A Rare Set of Eighteen Tiffany & Co. Gilt Silver Finger Bowls from the Collection of Mary Jane Morgan, New York, circa 1883 ... (Total: 18 )

Description

A Rare Set of Eighteen Tiffany & Co. Gilt Silver Finger Bowls from the Collection of Mary Jane Morgan, New York, circa 1883
Designed by Eugene J. Soligny,
Marks: TIFFANY & CO, 7311 M 9733, STERLING-SILVER
2-3/4 x 5-3/4 inches (7.0 x 14.6 cm) (each)
4570 grams (142.93 troy ounces)

PROVENANCE:
Mary Jane Morgan;
Her sale, Thomas E. Kirby via the American Art Galleries at New York's Chickering Hall, 1886; Lot 728;
Possibly acquired by Charles L. Tiffany from the above;
Pierre J. Lorillard IV;
Thence by descent;
Christie's, New York, 20-21 January 2005, lot 70.
Private collection.


LITERATURE:
American Art Association, Priced Catalog of the Art Collection Formed by the Late Mrs. Mary J. Morgan, 1886

The bowls with gadrooned and pierced gallery rims with floral trelliswork, bodies in high Rococo style with elaborately chase, engraved, and repousse motifs with dolphins and putti posed against radiating seashells and floral garlands, each with chased monogram MJM to one side, raised on fluted and gadrooned bases.

Mary Jane Sexton Morgan (1823-1885) was the daughter of Francis Sexton, a New York City Merchant involved in the East Indian trade. She married shipping, railroad and iron magnate Charles Morgan (1795-1878) in 1851 and inherited $9 million upon his death in 1878. Mary Jane Morgan used this sizable inheritance to fund an ambitious and seemingly unending quest to assemble a world-class art collection. Her voracity for collecting was perhaps only matched by her cousin-in-law, J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913).

When Mary Jane Morgan died in 1885, the press reported that "the house of the late Mrs. Morgan is literally honeycombed with secret closets and drawers filled with works of art of the most varied kind. Since the first inventory was made there have been several supplements. Now the total value is put down at something like four million dollars." (Town Topics, November 1885)

The executors of her estate sold her entire collection at auction following a ten-day exhibition in March 1886 at New York's American Art Association. The Morgan name and the stories of her tabloid-worthy spending habits garnered considerable press and public interest over the course of the three-day sale. Attendees and bidders included notable collectors and society members like Charles L. Tiffany, William Walters, Henry G. Marquand, Henry O. Havemeyer, Mrs. Collis P. Huntington, and Mrs. Ogden Goelet.

The multi-category sale included etchings, books and Asian & European decorative arts. According to the auction catalog, most of the 154 lots of silver were "with few exceptions made to order by Messrs Tiffany & Co." Recognizing their importance, Tiffany & Co.'s founder purchased back many of the masterpieces in this sale on behalf of the company.

The present lot is described on page 142 of her auction catalog as lot 728. "728- FINGER BOWLS, best style of repousse chased ornamentation, pierced borders, gold finished. 18 pieces" The following lot in this current auction is lot 729 in Morgan's catalog. 729-PLATES, to match above. 18 pieces."

This unique set of bowls was designed by one of Tiffany's greatest designers, Eugene J. Soligny. Soligny was born in Paris in 1832 and started working at Tiffany & Co. in the late 1850s. By 1890, Soligny had risen to become foreman of Tiffany's chasing department and oversaw the production of silver for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Soligny is perhaps best known for his work chasing Tiffany & Co's seminal Bryant Vase in 1876, now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mary Jane Morgan was familiar with Soligny's work, having owned the present lots and a tea and coffee service made by Soligny in the "American Flora" pattern, illustrated in John Loring, Magnificent Tiffany Silver, 2001, p. 136. Soligny's penchant for busy designs and detailed chasing perfectly aligned with Morgan's tastes for excess and ornamentation. The pierced floral trellis rims to the present lot are exuberantly decorated with putti set against radiating open shells with floral garlands overflowing towards the center ground. Each putto is framed by stylized dolphins and rocaille foliage in a seemingly endless panoramic animation of a fantasy nautical realm. The MJM monogram to the center of each is boldly presented in chased and repousse techniques.

Though we know the following lot in her sale catalog (729-PLATES, to match above. 18 pieces.) was of the same pattern and is included in this auction, the existence of a larger table service in this same pattern is unknown. The two lots, as finger bowls and plates, allude to the progression of a new course during a meal and are perhaps functioned as a dessert service.

It is of note that this pattern was a special order by Tiffany & Co. Excluding the present lot(s), there are only a pair of tazza known to definitively exist in this pattern (see Christie's New York, In Praise of America, 21 January 2021, lot 271). The bowls and plates were likely purchased at the 1886 auction by Charles L. Tiffany and then sold to the American tobacco magnate and horse breeder Pierre Lorillard IV. His descendants kept the Morgan silver in the Lorillard family until 2005.

Extant examples of Tiffany & Co.'s work attributed to Soligny are sparse, and rarer are those which have traceable provenance to one of America's most famous art collections. Enhancing the rarity of this lot is its complete count, being sold in the same way it was originally dispersed in 1886.

Today, artwork from Mary Jane Morgan's collection can be found in notable museums and private collections across the country including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the National Gallery of Art (Washington DC), The Walters Art Museum (Baltimore), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and Art Institute of Chicago.

References:
Daphne T. Nash, The Art Collection of Mary Jane Morgan: A Document of Taste in Nineteenth Century New York, Master's Thesis, the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, 1999;
American Art Association, Catalogue of the Art Collection of Mary Jane Morgan, March 3, 1886 - March 15, 1886.
Harvey, Medill Higgins, et al. Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co.. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021.
John Loring, Magnificent Tiffany Silver, 2001



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