Booklist Review
Tableware, from everyday dishes to "good china," embodies the zeitgeist in particularly intimate and revealing forms. The 200 exceptional pieces on display in this handsome, entertaining, and richly informative catalog represent a century's worth of social, technological, and aesthetic change. Venable, chief curator at the Dallas Museum of Art, and his coauthors provide lively and knowledgeable commentary on the forces that inspired diverse tableware styles, fueled the evolution of pottery and china industries, and instigated the move toward convenience and durability in tableware design, a shift reflective of the women's liberation movement. The dishes displayed range from the most delicate of bone china to hardy Fiestaware, and from the gorgeously organic to the sparest of geometric shapes and patterns. Examples of Red Wing pottery and Franciscan china alternate with Depression-era glassware and postwar plastic, while classic dining sets are contrasted with speciality dishes for holidays and other occasions. Perhaps because meals are central to home life, tableware arouses curiously strong feelings, especially for readers who recognize the dishes of their childhood. --Donna Seaman
Choice Review
In each of five chapters Venable (Dallas Museum of Art) and colleagues discuss, chronologically, aspects of their subject: (1) the choices made by the middle classes for tableware in the home; (2) American tableware makers; (3) the role of imported china and glass; (4) marketing; and (5) the interrelated roles of design, industry, and the consumer. Popular magazines and advertising and trade journals are among the many resources used to explicate the stories. Short essays are interspersed throughout on individual firms--Montgomery Ward, Fostoria Glass, Lenox China, Rosenthal & Co., etc.--altogether a wealth of information. The chronological selection of beautiful illustrations in each chapter makes it difficult to sense the flow of taste represented in the exhibition this book accompanies. A detailed catalog, however, is included at the end of the volume. The subtitle, "From Tabletop to TV Tray," sums up the transformation from an era when ample tableware was used daily in the average household to today when fewer and fewer utilitarian dishes are used and, paradoxically, "old" or antique tableware is often avidly purchased but used only occasionally. An excellent reference work. Recommended for general readers, researchers, and specialists. J. J. Poesch; emeritus, Tulane University
