BOLESLAW CYBIS Blue and white underglaze-decorated plate depicting a farm landscape with bridge. Some shaving of glaze bubbles. Unmarked. 10 1/2" dia.

"Boleslaw Cybis was an award-winning oil and fresco painter, a rug designer, a sculptor, a Christmas window designer, a film-maker, and a ceramist, best remembered now for his art porcelain sculptures. He was born in Lithuania, and moved to New York in 1939 to paint fresco murals for the Polish Pavilion of Honor at the World's Fair. He designed ceramic sculpture for Corday in Trenton before opening his own studio, first in 1940 at the Steinway Mansion, Astoria, Queens, then in 1942 in Trenton. After his death in 1957, the company he had founded continued the production of porcelain figures by other designers. Their work is well represented at the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton. The great grand old man of American historical china, Sam Laidacker, was the first person to tell us about the Cybis reproductions, and to show us some of them, including cup plates and Gaudy Dutch dishes. Here we have a plate on which is hand painted, not transfer printed like the originals, the Upper Ferry Bridge over the River Schuylkill with an eagle border. It was originally done by Joseph Stubbs, in Burslem or Longport, probably around 1827-28. The Cybis plate above was probably experimental, and there may be no two alike. We have only seen three different views of this series. Sam Laidacker had one himself, of Columbia College. So, this plate is really exceedingly rare. Again, it's the kind of ceramics that we always liked because it's unusual, and experimental. The Cybis dish would have to have been made in the late '40s or early '50s, as Cybis died in 1957."