In the Loan Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art have been exhibited many examples from Mr. Prime’s collection of porcelains, and about five hundred pieces of Oriental ware from Mr. Avery’s, of nearly every distinctive style made in China and Japan in their best times.
The collection of Mr. Robert Hoe, Jr., is extremely choice in its admirable specimens of Oriental porcelain. Its egg-shells, crackles, and “celestial blues,” are not to be excelled. In this collection are also examples of other styles, among them some of the best of old Dresden.
Mr. W. L. Andrews, of New York, has a very choice collection of Oriental porcelain, probably the best in the country, and, containing the most of the “rose-back” and other “egg-shell.”
Mr. Edward Cunningham, of Milton, Massachusetts, has many superb vases, some of them of great size, obtained by himself in China.
In Albany, Mr. J. V. L. Pruyn has several complete dinner-services of Sèvres porcelain, made for King Louis Philippe, one large service of Lowestoft, and many other individual and interesting specimens. Some of his examples of Sèvres painting cannot be surpassed. He has also a small breakfast-service of “celestial blue,” mounted in silver, which is excellent.
In Boston, Mr. G. W. Wales’s collection is very varied and rich. He has excellent examples of Oriental and of European porcelains, and some perfect pieces of “celestial blue.” Many of his best specimens are on loan in the Boston Art Museum.
Mrs. Anson Burlingame’s collection of Chinese porcelain, at Cambridge, made while in China, is not large, but it has in it some of the best examples of the “green,” the “celestial blue,” the “rose,” and the “chrysanthemum.” Some of these have been exhibited in the Loan Collection in Boston.
Dr. F. W. Lewis and Mr. E. S. Clarke, of Philadelphia, have small and good collections, particularly devoted to Oriental porcelains.
Mr. W. S. Vaux and Dr. Lewis have made interesting exhibitions of the pottery of Greece and of Italy.
Mr. Joseph A. Clay, of Philadelphia, has a small and valuable collection of early Peruvian pottery, of the period before the Spanish Conquest. There is also a varied collection of South and North American Indian pottery in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge.