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!
Posts Tagged porcelain
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19 JunTue / 2012
Throughout this inaugural year, the Rienzi and Bayou Bend book club has covered an array of topics inspired by the collections of the two house museums. July's book takes us back to 18th-century France, for a peek into the life of one of Rienzi's most famous residents. "Madame du Barry: The Wages of Beauty" chronicles the life of Louis XV’s last maîtress en titre . . .
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30 MayWed / 2012
How do you take your mocha latte? Nonfat soy, no whip? Such options were hardly offered at the tables of 18th century Europeans, nor was the combination of coffee and chocolate that is now referred to mocha . . .
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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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21 FebTue / 2012
This March, the Rienzi and Bayou Bend Book Club is reading The Arcanum: The Extraordinary True Story by Janet Gleeson. Focusing on the development of Meissen porcelain in the 18th-century, Gleeson tells the tale of three Johanns, all instrumental in the process of creating “white gold”: Johann Frederick Böttger, Johann Gregor Herold, and Johann Joachim Kändler. Meissen, founded in 1710, was the first European porcelain manufactory to develop hard-paste porcelain similar to Asian...
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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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22 SepThu / 2011
In lieu of our upcoming Punch Party (September 29th, buy your tickets now!), I am reviving some notes on a Gallery Talk I held last October, on a curious item from Rienzi’s collection – a punch pot, from 1765, by the Worcester Porcelain Manufactory[i] :
Alcoholic punch was consumed throughout the eighteenth century, however, the punch pot – a form resembling an overblown teapot – appeared in England only at about 1750, falling out of...
