Abstract
In August 2011, a lucky visitor to the PUS Antiques Roadshow event at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh excitedly stood in front of TV cameras to share his porcelain bust of Cleopatra with antiques appraiser David Rago. According to the expert, the extremely rare bust had been made by renouned ceramic artist Isaac Broome in Trenton, New Jersey, and dis1>fayed at the 1876 Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia. much to the delight of its owner, Rago desctibed the bust as being very rare and of the finest museum quality. What failed to come up in the conversation, however, was that its celebrated maker had an important (yet overlooked) career in Pittsburgh long before his famous Cleopatra bust was modeled, molded, and fired.
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