"We have examples representing almost all kinds of ceramics made from the 9th to the 15th century, about 90 percent of which are bowls," says Plotnick, adding that the variety of types of decoration is much broader than most people realize. "The four basic motifs that go through all Islamic visual art are floriate patterns, calligraphy, geometric and figurative representations—birds, camels, dogs, other animals, even people." One outstanding example of this figurative painting is a late 12th-century bowl from Iran with two seated figures whose facial features the artist has depicted in considerable detail.

About half of the Plotnicks’ collection was featured in the exhibition "Perpetual Glory," at the Art Institute of Chicago, from March through October last year. "After nine months, I’m glad to have it all home again," he says. "At first, I thought, who else is interested in this but us, but the show pulled in substantial numbers of people. It’s such an exciting area of art that most Americans don’t know much about." —Bobbie Leigh
 
AMERICAN FOLK ART: Jane Katcher
American Invention
Jane Katcher’s collection of Americana, considered one of the finest in this country, works on many levels. Aesthetically, it reflects Katcher’s admiration for art imbued with what she describes as "a restrained power, a sense of motion in space and supreme elegance." Historically, it reveals and documents how people lived, courted, married and maintained friendships in post-Revolutionary America. Many of the roughly 300 works in the collection are primarily utilitarian, "produced by people not making art for art’s sake," says Katcher. Her bucket-bench cupboard, Windsor armchairs, utility baskets, boxes and an ivory bodkin, among other historical material, were created for families in the 18th and 19th centuries in New England, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

What unifies the collection—everything from furniture to folk portraits—is what the Coconut Grove, Florida, collector calls "sincerity in the material, an openness and innocence." One of her most remarkable works, reflecting both a sense of restraint and a candid, straightforward simplicity characteristic of the collection, is the 1799 portrait "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt" by John Brewster Jr., which is promised to the Yale University Art Gallery. In this astounding painting, the visual restraint only serves to magnify the loving bond between father and daughter. "They are not smiling," Katcher notes. "Their gaze is penetrating, and with their fingers barely touching you sense a gentleness and the ephemeral nature of their relationship. It makes me weak-kneed just to gaze at it."

Katcher is especially drawn to family portraits and equally captivated by family and friendship memorabilia, such as an 1849 Christmas party invitation and fragile friendship albums replete with notes, woven hair, poems and personal sentiments. "Their sweetness and letters of affection allow us the incredible opportunity of getting close to people of a young nation and to admire their ability to express love and disappointment so openly," she says. Her Web site (janekatchercollection.com) features images from Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana (2006), a comprehensive book that includes scholarly essays that documents her collection. In addition, the site is updated with new acquisitions made since the book’s publication and presents new information about the collection. —Bobbie Leigh

PHOTOGRAPHY: Elton John
Iconic Images
Pop culture legend Sir Elton John has been snapped by many great photographers throughout his career, but it wasn’t until 1991, when he first saw photographs taken in the 1950s by fashion greats Horst P. Horst and Irving Penn, that his "eyes opened to photography as an art form." A longtime collector of everything from vintage records and cars to contemporary art and Art Nouveau and Art Deco, he went on to create one of the world’s leading private photography collections.

Distinguished by its extraordinary depth and stellar quality, Elton’s 5,000-plus work collection ranges from vintage 20th-century photographs by such masters as André Kertész, Man Ray, Edward Weston, Paul Outerbridge, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Diane Arbus, Berenice Abbott, Horst and Penn to contemporary prints by Andreas Gursky, Gregory Crewdson, David Hilliard, Sam Taylor-Wood and Zhang Huan, some of whom are personal friends of the entertainer.
 
The collection reflects Elton’s interest in figurative forms, fashion images, nudes and portraits, as well as abstract modernist works from the 1920s and 1930s by artists such as Man Ray and Kertész, which form a significant concentration. He became known for breaking price records for these photographers at New York auctions in the 1990s, having contributed to the explosive growth of the vintage photographs market. Indeed, Elton says one of his favorite works is the first print Kertész made of the "Underwater Swimmer" in 1917, which shows the original crop marks that he used to make future prints.