Renwick+30th+Anniversary+Plate

Date: 2002
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/2003/2003.59.3_1a.jpg?itok=du9_8n1g width="487" height="261" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/renwick-30th-anniversary-plate-72166"]] ||
 * Title: **The Renwick 30th Anniversary Plate**

Artist: **Irma Starr** Born: Boston, Massachusetts 1933

Medium: slab-constructed, shaped, wheel-thrown (foot), drawn, incised, and glazed earthenware with slip Dimensions: 2 x 14 1/2 in. (5.1 x 36.8 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Kathleen Derman in honor of Olivia Derman

Accession: 2003.59.3 || The Smithsonian American Art Museum has acquired "The Renwick 30th Anniversary Plate," 2002, by Irma Starr. This ceramic plate, crafted using 17th-century English slipware pottery techniques, is a special piece presented to the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum through the generosity of patrons and supporters of Starr and is now hanging in the permanent collection galleries.
 * About the Artwork (official text): **

"We are thrilled that Irma Starr has created this spectacular plate to honor the Renwick's 30th anniversary," said Renwick Curator-in-Charge Kenneth R. Trapp. "Starr's commemorative piece depicting the Renwick Gallery building pays homage to the history of ceramics by the continuation of old slipware techniques used to depict a 19th-century landmark building in the heart of federal Washington, D.C."

The commemorative text on the piece reads, "1972 Renwick Gallery 2002/ Smithsonian American Art Museum," "Dedicated to Art," which appears on the building, and "30 years of collecting, exhibiting, preserving and studying American craft." Two roundels opposite each other on the rim of the plate contain the initials "WWC," for William Wilson Corcoran, who had built what is now the Renwick Gallery to showcase his collection of paintings and plaster cast sculptures, and "IKS," for the artist Irma Kushner Starr.

Starr approached Trapp in December 2000 when she was attending an event for artists invited to create holiday ornaments for The White House. They discussed the creation of a commemorative plate to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Renwick Gallery, which opened to the public in 1972. To begin her design, Starr visited the Renwick to photograph and sketch the Second-Empire style Victorian building designed by James Renwick Jr., architect of the Smithsonian's "Castle" and St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Because of its size and the complexity of the design, three months were spent decorating the piece. It took six months to dry. Starr fired the red earthenware plate twice in June 2002; each firing took a week, followed by a week to cool. The glazing was done last, before the second, and final, firing.

The 30-inch plate is completely covered in slip, a thin wash of light clay over which the decorative designs are applied by a method called slip-trailing. Starr used the clay much like a painter applies pigments to a canvas. Slip-clay mixed with water and mineral oxides, added for color-is trailed on in thin lines to create the final design and intricate patterns. This process is similar to that of a pastry chef decorating an elaborate cake. The slip is thickly built up to emphasize column capitals, wrought-iron metalwork and other architectural details. The colors of the piece are cream, deep red, black, green and orange.

A resident of Kansas City, Mo., Starr began studying the techniques of 17th-century English slipware more than 30 years ago. She uses methods such as combing, feathering- and marbling in her pieces. She has worked extensively with The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gift shop in Kansas City to reproduce art pieces from the Burnap Collection. Her reproductions include large dishes, posset pots, cradles, puzzle jugs and many other ceramic pieces. – [SAAM Press Release, Nov 4, 2002]
 * Biographical Information: **

Many purchase her reproductions of 17th-century English slipware in the museum's famous Burnap Collection. Starr, who works out of the studio behind her Loose Park area home, knows all the historical techniques - combing, feathering, marbling and slip-trailing - necessary to duplicate the pottery's distinctive brown and orange designs on ocher backgrounds. And she's been doing it for 30 years.

Starr is "one of the greatest living practitioners of these traditional decorative techniques," according to Catherine Futter, the Nelson's new curator of decorative arts. She often is commissioned to make commemorative plates in the English slipware style, celebrating everything from Father's Day to important anniversaries - of people, institutions and organizations.

In 1999 she was invited to create an ornament for the annual White House Christmas tree; in 2000 Hillary Clinton commissioned her to make a commemorative plate for the Clintons' 25th wedding anniversary. While visiting Washington, D.C., three years ago for the White House Christmas tree fete, Starr introduced herself to Kenneth Trapp, director of the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art.

The result of the meeting was yet another prestigious commission: to create a commemorative plate for the Renwick's 30th anniversary in 2002.

"I knew her work, I know the Nelson-Atkins well and the Burnap Collection, Trapp said in a recent telephone interview. "This is going to be a magnificent piece." "What I like about it," he added, "is Irma making works of art in clay that reference the history of clay, but she brings that past tradition forward to the present."

Starr and Trapp worked together to come up with the plate's design. The aim, Trapp said, was to commemorate "an American architectural landmark as well as the Renwick's commitment to the American craft movement." At his suggestion, Starr worked up an image of the exterior of the Renwick building, a handsome Second Empire-style structure designed by James Renwick Jr., architect of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.

Starr made sketches and two small prototypes before beginning the arduous process of creating the design on a 32-inch-wide charger.Three months of working from 6 a.m. to late at night included some tense times.

"There were so many moments when it could have cracked and been destroyed because of the size," observed Futter. "Most chargers are a half or a quarter of this diameter. It's technically a masterpiece."

Starr's technical command sparkles in her highly detailed treatment of the building's individual bricks and roof tiles, its Victorian lampposts and the wrought-iron fence out front. The sculptural ornament gracing the windows and door lends itself perfectly to reproduction in white slip, applied like cake icing.

Tiny dots of white slip animate the commemorative text on the rim of the plate: "1972 The Renwick Gallery 2002 Smithsonian American Art Museum." It is, as Trapp predicted, "a magnificent piece."

All of Starr's designs are licensed through the Nelson. "She's the creative genius," says John Hamann, bookstore manager. "We make suggestions, and she takes the ball and runs with it."

"They're really my family," said Starr of her Nelson contacts. "We've developed all these things together." In October, Starr's huge charger - the first commemorative plate the Renwick has commissioned - will go on display at the gallery as a highlight of its permanent collection. – [Alice Thorson, The Kansas City Star]

[|Artist Biography] SAAM Collections Page
 * Links: **