Trout Fishing in America


I snatched this out of the stream as it went by the other day. Now I don't know what to do with it.

"... held a patent on the term "tomatoketchup."

Kathleen Pflueger, Porcelain Fan, Dies at 90
Published: April 5, 2006

Kathleen Powers Pflueger, owner of one of the world's great collections of 18th-century porcelain and 16th- and 17-century faience, a form of earthenware, died on March 30 surrounded by her pieces in the Park Avenue apartment that she had designed to house them. She was 90.

Her death was confirmed by her nephew Donald H. Dewey.

Mrs. Pflueger, who was known as Kiyi (pronounced kai-yai), was born into a family that counted among its ancestors early settlers of Manhattan, Rhode Island and Martha's Vineyard.

She was drawn into the rarefied world of porcelain by her husband, Edward M. Pflueger, who had begun collecting it in the 1930's. They married in 1943. Mr. Pflueger had immigrated to the United States from Germany to establish an American base for Bayer A.G., the pharmaceutical company. He was chairman and president of the company in New York until 1975. Mrs. Pflueger became his partner in assembling collections of more than 700 pieces.

A turning point in their collaboration came in 1949, when they acquired the Otto Blohm porcelain collection, one of the finest in the world.

"The Pfluegers collected for more than 40 years and formed an absolutely superb collection of French faience and German porcelain and faience," said Anne Little Poulet, director of the Frick Collection. She came to know the Pfluegers when she led the department of European decorative arts and sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Ms. Poulet, who traveled with the couple to shows and auctions, helped persuade them to donate 377 pieces to the Boston museum. Mr. Pflueger agreed to do so on his wife's death. He died in 1997 at the age of 91. The rest of the collection will remain with the family, Ms. Poulet said.

Tracey Albainy, senior curator of decorative arts and sculpture in the museum's European art department, declined to disclose the collection's estimated value.

The collection is particularly admired for the quality of its porcelains from the Japanese Palace in Dresden, Germany. In the early 1700's, the palace was a getaway for Augustus II, known as Augustus the Strong, who was King of Poland and an elector of Saxony and who built the palace specifically for his collection.

The Pfluegers also acquired an impressive number of porcelain figures modeled on commedia dell'arte, the Italian comic theater.

In 1993 Christie's auction house published two books showing the Pflueger collection.

Most of their acquisitions were housed in the spacious Park Avenue apartment that Mrs. Pflueger had designed for them.

But some went to their country home, Kiyiwana Farm, a 1,000-acre property in Dutchess County. The farm has five houses, stables and barns, and a red tea house, all largely designed by Mrs. Pflueger. Formal terraced gardens feature 18th- and 19th-century statuary.

In Manhattan, Mrs. Pflueger was a founder of the Winter Antiques Show, established in 1954 to aid the East Side House Settlement, on whose board she served from 1947 to 1991. Modeled on the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair in London, it became, and remains, one of the premiere antiques shows in Manhattan. Mrs. Pflueger was also on the arts committee of the China Institute and helped design and establish a gallery there.

Mr. Dewey, her nephew, said that Mrs. Pflueger had been a firm believer in the importance of genealogy. Her father was descended from early New York settlers; her mother, from colonizers of Martha's Vineyard and Newport, R.I. One of her grandfathers became a parks commissioner in New York; another held a patent on the term "tomatoketchup."

She belonged to a raft of organizations with lofty pedigrees in American society, among them the Colonial Dames of America, the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne, the Hereditary Order of Descendants of Colonial Governors and the Order of Colonial Lords of Manors in America.

Kathleen Isabel Powers was born on Oct. 4, 1915, the fifth of eight children of Harry Lord Powers and Elizabeth Robinson Hazard at Shrewsbury Manor, their agricultural and equestrian estate in Shrewsbury, N.J. She lived there until she was a teenager, when she was sent to school in Paris. As a young woman, she worked as an interior designer. "Like a lot of people in the Depression," Mr. Dewey said, "she was left with all the trappings, but not much money."

She is survived by a sister, Patricia Hazard Powers Frech, of Manhattan.