Hayden Goldberg, 82, died on January 3. He was born in Gardiner, Maine, on February 23, 1929, to Gertrude Swartz Goldberg and Abraham Goldberg and was educated in the public schools of Gardiner. Upon the completion of his third year of high school, he was accepted for admission to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, from which he graduated cum laude in 1949.
He earned a master’s degree in English literature from Columbia University and completed the requirements for his doctorate at Cambridge University in England. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa fraternity.
Goldberg began his teaching career at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., and Temple University in Philadelphia; he moved to the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where he taught until his retirement.
With his devoted partner of 57 years, Curtis F. Brown, Goldberg was an avid antiquarian, attending shows and auctions with his sister Faye Montell, a respected Maine dealer, in their search for English Staffordshire china. In addition, he was a devotee of the opera, a passionate stamp collector and a fan of the Boston Red Sox.
A lover of dogs, he was especially fond of his Bedlington terriers as well as his sister’s many border collies.
He was predeceased by his parents and his sisters Joan Goldberg and Faye Montell.
In addition to Curtis Brown, he is survived by his brother-in-law James Montell; nephew Alan Montell, nieces Susan Montell and Karen Montell and her husband Donald L. Brown; an uncle, Professor Milton Gordon; and seven grandnieces and nephews.
Memorial donations made be made to the Temple Beth El Building Fund, 3 Woodlawn Street, Augusta ME 04330-6918 or to a charity of one’s choice.
Transferware Collectors Club Remembers Hayden Goldberg
With profound sadness, the Transferware Collectors Club (TCC) learned of the death of veteran transferware collector Hayden Goldberg on January 3. Hayden and Curtis F. Brown, his partner of 57 years, began collecting “Old Blue” American historical patterns in 1963, successfully amassing an encyclopedic collection of almost 800 pieces, containing nearly all the known views.
Hayden’s intellectual insights and scholarly contributions to the field of transferware are well known. In the July 1981 edition of The Magazine Antiques, he published “The Earliest Known Example of Historical Blue Staffordshire,” an earthenware plate with a medallion portrait of George Washington and the arms of the United States. Two later articles explored the architecture of Charles Bullfinch on Historical Blue Staffordshire.
The TCC is indebted to both Hayden and Curtis for allowing the club to photograph and document their collection for the TCC’s current interactive online exhibit, “Patriotic America: Blue Printed Pottery Celebrating a New Nation.” Produced in partnership with Historic New England and Winterthur Museum, it provides a definitive database of images illustrating important places and historical events of the early republic.
Hayden will also be remembered for the legendary lunch he and Curtis hosted for TCC members Ted Gallagher and Kurt O’Hare. As described by Gallagher in the Spring-Summer 2010 edition of the TCC Bulletin, “Sandwiches and soup were served in some of the rarest views in ‘Old Blue’ and food never tasted so good.”
