Measuring approximately seven and seven eighths inches (7 7/8”) in diameter by seven eighths of an inch (7/8”) in height, Bene Conway used her training as a watercolor painter to create a bold portrait of a young woman who has an explosion of reddish-orange hair with yellow highlights. She is also wearing a reddish-orange and yellow neck piece, possibly a feathered boa, and she is smoking a cigarette, which is rendered in white enamel. In addition, Conway used post-firing gold for the woman’s earring and her cigarette holder, and she aggressively used the gold around the outer edges of the plate. Aside from the red, orange, and yellow enameling, Conway selected a bluish-pink enamel for the plate’s interior background and a dark green enamel to represent the smoke emanating from the young woman’s cigarette. The plate’s underside is counter enameled with variegated aqua blue enamel.
Signed “Bene Conway” within the enamel itself on the underside bottom of the plate.
Condition: Absolutely beautiful on the front and only a couple of small scratches on the underside bottom! Please Note: Conway created this enamel plate in an aggressive and gutsy manner. The enameling is thickly applied and has a few firing pimples. Conway also aggressively applied the post-firing gold around the outer rim of the plate and therefore there are areas where her brush stroke became too heavy handed – but all of this is original to the plate! Examples of Bene Conway’s enamel art are quite rare, even though enameling was a large part of her artistic output during the 1950s and 1960s.
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BENE CONWAY BIO (the following information is primarily from an article titled “Contemporary Garden Art Forms To Be Exhibit For Garden Show” published in the Baytown Sun newspaper of Baytown, Texas, on April 8, 1960.
Bene Conway was a painter and enamelist of Houston, Texas, during the 1950s and 1960s. Although Conway worked in various art media, she is best known for her watercolors and enamels on copper. She had a solo exhibition of her enamels in 1959 at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston in their Houston Artists Gallery. In addition, Conway completed large-scale enamel commissions for both Maxim’s Restaurant in Houston and the Normandie Restaurant in Houston.
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