allowance during her marriage, Mary Morgan indulged the fantasy of forming an art collection by reading Art Journal and planning what she would buy if given the finances.[1] After long awaiting her fortune, Mary Morgan inherited five million dollars following her husband’s death in 1878 and began the task of forming the art collection of her dreams.[2] One particular object from Mrs. Morgan's collection, a “peach blow or crushed strawberry color vase” generated considerable controversy when it was subsequently purchased at the 1886 sale by William T. Walters (1819-1894) of Baltimore, Maryland, for $18,000.[3]

The spectacular price attracted immediate criticism when a New York Times column published on March 24, 1886, titled Not Even a Peachblow,[4] questioned the Baltimore millionaire’s judgment in acquiring the piece. Several days later, the Times devoted a column to The Rime of the Peachblow Vase, a parody of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, to further taunt Walters.[5] Still, collectors such as Charles A. Dana, a devoted collector of Chinese ceramics, defended the vase and its purchase.[6] Amidst all the controversy, acquiring the “graceful ovoid vase” became one of the great stories of Gilded Age collecting.  

The New York Times reported that the American Art Association representative R. Austin Robertson had originally bought the vase for 250 Mexican silver dollars from a Peking porcelain dealer. Robertson was a provider of Chinese and Japanese art objects and curios to Thomas Kirby and to James F. Sutton, the son-in-law of R.H. Macy.[7] All three men were associated with the American Art Association. Although researchers have been unable to verify the claim, it was recounted that Mrs. Morgan, on a casual visit to the American Art Association, purchased the vase assessed at $2,000 for $12,000 when the salesman misread the coded price.[8] The vase appeared for sale on the evening of March 8, 1886, at the auction disposing of Mary Morgan’s estate along with hundreds of additional Chinese objects. Bidding in competition with an unnamed buyer, Sutton ultimately secured the vase on behalf of Walters. Within two years of the sale, the controversial object created an industry of replicas when Hobbs and Brockunier and Company of Wheeling, West Virginia, patented a glass copy of the vase.[9]  

The first peach bloom vases to reach the United States appear to have come from Peking out of the famous collection of the Prince of Yi, also called I Wang-ye (d.1861).[10] The same provenance is recorded in the Morgan catalogue and is referenced on the Walters Art Museum’s website. The renowned Chinese Art scholar, Stephen W. Bushell, likened its splendid surface to  “the warm and varied hues of the skin of a peach ripening in the sun.”[11] According to Robert L. Hobson, the glaze owes its hues to copper oxide while all the accessory tints of russet brown and apple green, are due to happy accidents in the changing atmosphere of the kiln.[12] Beginning in the Kangxi period (1662-1722), copper red glaze was not only revived, but also experienced major technical improvements. Many fine red glazed types of porcelain were fired during this period including kidney bean red (jiangdou hong), known in the West as peach bloom.[13] Modern scholars identify the Walters Peach Bloom Vase as one of a limited number of imperial objects produced at the imperial kilns at Ching-te chen during the latter part of K’ang-hsi’s reign. The object, known today as the Three String Peach Bloom Vase, was first displayed in the Bridge Gallery in Walters’s Baltimore family home. It is now in the collection at the Walters Art Museum.[14]