Rienzi is the house museum and collection of European paintings and decorative arts at the MFAH. Our articles highlight elements of the collection, discuss additions and changes to the house or gardens, and review events held at Rienzi for those of you not able to be here in person. Feel free to e-mail rienziblog@mfah.org with questions, comments, and suggestions. Welcome!
About Caroline Cole
Caroline Cole joined Rienzi as Curatorial Assistant in the fall of 2010, after completing her M.A. in the history of decorative arts and design at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and Parsons School for Design in New York City, and a B.A. from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Posts by Caroline Cole, page 3
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01 MayTue / 2012
Bedrooms at Rienzi are nothing to yawn at. We’ve been re-awakened this year by the addition of a new gallery at the house museum, in what was once a bedroom of the original Masterson home. . . .
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15 DecThu / 2011
This past Tuesday, Christie’s New York auction house held a sale of Elizabeth Taylor’s jewelry, 80 pieces totaling a whopping $116 million. At the top of that list, was a necklace featuring one of the most celebrated pearls known in the world – La Peregrina.
The pearl is familiar in Rienzi’s gallery, where it is prominently depicted in a full-length portrait of Margaret of Austria, Queen of Spain from 1605. The jewel made its way to...
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17 NovThu / 2011
Because one scoop of ice cream blog post is never enough, here’s a bit more on dessert equipage from the eighteenth century…
As part of our installation devoted to the dessert service, we have on view an ice pail, made by the Worcester Porcelain Manufactory in 1770. This intricately decorated vessel is very much what it sounds like – it is a pail made to hold ice and chill food. Designed in three parts, ice would...
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15 NovTue / 2011
If you enjoy an ice cream cone now and again (and we hope that you do), you might be interested to learn that ice cream was a favored dessert in European circles as early as the seventeenth century. As part of our exhibition English Taste, Rienzi has on view a series of porcelain objects from eighteenth-century dessert services, two of which were made specifically for ice cream.
If the thought of 300 year old ice cream...
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30 SepFri / 2011
The abundance at our dining table might never have come together, if not for guidance from the omniscient hands of Mrs. Elizabeth Raffald. The Experienced English Housekeeper, written in 1769 by Mrs. Raffald, was used as a model for the dining table in Rienzi’s exhibition. I am delighted that we are able to honor Mrs. Raffald, by laying out one more dinner course to her keen specifications. What the housekeeper-turned-author would have thought, if she...
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