Lacquered Table with Everted Flanges

With Edgar Worch (1880-1972), Berlin and New York, and Gertrude Trubner (1895-1972), Geneva and New York, probably by 1930-February 3, 1945 [1];

Purchased from Worch and Trubner by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1945.

NOTES:

[1] Edgar Worch and Gertrude Trubner lent this table to the Nelson-Atkins opening exhibition in December 1933, and it remained on loan to the museum until its acquisition in February 1945. See letters between Worch and Lindsay Hughes, Acting Curator, between November 10, 1944 and February 11, 1945, Nelson-Atkins Archives, RG92 Lindsay Hughes Files, box 1, folder 23. German-born Worch began his career working for his uncle Adolphe (1843-1915), a dealer of Chinese and Japanese art, in Paris in 1902, and travelled to China on business annually between 1906 and 1914. During World War I, the Paris business was sequestered by the French government as enemy property and Worch returned to Germany, where he enlisted in the army and was subsequently wounded at the battle of Verdun. After the war, Worch became managing director, and later co-owner, of Glenk-Worch in Berlin, an antiques dealer focusing on Chinese ceramics. His brother-in-law (sister to Edgar’s wife Hedwig), Jörg Trubner (1901-1930), oversaw purchases in China for the firm. He died of black measles on his third trip to China in 1930. Worch and Gertrude Trubner’s joint ownership of this table likely indicates it had been part of the company’s stock prior to Jörg Trubner’s death. Worch moved to Geneva in 1932 and later New York in 1938. For more on Worch, see Patrizia Jirka-Schmitz, “The Trade in Far Eastern Art in Berlin during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933),” Journal for Art Market Studies 3 (2018): 4-8.