LEARN: The Collections

 Visitors touring beautiful Olana will see the paintings, sculpture and furnishings Frederic and Isabel Church acquired over the course of their lives, which surrounded them and their children, servants and guests in their daily life at Olana.
The collection was described by a 19th century guest as, "a museum of fine arts rich in bronzes, paintings, sculptures and antique and artistic specimens from all over the world."
Today's visitor experience is remarkably unchanged, with the public encountering interiors that look as they did in the 1890s-- the virtually intact home of one of America's most important painters. The sheer richness and depth of the collections speak to Church's life-long interest in acquiring intriguing objects from around the world.The whole is an exemplary example of an early Aesthetic Movement interior.

 Highlights of the collection include paintings by Frederic Church and fellow Hudson River School artists Martin Johnson Heade and Arthur Parton, and numerous works by his close friend sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer.


The eclectic assortment of furniture and art collected on his many travels abroad and purchased from the growing number of purveyors in New York City include, Middle Eastern carpets,
metalwork,ceramics and costumes; old master paintings; Mexican and colonial folk art; pre-Columbian art; and 19th century American and Oriental furniture.

Object of The Month: Massier Vase

One of the many treasures collected by Frederic Church and displayed in the Court Hall of Olana is an Art Pottery vase by the French ceramist, Clément Massier (1844-1917).Massier specialized in producing Hispano-Moresque-influenced pottery - earthenware with wonderful silver and copper oxide glazes made iridescent in a smoky kiln.

The technique of producing luster glazes was developed in Egypt in the 7^th or 9^th century, and perfected by the potters of Bagdad, Basra and Samarra by the 10^th century.It was then transmitted Syria and Iran, and by the 14^th and 15^th centuries had reached Spain and Italy.This method of glazing was revived in the 19^th century by Art Potters like Massier.Art Pottery, making hand crafted works of earthenware, flourished in the United States, Great Britain and Europe from 1870 to 1900.This Art Pottery movement was a reaction to the mass produced utilitarian machine made objects readily available in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Olana piece is a wonderful example of Massier.The gourd shaped vase is glazed with a rich red copper luster glaze and further ornamented with a delicate etched design of flowers and scrolling vines – a decorative technique introduced to Massier by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer in 1885.For his spectacular Art Pottery Massier won a gold metal prize at the 1889 Paris Exposition.