Online Talk! Curator Brian Gallagher Discusses the Exhibition Walter Scott Lenox and American Belleek at The Mint Museum

Tickets ($10/$5 for Members) Available Here

Brian Gallagher, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts at The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, will present noteworthy examples of art porcelain produced in late nineteenth-century Trenton, New Jersey, at the three factories—Ott & Brewer, Willets Manufacturing Company, and Ceramic Art Company—where Walter Scott Lenox (1859–1920) served sequentially as artistic director. Lenox was instrumental in developing a version of the eggshell-thin, ivory-colored porcelain first manufactured in the village of Belleek in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, but that achieved new aesthetic heights in the United States thanks to his vision and artistic talent. This subject is the focus of Gallagher’s exhibition, Walter Scott Lenox and American Belleek, on view at the Mint Museum until January 21, 2024.

Brian Gallagher joined the Mint Museum’s curatorial staff in 2007, and before then he was an assistant curator in the Department of European Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He has organized numerous exhibitions during his museum career on a variety of decorative arts topics. Recent projects include Classic Black: The Basalt Sculpture of Wedgwood and His Contemporaries (2020) and Portals to the Past: British Ceramics 1675–1825 (2016). He co-authored the catalogues associated with these two projects and was the sole author for Walter Scott Lenox and American Belleek (2023). Gallagher has an M.A. and an M.Phil. from the Bard Graduate Center, New York, and an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Drexel University, Philadelphia.

📷 Ceramic Art Company / Lenox, Incorporated, manufacturer; Depasse Manufacturing Company, silver mounts and overlay; Decanter Set, circa 1905-15, Belleek porcelain, glazed, decanter 6 11/16 x 6 5/8 in. Collection of Bob Cunningham.

📷 Ott and Brewer; Bowl, 1882-90, Belleek Porcelain with ivory glaze, polychrome enamels, and gilt decoration, 7 ¾ x 8 ¼ x 6 ½ in. Collection of Bob Cunningham.