Family’s blue-and-white legacy will brighten Morse Museum
What do you do when you’ve inherited more than 200 pieces of porcelain? Especially when their beauty and significance are museum-quality?
“We certainly did not want to break up the collection,” says Will Abberger. “We know how much it meant to my parents, my dad particularly, who assembled it over 40 years.”
And then the answer became crystal clear: The Morse Museum of American Art, created by Hugh and Jeannette McKean, would be a suitable home — and it had a family connection.
“It all clicked,” said Abberger, who grew up in the Orlando neighborhood of College Park, “because of our parents’ long-standing friendship with the McKeans and my mother’s service to the organization.”
Today the array of delicate porcelain, most of it the blue-and-white variety, is safely at home with the Morse, to the delight of Jennifer Thalheimer, curator and collection manager at the Winter Park museum.
“It’s a substantial collection,” she said. “There are a lot of ways we can use it.”
The collection’s story begins with Dr. Benjamin Abberger — Will’s father — who found a pair of simple, tall, slim blue-and-white candlesticks at a Winter Park antiques shop. Over the years they were joined by teapots and sugar bowls, tureens and teacups, pitchers and platters.
“There’s so much porcelain in the collection now that it has taken over most table tops and bookshelves in the Abberger house,” stated a 1989 feature story in the Orlando Sentinel.
That’s how Will Abberger remembers growing up with his three brothers.
“It was proudly displayed in our home,” said Abberger, who today is director of The Trust for Public Land’s conservation-finance service in Tallahassee. “My parents were great lovers of art generally so that was a beautiful blessing growing up.”
Ben and his wife, Nancy, also championed opera in Orlando; Nancy was a president of the Opera Guild of Orlando. She also served as head docent at the Morse
Museum’s early locations and as an assistant to Hugh McKean. She died at the end of 2011, and Ben passed away eight months later.
After their deaths, the Abberger siblings — who had moved to other parts of Florida and Canada — had to determine the collection’s future. The pieces, of course, held a great deal of sentimental value.
“As we age, we gain greater appreciation for these things, right?” Abberger said.
And the pieces were imbued with recollections of their parents, especially their father.
“I have very fond memories of going with him to antiques stores,” Abberger said. “He was always very decisive. He knew Chinese export porcelain very well and when he found a piece he wanted to add to his collection there wasn’t much dithering around.”
They each saved a few favorite pieces but began searching for a home for the bulk of the collection. Funnily enough, the siblings didn’t picture the Morse as a repository at first — because of its worldwide reputation in another area.
“I always think of the Morse as Tiffany, pretty exclusively,” Abberger said.
But it turned out there is a connection between Chinese export porcelain and famed glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany: He collected the pieces himself.
That was one of the reasons Thalheimer was interested in acquiring the collection.
“It really played such a role in interior decoration” during the era of Tiffany, who died in 1933, she said. “It was an essential part of it.”
In fact, a photograph of a fireplace hood recently acquired by the museum showed pieces of the porcelain on its mantel — where now some of the Abbergers’ finds reside. And Tiffany used it for inspiration in his studios.
Also of note, blue-andwhite porcelain has its own immigrant-assimilation story for the United States.
“The first pieces supposedly came with Marco Polo to Europe and they marveled at it,” Thalheimer said. Creating the porcelain for export became a thriving industry in China, with Europeans snatching it up: “By the 18th century, entire rooms were being filled with collections of those pieces.”
As Europeans journeyed to America, their porcelain was among their most prized possessions. It eventually became associated with the Colonial era and patriotism, especially during the nation’s centennial celebrations when Americans were eager to “escape the ugliness of the Civil War” and remember happier times, Thalheimer said.
“It is now a very American concept to have it,” she said. “It really became linked with American history — ironic since it’s Asian.”
Part of the Abberger collection is currently on exhibit at the museum, where patrons can admire its beauty — just as guests did years ago at the family’s home.
“We couldn’t be more pleased to continue that
tradition,” Abberger said. “I know my parents would be pleased, as well.”
Chinese Porcelain
Where: Morse Museum, 445 N. Park Ave. in Winter Park
When: Make an online appointment to visit between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday
Cost: $6; $5 seniors; $1 students; free for children younger than 12; free on Fridays through April 30 Info: morsemuseum.org Follow me at facebook. com/matthew.j.palm, email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com or find me on Twitter @matt_on_arts. Want more news and reviews of theater and other arts? Go to OrlandoSentinel. com/arts