Katherine Houston Antique Style Porcelain

February 15, 2019

See this beautiful Boston Tied Asparagus Bundle. Video Translation: Hi, This is Jennifer with City Farmhouse Antiques and I am here with this week's find of the week and this week I want to introduce you to an artist by the name of Katherine Houston. She may not be someone you have heard of before. She was an art history major in college and never worked with ceramics until she was in her late 40's. She happened to walk by a shop where she saw the most beautiful fruits and vegetables made from hand painted porcelain and fell in love with them instantly. That became her calling and the rest is history. Look at her pieces of work. She loves working with porcelain. All of her works have been inspired by 18th century porcelain and Asian porcelain. The colors that she chooses make the pieces look so antique. She works with over 300 colors all hand selected to give that antique look. The attention to detail is just amazing. This is one of her pomegranates and you can see such extreme detail down to each tiny seed to the stamen in the center to the formation of the leaves. The detail, the veining, is just so life-like and beautiful and they really do look antique. Each piece is signed on the bottom. This piece was made in 1997. These pieces are done by hand so every little petal, every little leaf are done and sculpted by her. These are strawberries that are absolutely adorable that she did. The fine attention to detail can be seen on this set of strawberries on all of the pieces and you can see how delicate they are. I haven't even shown you my favorite piece yet. I have another piece in here that is fabulous. She does some bigger pieces, some floral pieces. You can see her own gallery online where you can order pieces. Everything is terribly delicate. This is a red cabbage that she did. This piece has exquisite ruffled leaves. These fruits and vegetables are nice for added decor in your kitchen. Look at the veining and the color on this red cabbage. Here you can really see the veining throughout. If you can imagine every single furl of every single cabbage leaf is all done by hand. She says in her video that she does these pieces with the delicacy of an eyelash of a butterfly. It doesn't get anymore delicate than that. This artwork is really just like a 2 dimensional painting except on a 3 dimensional canvas. To get these fabulous colors, she continues to fire them until she gets them exactly like she wants them to be. Some of these have actually been fired 13-14 times. Her work is definitely exquisite. This is my favorite piece. Asparagus. Down to the detail I can show you on the very bottom of the piece. There is a ribbon that goes around this bunch with little floret flowers and you can see the changes in the hues in the pinks to plums on the edges of each spear of asparagus. They are bunched up and you can see how she has done the little tiny holes always on the bottom of each stem of fresh asparagus. I will turn this piece around, you have to be so careful. You can see the great attention to detail. You can see each piece is made to look antique, but they are not actually antique, but they are really exquisite. I was not familiar with Katherine's work, but I have to say I really love it and I can see why there are so many collectors out there. So that is our Find of the Week from the artist Katherine Houston. Be sure and check us out on our website at www.cityfarmhouseantiques.com where we have more than just antiques and go over and give us a like on Facebook.