The Union Porcelain Works was one of the most important porcelain manufactories in America during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and the most significant firm in the New York area. Although it maintained a successful bread-and-butter production of hotelware, its fame derives from the hire of German-born sculptor Karl L. H. Muller in advance of the nation’s Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, for which he designed a large number of major exhibition pieces, several of which are in the Museum’s collection. Their display elicited “admiration from the delicacy of the ware and shape, and for beauty of design,” in the critical press of the day.
From the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
