Toronto Guide
Toronto
Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art
Address: 111 Queen's Park; Subway: Museum
Opening time: Daily 10am–6pm, Fri till 9pm
Price: $12, free on Fri 4–9pm
Website: www.gardinermuseum.com
The Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art holds a superb collection of ceramics. Spread over three small floors, the museum's exhibits are beautifully presented, and key pieces are well labelled and explained. An audioguide is also available.
On the main floor, the pre-Columbian section is particularly fine, composed of over three hundred pieces from regions stretching from Mexico to Peru. One of the most comprehensive collections of its kind in North America, it provides an intriguing insight into the lifestyles and beliefs of the Mayan, Incan and Aztec peoples. The sculptures are all the more remarkable for the fact that the potter's wheel was unknown in pre-Columbian America, and thus everything on display was necessarily hand-modelled. On this floor also is an exquisite sample of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century tin-glazed Italian majolica, mostly dishes, plates and jars depicting classical and Biblical themes designed by Renaissance artists. The early pieces are comparatively plain, limited to green and purple, but the later examples are brightly coloured reflecting technological change: in the second half of the fifteenth century, Italian potters learnt how to glaze blue, yellow and then ochre. The most splendid pieces are perhaps those from the city – and pottery centre – of Urbino, including one wonderful plate portraying the fall of Jericho.
Up above, the second floor has both Japanese and Chinese porcelain plus an especially fine sample of eighteenth-century European porcelain, most notably hard-paste wares (fired at very high temperatures) from Meissen, Germany. On this floor also is a charming collection of Italian commedia dell'arte figurines, doll-sized representations of theatrical characters popular across Europe from the middle of the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century. The predecessor of pantomime, the commedia dell'arte featured stock characters in improvised settings, but with a consistent theme of seduction, age and beauty: the centrepiece was always an elderly, rich merchant and his beautiful young wife.