Artful Ceramics Make Their Debut at Frieze New York

For the first time in its history, Frieze New York (May 5–7) has invited a ceramics gallery to set up a booth at its Randall's Island fairgrounds. The lucky exhibitor? New York–based dealer Jason Jacques, who brought a selection of antique and contemporary pieces from his collection. "Ceramics have always played second fiddle in the art world," Jacques explains. "There are a lot of collectors who don't mind spending $1 million on a second- or third-tier Renaissance painter, but if they hear $80,000 for a chair or $50,000 for a vase they can't wrap their head around it. This is a very common perception in the West."

At Jacques's booth—a spider-like steel pavilion designed by Joseph Miranda for Digifabshop—30 museum-quality works created in the late 1800s and early 1900s by European masters like Jean-Joseph Carriès and Georges Hoentschel (some of the first creatives to experiment with the idea of art pottery) join a series of trompe l’oeil tree sculptures by contemporary American clay artist Eric Serritella, evidence enough of the medium's influence.