?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
Thaxter, Celia (1835-1894) A Set of Two Hand-decorated Cups and Saucers.
Four slipcast porcelain pieces consisting of two matching cups and saucers delicately hand-painted, signed and dated by Thaxter in 1880, the motifs suggestive of dried plants, seaweed and kelp in mauve, green, lilac and beige washes, with fronds and stems picked out in coral, dark brown, deep purple and black; each teacup handle painted black; each of the four pieces signed and dated inside the footring; very nicely preserved. (4)
Thaxter grew up on the Isles of Shoals, off the Atlantic coast of Maine and New Hampshire, where her father was a lighthouse keeper. The sea served as an inspiration to both her writing and visual art. Thaxter's renderings of sea plants convey a careful sensitive empathy and familiarity. The delicacy of her brushstrokes evokes the fragility of dried specimens collected along the shore and pressed flat.
