Summer Session Kansan
53rd Year, No.9
Friday, July 16, 1965
Lawrence, Kansas
Famed Silver Coffee Pots Being Shown
By Hugh Tessendorf
The Museum of Art is displaying, for the first time in a university showing, the Folger Coffee Co. collection of antique English silver coffee pots.
A. Bret Waller, curator of the museum, said: "This collection is among the finest collections of its kind in the country, or anywhere."
There are more than 200 pieces of silver in the collection, representing the great age of English silversmiths, so far as coffee service goes. Some of the greatest silversmiths are represented in the collection, along with 114 other smiths of the time.
THIS SILVER dates from 1700 to 1830, during which time designs and styles were set and have not been changed over the many years. One of the many reasons that the style has evolved is that when the French Huguenots came to England they also brought their silver styles and patterns with them.
Some of the better-known silversmiths represented are William Charnelhouse, smith of the Queen Anne coffee pot, London, 1704; Thomas Gilpin, who formed the George II coffeepot in London in 1750, and Hester Bateman, the leading woman silversmith during the 18th century. Other women represented in the collection are Dorothy Sarbit and Rebecca Eames, Paul de Lamerie and Paul Storr have numerous pieces in the collection.
THE COLLECTION also includes more pieces than just coffee pots but has small novelty items such as miniature coffee pots. These $2\frac{1}{2}$-inch tall pieces of silver were made either for children to play with or as models of the particular silversmith's work.
Waller said he did not know the value in dollars and cents of the collection but did say it was quite valuable. Even though he did not know the price, he said, he could make a rough estimate but that the dollar sign appears in the picture and reduces the value of the silver for its beauty.
GEORGE III COFFEE SERVICE—These antiques, made in the late 18th century, are part of the Folger Coffee Co. collection of antique English silver coffee pots now on display at the KU Art Museum.
Park Plaza South Is Racial Drive Focus
By Phil Higdon
A major focal point of the drive against discrimination in off-campus housing is the Park Plaza South Apartments, 1912 West 25th. The situation began in January when Robert L. Reynolds, a KU sophomore, issued a complaint that the manager of Park Plaza South had refused to rent him an apartment on the explicit grounds that he was a Negro.
A series of telephone calls and negotiations between the local chapters of CORE and NAACP and the owner of Park Plaza South, Jim Vestering of Burns, followed the initial complaint. Unsatisfied with the results of their meetings, CORE and NAACP decided to picket the Park Plaza South office in April. They continued picketing until recently.
RICHARD L. BURKE, professor of human relations and Lawrence CORE chairman, stated that, as far as CORE was concerned, the situation had not changed.
"We're still attempting to negotiate with them to change their policy." Burke said.
He added that they were in a fact-finding and planning phase and that they would continue the project in early fall, although he did not say what action would be taken.
Burke said there were reasons for stopping the picketing. Because of the summer vacation they felt there wasn't sufficient manpower to picket. Also, he said, other projects were taking the time of CORE people still in Lawrence.
"WE FELT most of the tenants of the Park Plaza South knew how the situation was," Burke said, "and they weren't getting many new applications in the summertime."
The human relations professor also said there was a "news blackout" in the Lawrence Journal-World, which "afforded no publicity in the wider community."
Burke also stated that they had received information that it probably was a much much larger problem than they had originally assumed. He said it was his understanding that Vestering and a group of others owned a group of other apartments as well as the Park Plaza South and that the problem was not limited to just this one establishment, but extended to many of their apartments south of 23rd Street.
"WERE ALSO upset that a new social sorority at KU has agreed to live in one of those apartment buildings while the apartment complex is maintaining its discrimination policy," Burke said.
"Our hope would be that the management of Park Plaza South would, on its own accord, stop the discrimination policy in Park Plaza South and in their other apartment buildings." Burke concluded.
Mr. and Mrs. Joe Supple, managers of Park Plaza South, assumed their duties the first of July, and are new to the situation. Supple said he knew nothing about the problem.
SUPPLE SAID he felt that the situation would have to be "taken in stride" when it came. However, he added that he had no discriminatory feelings toward Negroes. He said that while the situation was strictly up to Vestering, the owner, he himself would not object to renting apartments to Negroes.
"We would not discriminate against anyone," Mrs. Supple added, When Vestering was called in Burns he denied that he had any interests in other apartments.
"THE OTHER apartments are owned by entirely different groups," he said. "We have an inter-relationship-share common interests, but they have their own property, and I have mine." Vestering said.
He also objected to being "singled out."
"I think CORE has singled us out and that the Kansan has, too," Vestering said. "The record speaks for itself. This is a problem among all the different apartments. I don't like being discriminated against any more than they do." he added.
Vestering suggested that the prob-
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Guest Conductor at KU Is Dedicated to Music for Youth
By Mike Holder
Ever since the Midwestern Music and Art Camp began, it has prided itself in the great guest conductors it has been able to obtain for the students of the camp. Most of the arrangements for these conductors in the past and present were made as early as October and most were completed by January.
Conducting this Sunday's concert will be Harry John Brown, music director and conductor of the Milwaukee Symphonic Orchestra. Brown has instructed the Orchestra, Concert Band, and Symphonic Band all this week in preparation for the Sunday concert, which is expected to be one of the finest ever to be presented at the camp.
When Brown was five, his mother, a former prima ballerina of the Chicago Opera, gave him a baton. With a musical score spread before him on the living room floor, he would "conduct" the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.
WHEN HE WAS 13, he organized a band of his schoolmates, and by the time he was 15, the group had grown into a 65-member orchestra. At 16 he won a New York Philharmonic Young Composer's Award for a tone-poem entitled "Arizona," and when he was 17 the Eastman School of Music awarded him a composition scholarship.
In 1942, when he enlisted in the Army, Brown's command of languages (German, Czech, French and Russian) earned him a place as a frontline interpreter and interrogator. Later, his work as director of the famous G.I. Symphony, which followed a 500-concert tour of a choral group, The Gleemen, which he organized and conducted, led to guest appearances conducting the Nuremberg, Munich, and Vienna orchestras. All this was by the time he was 21.
AFTER THE WAR Brown completed his studies at Eastman, won his master of arts degree from the University of Chicago, and studied during the summers with Koussevitzky at Tanglewood. In addition he found time during the winter to conduct orchestral and choral concerts in Chicago and direct the Elmhurst College Music School.
He also became conductor of the Tri-City Symphony in Davenport, Iowa, where for five seasons he pioneered in community orchestra work. He later became the first musical director of the Evansville, Ind., Mesker Memorial Amphitheatre, guest-conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and was associated with Helen Traubel as conductor and arranger.
IT WAS WHEN Brown was making a guest appearance with the Boston Pops Orchestra in Boston's Symphony Hall that Arthur Fiedler came back at the intermission to engage him as associate conductor for the Boston Pops Tour Orchestra. In the two seasons he was on the road with that group, Brown conducted some 45 to 50 concerts in as many cities.
Following this experience the Manhattan Concert Orchestra was formed for him, and several coast-to-coast tours averaged more than 25 cities a month. These tours included concerts in Mexico and Canada.
In the spring of 1958 he was closely associated with the homecoming of the famous Texan, Van Cliburn. His rehearsal of the orchestra prior to Kondrashin's arrival in this country was no small contribution to the success of the concert in Carnegie Hall.
A CONCERT in the Milwaukee Auditorium, with Cliburn as soloist and Brown as conductor, brought the latter to the attention of the president and board members of the Milwaukee Orchestra and led to his engagement as music director and conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
Although he puts in a 14-hour day, seven days a week, in the interest of the Milwaukee organization, he found time to conduct seven Firestone programs on nationwide TV during the 1962-63 season.
While he has done work in building a major orchestra for Milwaukee's music lovers, it would seem that the happiest phase of Harry John Brown's musical life is that which he dedicates to bringing music to young people. Everywhere he goes Brown arranges for special concerts for them, starting at the age of three.
IN DAVENPORT, Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island, Ill. he established a children's series, going to the outlying schools when the children could not be transported to the urban centers.
When he was associated with Arthur Fiedler he conducted many of the young people's concerts, and now, in Milwaukee, he is determined that no pre-school child shall be untouched by the great spell of music. By going into the schools and talking to the young people (he addresses some 40,000 of them annually) Brown successfully transfers his own enthusiasm to them.
As an alumnus of Interlochen, Mich., Summer Music Camp he returned this year, upon invitation of Dr. Joseph Maddy, to the newly established academy to conduct a Spring weekend concert. It would be hard to determine who was more thrilled by the experience, the group of young musicians or Harry John Brown.
THERE IS NOTHING pedantic about Brown's approach to music for young people. They first must enjoy what they see and hear—the instruments, the rhythms, the melodies. Analysis of the music will come later.
A Christmas Kinderkonzert in Milwaukee is a never-to-be-forgotten sight. On Nov. 4, 1963, it was announced that there would be a concert for small children on Sunday, Dec. 22. Before the day was over the tickets were sold out and a second concert was scheduled for the same day.
Early in December the second concert was sold out, with a long list of disappointed applicants for tickets. Most exciting of all was the fact that the children were loath to leave the magical land of music.
THE REGULAR young people's concerts, sponsored by the city of Milwaukee, are presented the day after each Pop Concert. Mr. Brown has introduced such artists as Yehudi Menuhin, Ruggiero Ricci, Richard Tucker, Eileen Farrell, Rise Stevens and Frances Yeend to these audiences, never playing down to them but rather respecting the fact that they are ready for the very best.
It is the hope of Harry John Brown that every child, every teenager, every young adult will be reached in some way, in some place by the divine "sound of music."