Transcript
Speaker: He estimates there are 150,000 individual pieces.
Speaker: It's not overworked, it's not overwrought with ornaments.
Speaker: There are multi layers of glass.
Speaker: The peacock eyes, they're green.
Speaker: And back then that would have bought you four or five cars.
Speaker: The emperor said, you know what, let's only produce for our own art.
Speaker: And for the weather, for the great, great light.
Speaker: I'm striking in the coil of the serpent.
Speaker: I'm absolutely amazed.
Speaker: Lucky you get it all back.
Speaker: Welcome back to Curious Objects and the Stories Behind Them, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm your host, Ben Miller.
Speaker: I'd like to thank our sponsor for this episode, America's oldest auction house, Freemans.
Speaker: Located in Center City, Philadelphia, Freemans has been telling the story of valued objects and collections since 1805.
Speaker: Today, Freemans believes in a unique standard of one-on-one service, and their tradition of excellence has benefited generations of private collectors, institutions, advisors, estates, and museums.
Speaker: Freeman's is always inviting consignments across all collecting categories.
Speaker: With furniture from Pennsylvania makers such as George Nakashima, Warren Escherich, and Paul Evans, and paintings of the idyllic Bucks County landscape by Pennsylvania Impressionists like Daniel Garber, Fern Isabel Coppage, and Edward Willis Redfield, their Spring 2018 sales will celebrate Pennsylvania as a center for antiques, fine art, craft, and design.
Speaker: Let Freeman's help tell your story.
Speaker: For more information or to set up a complimentary and confidential auction valuation, please visit Freeman's online at freemansauction.com.
Speaker: Now, fasten your seatbelts.
Speaker: So far, I've been talking with one expert per episode.
Speaker: Today's show has not one, not two, but nine different specialists.
Speaker: And there will be even more in the next episode.
Speaker: That's because I'm bringing you on a whirlwind tour of one of the greatest antique shows in America, the Winter Antique Show at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan.
Speaker: This is a show that draws together under one roof some of the best antiques dealers there are, and once a year in January they bring with them the most rare, fascinating, and beautiful pieces in the world.
Speaker: So I had this incredible opportunity to interview some of the greatest antiques dealers in the world about some of the most curious objects that exist.
Speaker: They range from imperial jewels to Tiffany glass to the finest American folk art and even a very political quilt.
Speaker: I'm so excited to share these stories with you.
Speaker: We're going to be moving pretty fast, and if one of these objects really speaks to you, go take a look at its picture at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: I don't want to take any more time away from these experts, but don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, leave a rating on iTunes, and send me your feedback and suggestions at podcast at themagazineantiques.com.
Speaker: Without further ado, here's Patrick Bell with Old Hope Antiques.
Speaker: Well, we've been in business since July 4th of 1976.
Speaker: We're based out of New Hope, Pennsylvania, and now also maintain a location by appointment in New York City.
Speaker: And we've been dealing American painted furniture and folk art for that entire period of time.
Speaker: And we have been at the Winter Antique Show now for 22 years.
Speaker: That's a lot of years.
Speaker: It's a lot of years.
Speaker: It's aging.
Speaker: And you're back for more punishment.
Speaker: We are here for the duration.
Speaker: And one thing that you've brought with you this time around is a quilt.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Tell me about this quilt.
Speaker: We have really quite an extraordinary quilt with us this year, both historically and graphically.
Speaker: It's called the Union Star Quilt.
Speaker: It has been published in a couple of books recently.
Speaker: on various topics of American folk art, but a number of things make this quilt special.
Speaker: First of all, it's not a pattern quilt, meaning it's not a log cabin or a flying geese or a quilt that you see in multiple examples.
Speaker: This is an individual effort, an individual design, and we also know who it was done by and when it was executed.
Speaker: because the quilt consists of 39 stars on a blue background.
Speaker: The stars are in white.
Speaker: It's bordered by white oak leaves and little red leaves and red flowers.
Speaker: And in the center, lower left, is a dove raising a deconstructed American flag with red and white stripes and a single star.
Speaker: And then she has cut out letters that read Abraham Lincoln, Grant P.R.
Speaker: for president, Colfax V.I.
Speaker: for vice president, and the Union Forever 1869, the Union Star.
Speaker: And then below that it says this quilt was made 1869 by Elizabeth Holmes in her 68th year.
Speaker: And Elizabeth Holmes was a Quaker lady living in Loudoun County, Virginia.
Speaker: So she would have been below the Mason-Dixon line and a part of the country that would have been torn apart by the Civil War.
Speaker: And she is expressing herself in the only way she was able to politically.
Speaker: The election of 1868 saw Grant and Colfax come into the White House.
Speaker: And she's, first of all, giving credit to Abraham Lincoln, then Grant and Colfax as president and vice president, at a time when there would still be a lot of division and hard feelings about the Civil War, obviously.
Speaker: So what would her motivation have been?
Speaker: Was this really a political poster or the equivalent of what we'd call a political poster?
Speaker: One can't help but think that she was making a political statement.
Speaker: It's just too bold and too obvious.
Speaker: So she is definitely making a statement about that.
Speaker: But I think even more so than the political angle, she's making a statement about America and the fact that the union stayed together because she says twice, the union star and the union forever.
Speaker: And I think that really is her statement.
Speaker: And then she's also making an artistic statement in her use of this beautiful combination of blue and white set off by the red and white stripes of the flag.
Speaker: It's really quite a magnificent piece.
Speaker: Now, I think of a quilt as being a private object.
Speaker: You use it in your bedroom.
Speaker: But it's making quite a public statement in this case.
Speaker: Is that a common occurrence or is that unusual?
Speaker: Generally, I believe quilts that were unique and really showed off the skill of the maker were used as adornments when there was company or guests in the house.
Speaker: And as I understand it, they were often used in guest rooms and laid out just for observation and appreciation and not for daily use.
Speaker: I have no doubt that this quilt was not used on a daily basis.
Speaker: It would never have survived like this.
Speaker: And sort of the piece de resistance of this quilt is in the very lower right-hand corner where it says, by Elizabeth Holmes in her 68th year, that's followed by a pair of hands that are done in stuffed work, which means that the hands were cut out of white cotton and they were sewn down and then left open at one end and stuffed with cotton.
Speaker: And so they're dimensional.
Speaker: They're a three-dimensional effect on this quilt, as is the dove.
Speaker: The dove is stuffed as well.
Speaker: So that's another technique that is found in this particular piece.
Speaker: Those elements really do pop out from the quilt.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Well, it's a very impressive object.
Speaker: Thanks so much for telling me about it.
Speaker: Well, thank you for your interest.
Speaker: Okay, I know what you're thinking, and I promise, no more political talk.
Speaker: Let's travel back in time, from 1869 to 1680, and back to the old country.
Speaker: This is Robert Aaronsen, the fifth generation owner of the Amsterdam firm Aaronsen Antiques.
Speaker: They specialize in Dutch Delftware, that is, ceramics produced in the Dutch city of Delft.
Speaker: This city was the home of Vermeer, the origin of Delph ware, and, well, what else do you need to know?
Speaker: I asked Robert about a pair of vases.
Speaker: They're a pair of pear-shaped vases.
Speaker: They were produced towards the end of the 17th century, around 1680.
Speaker: and where until that time most of the objects that we were looking at are simply blue and white.
Speaker: This has an added color of purple, a manganese color.
Speaker: We see on the vases a group of Chinese figures seated under a tree.
Speaker: The tree is blooming and that entire decoration is within beautiful bands that enclose the entire decoration.
Speaker: Now, Chinese figures on Dutch Delphware, we see that more often because the Dutch East India traders were bringing in Chinese porcelain from around 1600 and it was very much in fashion, not only in the Netherlands but all over Europe and it was traded through the Netherlands, through the ships that came into Holland and from there it was spread over Europe.
Speaker: In the middle of the 17th century, so around 1650, there were civil unrests in China.
Speaker: The end of the Ming era, beginning of the Qing era.
Speaker: And at that time the area where they were producing porcelain got part of the civil unrest.
Speaker: and part of it was burned down.
Speaker: So the production level, the amount of pieces that they could produce went down significantly and the emperor said, you know what, let's only produce for our home market and let's not produce anymore for export.
Speaker: So the trade lines to Europe dried up and the Dutch potters that were making ceramics until that time on a much simpler scale started to imitate the Chinese porcelain.
Speaker: And this is their necessity.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: So there was a demand in the market and they were supplying the demand with items that very much looked like Chinese porcelain, but it wasn't in fact, it wasn't porcelain at all.
Speaker: It was earthenware.
Speaker: And what's the significance of the added third color?
Speaker: Was that technically difficult to achieve?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That was very difficult, and it was produced by a gentleman called Van Einhorn.
Speaker: And Samuel Van Einhorn was a factory owner, and he introduced the third color.
Speaker: So he did quite a lot for the ceramics and for the production of ceramics, but he also meant a lot for the city of Delft.
Speaker: So actually, this pair of vases produced at the Greek A factory around 1680 were produced by a very important man who played an important role for...
Speaker: both the ceramics and the city.
Speaker: Just to explain a little bit more why he was so important for the city is that the king of England at that time saw how Delft was expanding and what the quality was of the products that came from Delft that he put out an embargo on anything painted from the Netherlands really meaning the Dutch Delftware.
Speaker: This was Charles II?
Speaker: This was, yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker: I think that was Charles II.
Speaker: And he said, well, you're not allowed to bring in any earthenware anymore from the Netherlands.
Speaker: We want to protect our own markets.
Speaker: Samuel van Eynhorn, together with two other people from Delft, traveled to the King of England the year before he died in 1685 and asked the King of England to lift the embargo.
Speaker: The embargo wasn't officially lifted, but a year later, the Greek A factory was selling quite a lot of pieces to England.
Speaker: So he did a good job.
Speaker: Well, a little mercantilism goes a long way, doesn't it?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Really, in the blood of the Dutch.
Speaker: Well, Robert, thanks so much for talking to me.
Speaker: Ben, it's my pleasure.
Speaker: Now we're going to go from a Chinese-inspired Dutch piece to an English-inspired American piece.
Speaker: Next up is Peter Eaton of the creatively named firm Peter Eaton Antiques.
Speaker: Peter and I talked about a real monster of an object, a secretary bookcase.
Speaker: What is this, eight feet?
Speaker: It's exactly 8 feet tall to the top of the finial and exactly 6 feet wide at its widest.
Speaker: One drawer pulls out and is a desk and the two big doors are for file cabinets and then the entire top section is glazed for ledgers or books.
Speaker: And the doors in the upper section have a kind of a Gothic arch shape to them.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Some of the interesting points about this are what remains of its history.
Speaker: I have photos of the house that it was made for and then pictures of the house with the secretary in place.
Speaker: The house was built between 1804 and 1808 in a small town called New Braintree Mass, which is just south of Worcester.
Speaker: And the house stayed in the Peniman family until 1917 when it burned to the ground.
Speaker: And fortunately, this piece and some of the other pieces of furniture had been taken out just a couple of years ahead of that.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: A close shave.
Speaker: It was a close shave, yes.
Speaker: And then it stayed in the Penniman family until 1913 when it was sold to a collector from North Andover, Mass., a man named George Stevens, and he was the second owner.
Speaker: and the Stevens family kept it for three generations and then donated it to a museum on the North Shore and I purchased it from the museum when they deaccessioned it several years ago but we have the pictures of the house we have pictures of it in the house we have the bill of sale from 1913 the history of the house and the history of the Peniman family all included with it so
Speaker: How unusual is it to have that level of documentation for an early American piece of furniture?
Speaker: It's very unusual.
Speaker: It's very unusual, yes.
Speaker: This was made probably about 1815 in Salem just for the Peneman family.
Speaker: So it's nice to know that something was made specifically for someone else and has survived intact that long.
Speaker: Has it attracted some attention at the show?
Speaker: It's attracted a lot of attention, most positive, although most people say, I wish I had a place to put it because it is pretty large.
Speaker: We are in Manhattan, after all.
Speaker: Well, that's what I thought.
Speaker: And there are a lot of buildings with high ceilings that I thought could perhaps fit it in.
Speaker: So we'll see.
Speaker: I'll see if I can squeeze it into my closet.
Speaker: Excellent idea.
Speaker: Peter Eden, thanks very much.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: I have to report that this piece has been sold, but you'll find plenty of other fine pieces in his Newberry, Massachusetts shop.
Speaker: We all know the name Tiffany, but they make more than diamond engagement rings.
Speaker: And they used to make some of the finest stained glass in the world.
Speaker: My next guest is Arlie Sulca of the 70-year-old New York City firm Lillian Nassau.
Speaker: And also, I should mention, the Antiques Roadshow.
Speaker: I asked her about a flamboyant Tiffany stained glass window.
Speaker: Okay, well, we are looking at an early Tiffany window from the 1890s.
Speaker: And this piece, this window is about, what, three by five feet, give or take?
Speaker: I'm going to say, yes, that sounds pretty good.
Speaker: And it features a peacock.
Speaker: Yes, a peacock medallion, and it is floating over a balcony.
Speaker: And it's actually very architectural in spirit and actually, no, in design, I should say.
Speaker: And I wanted to say that we actually owned this window several years ago.
Speaker: And I didn't know much, as much about Tiffany windows back then as I do now.
Speaker: And since we have now gotten this window back, I have made some fabulous discoveries.
Speaker: What have you found out about it?
Speaker: Well, we never knew how this window was used and we got behind it when it came back into the gallery and discovered that there are two original frames on this window.
Speaker: The interior original frame on one side has three cutouts for hinges and on the other side there's a cutout for a latch.
Speaker: And behind that frame is another frame that has very old weatherproofing on it.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Is there also a Declaration of Independence somewhere in here?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: But this is still very good.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And the other thing, another thing that we learned about this beautiful piece is the plumage on this peacock is just absolutely amazing.
Speaker: The glass in it, there's rippled glass.
Speaker: There are multi layers of glass and the peacock eyes themselves, they're green, but there's also like a little heart shape of blue.
Speaker: And we had thought probably the first time that that was just one piece of glass.
Speaker: But when we examined it from behind, we realized that the little heart was acid etched.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: So there was another layer of glass over the green initially.
Speaker: And then with acid etching, they made it into the little heart.
Speaker: And that forms the peacock eyes.
Speaker: Great attention to detail.
Speaker: Beautiful and it's a technique that was used all the way through the window making.
Speaker: But this, in style alone, one of the reasons we also decided that this was made between 1890 and 1895 is because it has more of an aesthetic nature to it.
Speaker: It's not super Art Nouveau.
Speaker: It doesn't show a peacock in the style that you'll see in the later windows.
Speaker: Usually the peacock would be perched on a balustrade with this beautiful landscape behind it and with the tail flowing beneath the body of the peacock rather than having the fan of the peacock making up the majority of this roundel.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, it's a beautiful and a memorable piece.
Speaker: Thanks so much for telling me about it.
Speaker: Oh, you're welcome.
Speaker: Always excited to talk about it.
Speaker: Once again, this episode is possible because of our sponsor, America's oldest auction house, Freemans.
Speaker: In Center City, Philadelphia, Freemans has been telling the story of valued objects and collections since 1805.
Speaker: Today, Freemans believes in a unique standard of one-on-one service, and their tradition of excellence has benefited generations of private collectors, institutions, advisors, estates, and museums.
Speaker: Freemans holds more than two dozen auctions a year across all collecting categories, from American furniture and decorative arts to modern and contemporary art.
Speaker: With international experience and comprehensive knowledge of market conditions, the specialists at Freeman's work closely with consignors and collectors to offer unparalleled assistance in the sale and purchase of fine arts, furniture, decorative arts, jewelry, books, and more.
Speaker: All of Freeman's auctions and catalogs are published online.
Speaker: Their app, Freeman's Live, is a complimentary service that allows users to bid live in real time from any mobile device or desktop.
Speaker: Freeman's is currently inviting consignments for this spring 2018 auction season.
Speaker: For those clients outside the Philadelphia area, Freeman's regional representatives in the New England, Southeast, and West Coast areas are available to assist you with every step of the consignment process.
Speaker: Let Freeman's help tell your story.
Speaker: For more information, or to set up a complimentary and confidential auction valuation of a single object or an entire collection, please visit Freeman's online at freemansauction.com.
Speaker: If you've listened to Curious Objects before, you may remember my interview with Stuart Feld, president of the New York firm Herschel & Adler, about a Boston linen press.
Speaker: Well, at the Winter Antique Show, I got to talk with one of Stuart's colleagues, Eric Baumgartner, and we spoke about something completely different.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: We're going to be talking about flat art as opposed to furniture or decorative arts that I'm sure that Stuart spoke with you about.
Speaker: And so what's this painting that we're looking at?
Speaker: It's a work by an artist named William McCloskey, who was an American still life painter active in the latter part of the 19th century.
Speaker: Our painting is a painting of Valencia oranges, and what is distinctive about these oranges is that some of them are wrapped in white waxy tissue.
Speaker: McCloskey in the early 1880s lived in Los Angeles right around the time that the citrus industry was beginning to take off.
Speaker: And part of its reason why it was doing so well was because the citrus growers were able to ship their product to the east by railroad.
Speaker: with the oranges being wrapped in this protective tissue.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: And McCloskey thought that it would make a great subject for a still life.
Speaker: So we did a series of still life paintings of oranges, lemons, many of them wrapped in this very dry, very tactile tissue.
Speaker: And it created, I think as a body of work, a very abstract type of still life that really is his signature subject.
Speaker: So this is really a very commercial subject.
Speaker: It is actually, yes.
Speaker: And McCloskey latched onto it at just the right time because the citrus growers started to ship the product to the east wrapped in this white tissue.
Speaker: But then about 10 years later, in the late 1890s, they discovered that why not print our advertising on the tissue?
Speaker: So instead of it being just plain white, it might say sun-kissed growers.
Speaker: And that would have changed the whole tenor of McCloskey's abstraction by having these words or colors or whatever on the white tissue instead of just plain white.
Speaker: Was he good at self-promotion?
Speaker: Was he popular during his life?
Speaker: He actually was relatively popular.
Speaker: He painted our painting and worked in New York City after living in Los Angeles for a few years.
Speaker: And his wife, Alberta McCloskey, was also an artist.
Speaker: They were good self-promoters, maybe not great self-promoters, but good.
Speaker: And paintings like the Oranges painting that we have in our booth were very attractive.
Speaker: to the kind of upper middle class buyer in late 19th century America.
Speaker: They're not big paintings generally, although this one is a little larger than most.
Speaker: So they appeal to people who had more modest, nice but modest homes, and they were great paintings for a dining room setting or parlor setting.
Speaker: They were sized for that.
Speaker: I don't think of late 19th century California as being a center of creative arts.
Speaker: Is that a misperception on my part?
Speaker: Were there other artists active?
Speaker: Well, there actually were, and a few of the others were still life painters, but as time went on, of course, it...
Speaker: And it became more and more populated and, I think, wealthier.
Speaker: I think a lot of artists went there for all the reasons that you can imagine today, for the weather, for the great, great light.
Speaker: And in McCloskey's case, he went there and discovered that he loved painting citrus fruits.
Speaker: And I assume eating them.
Speaker: And probably eating them as well.
Speaker: Thanks very much, Eric.
Speaker: My pleasure.
Speaker: There's an old Russian saying, it's not gods who make pots.
Speaker: But maybe it could be gods who make diamonds.
Speaker: Next I'm speaking with Peter Schaeffer of Olivier Roussy.
Speaker: Wait, let me try that with the proper accent.
Speaker: Olivier Roussy.
Speaker: My apologies.
Speaker: Anyway, I asked Peter about a very special piece of diamond jewelry.
Speaker: And this is not just any jewel.
Speaker: It has a hell of a provenance.
Speaker: It's not any jewelry at all.
Speaker: It's one of two that we know of from the Russian crown jewels.
Speaker: There's a slightly larger version, which is still in Russia.
Speaker: So give me a little bit of context here.
Speaker: When was it made and for which of the... It's late 18th century, so it would be the period of Catherine the Great.
Speaker: Most of the jewelry for the Russian crown jewels were made for Elizabeth, which was before Catherine.
Speaker: How many of the Russian crown jewels are in private hands now?
Speaker: You're asking me a question that I don't think I could answer, but quite a lot.
Speaker: Because in 1923, I think it was, they sold a whole bunch of them.
Speaker: And, no, I think it was 1926.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Either way.
Speaker: Either way.
Speaker: Either way.
Speaker: And they sold some things.
Speaker: And also, I can't remember his first name, Kunz, who was the stone man for Tiffany.
Speaker: A quick note for listeners.
Speaker: Peter is talking about George Frederick Kunz, the great gemologist who traveled the world seeking out gemstones for Tiffany and company.
Speaker: I think it's in the archives in Washington.
Speaker: They have some things that he acquired at the time of the crown jewels, which didn't make it into the official book, but that they are official pieces.
Speaker: So this piece is predominantly diamonds, and it also has pearls, and it's in the form of leaves with the pearls serving as fruits dangling from the branches.
Speaker: Is that right?
Speaker: That's as good a description as anything.
Speaker: I think it's a floral spray, and this type of thing might have been originally worn as a hair ornament.
Speaker: Oh, I see.
Speaker: And it's very large.
Speaker: It's three or four inches high.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it has a lot of diamonds in it.
Speaker: It has a lot of diamonds in it.
Speaker: No, you've got to remember that Russia is very cold.
Speaker: And in the wintertime, they wore very heavy clothing.
Speaker: So they needed big jewelry because if they wore what a lot of people wear in this country, you wouldn't see it.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: So this was merely a practical ornament.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, purely practical, big diamonds.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And so was this actually worn and was it used by the royals?
Speaker: We don't know.
Speaker: We believe so.
Speaker: It's an amazing piece to look at.
Speaker: Thanks so much for talking to me, Peter.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I hope you're having as much fun as I am.
Speaker: We have three more to go for today's episode.
Speaker: My next guest is like me, a silver dealer.
Speaker: And while I've known the firm for years, this is their first time exhibiting at the Winter Antique Show.
Speaker: They brought an all-star cast for their debut.
Speaker: So I'm here with Spencer Gordon and you're in business with Mark McHugh and your company is named Spencer Marks.
Speaker: I don't know how I'm possibly going to remember that.
Speaker: And what are we looking at today?
Speaker: Well, I was going to show you what Gorm called a Japanese work tea set.
Speaker: There is a mistaken thinking amongst American decorative arts people that after the Japan craze in the 1870s, Japan went out of style.
Speaker: The truth is that people continued to be interested in Japan and Japanese arts.
Speaker: And Gorham did Japanese work silver, what they called Japanese work silver, in the 1890s and in the early 1900s.
Speaker: So this piece is a, it looks to be a six piece tea set on a tray, all made in silver with ivory insulators, gilt interiors.
Speaker: And it's decorated very elaborately with chasing, sorry, I'm a silver dealer too.
Speaker: So I hope we're not alienating our audience here, but I like to geek out a little over this stuff.
Speaker: So tell me, when did Gorham make this?
Speaker: They were based in Providence, right?
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: The remarkable thing about this is that Gorham hired a Japanese chaser to come to Providence and make a very, very special and rare line of silver that they called Japanese work.
Speaker: And this was chased by, and his American name is Subero Yamamoto,
Speaker: uh... and americans always mess up foreigners names so that i'm not interested in sat japan is named but he spent about eight hundred and fifty hours during the decoration on this on this uh... tea and coffee service that's roughly three months of the time that he spent a corny was there for about three years it's most important and impressive thing that he was involved in making uh... it is uh... encrusted with chrysanthemums in uh...
Speaker: in high relief and then there are these lovely low relief leaves in the background and that goes all over the tray and the teapot, the coffee pot, kettle, etc.
Speaker: The bodies were all hand raised before he did his chasing.
Speaker: It had a retail cost of $1800 or $1900 in 1906 when it was made and back then that would have bought you four or five cars.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah, a ton of money.
Speaker: So each one of these pieces is a Model T, more or less.
Speaker: More or less, yeah.
Speaker: Although, you know, they came in more than just black.
Speaker: Well, any color as long as it's silver.
Speaker: I'm Matthew Imberman.
Speaker: I'm co-owner of Kenshire along with my sister Carrie Imberman.
Speaker: And we're the third generation of the family to run the business.
Speaker: And we deal in antique and estate jewelry.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I was going to let Matthew go ahead without an introduction, but do you remember your Shakespeare?
Speaker: All that glisters is not gold.
Speaker: I'm sure that's very wise, but well, this next piece is gold.
Speaker: Okay, sorry.
Speaker: Back to Matthew from Kenchhire.
Speaker: And you're located?
Speaker: We're located in Bergdorf Goodman on the seventh floor next to the restaurant, and then we have private offices in Rockefeller Center.
Speaker: And today we're talking about a bracelet by Pierret.
Speaker: It's by Ernesto Pierret.
Speaker: It dates to the last quarter of the 19th century, before his son Luigi took over, we think.
Speaker: And it's a really interesting sculptural snake bracelet.
Speaker: And obviously, the 19th century has a lot of different snake bracelets.
Speaker: This one is...
Speaker: entirely gold granulation and then has a lovely large diamond set into the head.
Speaker: But it's constructed in such a way, it's almost like it's two pieces that are fit together and coil around each other.
Speaker: So it seems almost perfectly seamless.
Speaker: And it's really kind of a marvel of construction from the time period, at least in our opinion.
Speaker: We've owned a lot of lovely, you know, antique, you know, archaeological revival pieces.
Speaker: For us, this is just a step above most things we see.
Speaker: And before we started, you were drawing a comparison between Piré and Castellani, who's a jeweler maybe more people are familiar with.
Speaker: Yeah, so Castellani, obviously, you know, that's one of the, let's say, blue-chip names from, you know, late 19th century jewelry.
Speaker: Piré was a native Frenchman but moved to Rome and...
Speaker: at some point apprenticed with Castellani or worked in his shop.
Speaker: Some people say maybe actually taught Castellani.
Speaker: There's a little bit of back and forth about the relationship, but we do know that he was working within the studio, then went off onto his own and ended up marrying the daughter of a papal lawyer, if my memory serves me correctly.
Speaker: So kind of came into money or married up, let's say, to the point where he was able to start producing on his own, have his own studios and live in quite a nice area.
Speaker: So
Speaker: When I look at Castellani jewelry, which is obviously such beautiful, let's say, reinterpretations of what you might find in some of the archaeological digs that were being done in that time.
Speaker: And there's general kind of grant or fascination with making things in the antique taste as accurately as you could.
Speaker: PRA, to my eye, tends to look a little bit more.
Speaker: as if he was trying to imagine what somebody would have made for people at the time, but that hadn't just been dug up.
Speaker: It's really, it's pared down.
Speaker: It's not overworked.
Speaker: It's not overwrought with ornament.
Speaker: And this bracelet to me is that.
Speaker: It's striking in that it's the coil of the serpent, the angle of it, and the verisimilitude to an actual snake that makes it so dynamic as opposed to just coiling a snake around your wrist and saying, look, this is in the ancient taste.
Speaker: It strikes me as maybe a little more wearable than some Castellani pieces.
Speaker: Yes, very much so.
Speaker: And it's not, I mean, it's an academic piece if you want it to be only because of Ernesto Pieri didn't have a huge output.
Speaker: The pieces tend to be for collectors, you know, a prized possession.
Speaker: They're rare.
Speaker: But also, I do, just having seen people try this on a number of times, it sits beautifully on the wrist.
Speaker: And it's real jewelry meant to be worn.
Speaker: Have people been looking at it at the show?
Speaker: Yeah, they have.
Speaker: We've been fortunate to have a few people who've been intrepid enough to try it on.
Speaker: I think people sometimes shy away from trying on pieces, especially antique ones.
Speaker: Obviously, they're old and they're worried about the condition.
Speaker: This one, it's crafted so beautifully that it goes on and off very well.
Speaker: And that's a sign of good jewelry in general, as you know.
Speaker: If it's meant to be worn, it shouldn't be so difficult to put on.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, that's great to hear.
Speaker: Thanks for joining me.
Speaker: Thanks for coming by.
Speaker: One more to go today.
Speaker: And although it's dangerous for me to say it, this is maybe the most visually striking of them all.
Speaker: It's not the oldest or the flashiest or even the most valuable piece we've looked at, but the sheer intricacy of craftsmanship is hard to compare.
Speaker: I'm with Kelly Kinzel.
Speaker: You're up from Pennsylvania.
Speaker: And you've brought with you a very interesting piece of furniture, which I have to say is visually it's unlike anything I've ever seen before because of the incredible amount of inlay.
Speaker: So tell me a little bit about this piece and where it comes from.
Speaker: Well, this piece was made in Redding, Pennsylvania, and it was made by a man named Harrison Weber.
Speaker: And he spent 12 years making this inlaid sideboard.
Speaker: 12 years?
Speaker: 12 years.
Speaker: And he estimates there are 150,000 individual pieces inlaid into the entire piece.
Speaker: It has four American flags on it.
Speaker: And when he completed it, right around the period of 1900, he started in 1890.
Speaker: And he completed it just about, probably really, if you read his paperwork, 1902.
Speaker: And he then took it to the St.
Speaker: Louis Exposition and tried to sell it for $6,000.
Speaker: That doesn't sound like a lot of payoff for 12 years' work.
Speaker: No, but in 1904, $6,000 was a tremendous amount of money.
Speaker: And did he get $6,000?
Speaker: No, it remained in his family until the 1990s.
Speaker: Oh, my gosh.
Speaker: And he sold it.
Speaker: The family sold it, and a collector in Allentown bought it.
Speaker: And it remained in his collection until I bought it about six months ago.
Speaker: And it's an ideal piece for this New York show.
Speaker: So give me some context here.
Speaker: Is there anything like this in the world?
Speaker: There are no comparables to this piece.
Speaker: There are other pieces of...
Speaker: folk art inlaid furniture that have sold, that people collect tramp art and other lower quality things.
Speaker: But in a comparison of the execution, the detail, everything, this is a standalone object.
Speaker: So this brings new meaning to the idea of a singular work of art.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: And a piece that is just so, the cabinet makers that came through and looked at this piece were absolutely amazed at the execution and could not imagine how some of it was even done.
Speaker: Well, I have to encourage listeners to look at the picture of this online because it's really hard to describe how intricate it is, but it's an incredibly impressive piece of craftsmanship.
Speaker: Thanks so much for talking to me about it.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: And that wraps up today's tour.
Speaker: I want to say a huge thank you to all the experts who took the time to talk with me.
Speaker: I hope you'll take a minute to look them up, because the objects you've heard about are just the tip of the iceberg as far as what they have to offer.
Speaker: Next episode, I'll have even more conversations with dealers from the Winter Antique Show, including, frighteningly for me, one with my own employer.
Speaker: So I hope you'll come back for that one.
Speaker: As always, look for pictures of all these objects at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: Today's episode was produced and edited by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: And I'm your host, Ben Miller.
Speaker: Thanks for listening.
