Author: Ross E. Taggart

Published: 1953, 1967

Publisher: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum

The Burnap Collection of English Pottery, with more than 1,300 examples of slipware, tin-glazed earthenware and stoneware, is the most important collection of pre-industrial British pottery outside Britain. It was the result of decades of collecting by Harriet and Frank Burnap. The collection is also important to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art as it was the first collection of art donated to the institution in 1941, seven years after its founding. The Burnap’s Deed of Gift stipulated that the Museum could not sell the collection or any works, that the collection must be accessible to scholars and lovers of art and that no other ceramics may be displayed with the collection.