Features Overview

Settler Colonialism

The porcelain vases, based on the Old Paris vases in Pieces of History, represent the Wallaces’ identity as Scots (left) and English (right). Identity is created and transmitted through such material objects. The black blistered vase evokes the unacknowledged tragedy of enslavement. Houston colleagues Garry Osan and Jeff Forster threw the basic vase shapes.

The Harvest

The Harvest consists of twelve dinner plates in the Autumn pattern by Lenox. My grandmother had these plates and I grew up eating from them during family celebrations. I chose this pattern when I got married in 1969. Now I have fired decaled images of two matriarchs of Klein and of their descendants who have come together at the Klein Homecomings in 2018 and 2019. The Autumn pattern also appears in First Harvest and Family Tree.

First Harvest

The First Harvest has my grandmother’s Autumn Lenox platter with small wads of cotton linter randomly placed on it. To me, this signifies the importance of cotton to our family in the 19th century and the legacy of the slavery that enabled their wellbeing.

The Autumn Lenox pattern also appears in Harvest and Family Tree. This platter was my grandmother’s. When I got married in 1969, she gave me her set of the Lenox Autumn pattern (originally issued in 1918), and I received new plates of Autumn, as the pattern which had been discontinued was reissued in 1968. Julie Nixon, who was married in December 1968, chose the same pattern.