Museum accessions.

Two recent gifts to the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) demonstrate once again the symbiotic relationship between museums and collectors. In one case, a family heirloom enhanced the museum's rich holdings, which in turn provided the resources that corrected some of the family's long-held misconceptions. In the second case, the museum, recognizing the collector's expertise, often called on him for advice during his lifetime; his widow and children repaid the compliment by presenting the collection to the museum after his death.

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The Herwig porcelain service (illustrated above) came to NOMA with the family history of having been commissioned by Joseph Louis Herwig of New Orleans, the great-uncle of the donors. However, its style suggests that the service dates from between about 1845 and 1865, and Herwig was only born in 1844, so it seems more likely that he inherited it from his parents. Nonetheless, its ownership in New Orleans underscores the continuing relationship between residents of that most French of American cities and their motherland. Well-to-do nineteenth-century New Orleans families paid regular visits to Paris, and upscale retailers such as Prudent Mallard on Royal Street in the French Quarter kept French-made furnishings on hand.

Family tradition also held that the service was made at the Sevres porcelain manufactory, but its body is not consistent with Sevres production. Instead, it is in keeping with the large amounts of hard-paste porcelain made by a number of manufacturers in Paris, and later in Limoges, from the third quarter of the eighteenth century to the end of Napoleon III's Second Empire in 1870. The well-painted floral decoration and royal blue bands relate the ...