Transcript
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: This is the podcast about art, decorative arts and antiques, the stories behind them, and what they can reveal to us about ourselves and the people who came before us.
Speaker: Here's a fun fact.
Speaker: You know that famous Hokusai print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa?
Speaker: It's that fantastic stylized illustration of a wave cresting over three Japanese boats.
Speaker: And it's credited as a huge inspiration for the French Impressionists, including artists like Monet, but even composers like Debussy.
Speaker: But what's less well-known is that Christopher Dresser, the great designer who we're going to hear a lot about later in this episode, designed a bowl that is an incredible ceramic homage to the Hokusai prints.
Speaker: The side of the bowl comes up and crests over the top, just like Hokusai's wave.
Speaker: So if you find yourself thinking about the connection between Japanese art and Impressionism and Art Nouveau,
Speaker: Do me a favor and don't just think about the paintings, remember the decorative arts too.
Speaker: And today our curious object is a totally weird and absolutely fantastic example of this global exchange of ideas, and how that intersection of different traditions can lead to wildly creative results, and how Tiffany and company achieved exactly that in the late 19th century.
Speaker: I'm joined by two guests who are the perfect people to help us navigate all of that.
Speaker: And I can't tell you how excited I am about this conversation because right now at the Metropolitan Museum, there's a special exhibition called Collecting Inspiration, Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Company.
Speaker: It's all about this fascinating figure in late 19th century design, Edward Moore, who assembled an unrivaled collection of international decorative arts, especially Asian and Middle Eastern.
Speaker: The exhibition is open until October 20th, and it features pieces from Moore's collection alongside the Tiffany works they inspired, so cool.
Speaker: Now, as a silver guy, I've spent a lot of time with Moore's pieces, and several of the objects in this show actually came through our shop.
Speaker: But there are two people in the world who know this stuff better than anyone else, and lucky for me, and lucky for you, they're both here with me today.
Speaker: First is my friend, the curator of the Mets exhibition, author of the catalog, also called Collecting Inspiration, and curator of American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum, Medill Higgins Harvey.
Speaker: Madill, thanks for joining me.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: And second is the jewelry historian and curator and former head archivist of Tiffany & Company.
Speaker: She is at ArchivistsDelight on Instagram, Anna-Marie Sendeki.
Speaker: So nice to have you here.
Speaker: Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker: And hello to Madill.
Speaker: Hello, Anna-Marie.
Speaker: Now, I want to start off with some rapid fire questions.
Speaker: So I hope you had your coffee this morning.
Speaker: Anna-Marie, what is the first piece of jewelry you remember falling in love with?
Speaker: Okay, this is a bad question to ask me because I really fell in love with a piece of silver first.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Well, you can give us silver.
Speaker: I'll never stop that.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: And I can tell you exactly what it was.
Speaker: It was a Wave Edge server with the clamshell end.
Speaker: It actually brought tears to my eyes.
Speaker: How sad is that?
Speaker: In this context, Anna Marie, that is very happy.
Speaker: What did you love about it?
Speaker: How old were you, by the way?
Speaker: Well, actually, it was on my first day at Tiffany.
Speaker: I saw that piece and I had never, ever, ever fallen in love with a piece of silver before.
Speaker: And it just made me cry.
Speaker: It made me, it reminded me of the beach.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: You know, sad for somebody who's going to spend the next 30 years of her life spending it primarily curating jewelry.
Speaker: Now, falling in love with silver is never sad.
Speaker: In fact, on that note, Medill, tell us why silver is the best material across all the decorative arts.
Speaker: Oh, gosh, you want to get me in trouble.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: Out of the gate here, Ben.
Speaker: Well, silver has so much potential to tell so many different stories, the workmanship,
Speaker: anybody with two eyes can dig in and find something to make them weep like Anna Marie to love.
Speaker: The material is one that I think has been valued in many different times and as a result there's such creativity to be found.
Speaker: Okay, a giant tidal wave, maybe it's Pocusize wave, is about to crush the Met Museum.
Speaker: And you both are in the exhibition.
Speaker: Fortunately, you have time to escape, but you can only grab one object to take with you.
Speaker: What are you going to save?
Speaker: I'll give that to you first, Anna-Marie.
Speaker: Oh, does a pair, is that like one object?
Speaker: You can save a pair.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right, so then I want my puffer fish and my frog creamer.
Speaker: Everything is in the parish.
Speaker: Even the jewelry, and that's a lot for me to say.
Speaker: All right, so you're previewing today's curious objects.
Speaker: Medill, what are you going to save?
Speaker: Oh, you really, now you have done it.
Speaker: I think I would, this is like choosing your children.
Speaker: It's just excruciating.
Speaker: I would save the
Speaker: red chocolate pot.
Speaker: Yes, that beautiful patinated copper piece.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: It is a beauty.
Speaker: I'm tempted to say the huge candelabra.
Speaker: I don't think I could carry them.
Speaker: No, at six feet tall and 105 pounds each, that might be a challenge, even for you.
Speaker: I'm glad you're saving that chocolate pot, though, because it means I can pick something else.
Speaker: Okay, Anna Marie, what is one misconception that people have about Tiffany that you'd like to correct?
Speaker: Oh, that's a tough one.
Speaker: I think today people feel like it's
Speaker: too unapproachable for them.
Speaker: And I think it's always been a store that has welcomed and a brand that's welcomed everyone.
Speaker: So I think, you know, somewhere along the way, we got that stuffy moniker that we don't deserve.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: You know, Anne-Marie, that's so interesting, because in all of the work I've been doing, Tiffany saw itself as serving its community and serving as a museum and a place to
Speaker: to look and learn and be inspired from its outset.
Speaker: And I think that's the core value of the brand.
Speaker: Museum for all, education, Walter Hoving's taste, and we present things because we think people will like their design, not because we think they're going to sell.
Speaker: I think that's always been our true north.
Speaker: Okay, so you've both worked throughout your careers with absolute pinnacle world-class collections, but I want to know what for each of you is the most valuable object or work of art that you've actually physically touched?
Speaker: Well, you know, it's like my least favorite object, but it's the Tiffany diamond.
Speaker: Yes, of course.
Speaker: are my least favorite.
Speaker: And Anna Marie, what's the latest insurance appraisal for the Tiffany Diamond?
Speaker: No idea, in all honesty.
Speaker: But I can tell you it is the most valuable piece in the collection.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bar none.
Speaker: What about you, Medell?
Speaker: Well, Ben, value.
Speaker: Is it what it's worth on the marketplace?
Speaker: I suppose my most recent acquisition of the pair of
Speaker: almost six foot high candelabra would come in as the most pricey.
Speaker: Yeah, hard to argue with that.
Speaker: And what was the last object or artwork you saw that gave you shivers that made the hair on your neck stand up?
Speaker: Man, that's a tough one, Medill.
Speaker: You know, I think a lot about what
Speaker: I got away.
Speaker: I think a lot about what I enjoyed buying.
Speaker: And I never realized how much I would miss the adrenaline rush of being in the auction room and winning.
Speaker: It's a really silly thing to say.
Speaker: Well, you can still feel that.
Speaker: It may not be the same, you know, scale of acquisitions, but you buy things for yourself, I know.
Speaker: I do, but not at the dollar value.
Speaker: No, although spending your own money does have a certain special feeling to it.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: You know, woohoo, I just spent $100.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Um, it's...
Speaker: I think the acquisition that I made that had the greatest impact in the last 10 years on the direction of the company is probably the script for breakfast at Tiffany, which again, not my fave, but certainly, certainly set a tone for where the brand wanted to go.
Speaker: And I'm not even sure that's an object.
Speaker: I mean, I know it is, but you know, not like, not like a regular, it's a manuscript.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I know I'm guilty of lots and lots of shivers installing the show.
Speaker: I kept falling in love and being astounded by each and every object as it was going in.
Speaker: So I, I am perhaps not very discerning about the single thing, although I was recently in,
Speaker: Vienna and getting to see Cellini Salt Cellar again was was one of those hair stand up heart flutter moments.
Speaker: I've never seen that in person.
Speaker: Oh, it's it's extraordinary.
Speaker: Is it magical?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's not it's not big.
Speaker: It's just the same thing we were just talking about.
Speaker: the attention to every detail that makes you want to stand there in awe forever.
Speaker: God, I'm so envious.
Speaker: Okay, well, we will be right back with Medill Harvey and Anna Marie Sendeki.
Speaker: For this episode, I think you are really going to want to check out a picture of the curious object.
Speaker: Actually, it's two objects, as Anna Marie just alluded to.
Speaker: And they are so wacky and fun.
Speaker: Our descriptions really will not do them justice, but you can see pictures at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: If you'd like to reach out to me directly, I'm at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com or on Instagram at objectiveinterest.com.
Speaker: If you're listening right now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or any other podcast app, make sure you've subscribed to Curious Objects so you see new episodes as they come out.
Speaker: Both of those apps also let you give us a rating and a review, which helps new listeners find the show.
Speaker: So please keep those coming and thanks for listening.
Speaker: Now, today's curious object, or two objects rather, is a cream pot and a sugar bowl.
Speaker: And they're like no other you've ever seen.
Speaker: So just start us off, Madil, what do these pieces look like?
Speaker: Well, the creamer is a crouching frog with a big, wide open mouth that becomes the spout and a curved handle and animated eyes
Speaker: looking out at you, presumably as you're pouring your cream into your tea or coffee.
Speaker: And the sugar bowl is exactly as you just said, it is the shape of a puffer fish.
Speaker: And it has a wonderful texture.
Speaker: And the lid is the top portion of the puffer fish's body.
Speaker: So it is almost sort of spherical puffy fish.
Speaker: complete with fins, eyes, a mouth and a top knot.
Speaker: Yeah, so these are crazy objects.
Speaker: I mean, they're very cartoonish, but also extremely realistic at the same time.
Speaker: They're sort of, they fit in the palm of your hand.
Speaker: You know, they're this very appealing size.
Speaker: They're wild things.
Speaker: And to understand them, I think we have to start with some context.
Speaker: You know, a lot of people that I've mentioned this exhibition to, and I have been talking about this nonstop, you'll be happy to know, Madill,
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: But a lot of people are surprised to learn that Tiffany & Company is such an old business, that they were very active in the mid-19th century and late 19th century.
Speaker: And Medill, when Edward Moore started working with Tiffany in the 1850s, what was the company up to around that time?
Speaker: So they were a fancy goods store, basically stationary and fancy goods.
Speaker: They sold
Speaker: Anna Marie, Silver and various other things that were made, they were a retailer make selling things made by various different makers and Marie may have more to add Anna Marie, I think the best way to describe them when they first started was teaching Americans about luxury so you know there were.
Speaker: people who were wealthy earth and they had anticipated when Tiffany first started.
Speaker: And so you couldn't necessarily travel to Paris or travel to Germany or travel to wherever to buy little luxuries for yourself.
Speaker: And Tiffany did a very good job of bringing those little luxuries to them and really teaching them how to enjoy money in a way that was not showy, but quietly wealthy.
Speaker: and made them very happy.
Speaker: And how did this guy, Edward Moore, fit into that context?
Speaker: Badil.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So as they were retailing various different silversmiths' work, Charles Tiffany realized that to have a competitive advantage, they wanted to lock in an exclusive with the silversmith they considered the best, and that was Edward Moore and his father.
Speaker: That's how it all began.
Speaker: Okay, no.
Speaker: Where is the rock star of New York City?
Speaker: Edward was the rising genius.
Speaker: And I think Tiffany knew that they really wanted that competitive edge that he was going to give them.
Speaker: Charles Tiffany was an enormously prescient.
Speaker: He was a smart business guy.
Speaker: He was the Bill Gates
Speaker: of silver in the city.
Speaker: You know, we don't use the word merchant prince very often.
Speaker: He was a merchant prince.
Speaker: And I think he understood that he needed this lateral, horizontal occupation of a certain area.
Speaker: And I think we also forget how pervasive silver was to Americans' lives.
Speaker: Medill talked about her love of the metal.
Speaker: Silver is meant to be used.
Speaker: And you were literally born with a silver spoon in your mouth.
Speaker: You were surrounded by silver.
Speaker: Everybody got silver all the time.
Speaker: And, you know, Charles Tiffany wanted in on that.
Speaker: Yeah, no, he knew it was the sort of key item in his offerings of merchandise.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, so how did Tiffany start to distinguish themselves and stand out from other American silver retailers?
Speaker: Well, you've hired a rock star.
Speaker: What are you going to do?
Speaker: You're going to give him whatever he needs to succeed.
Speaker: Give him talented workmen.
Speaker: Give him the ability to travel to Europe, which Medill documents so beautifully in her essays.
Speaker: You had to travel to Europe to look at the paintings on the wall.
Speaker: You had to bring things back.
Speaker: And he did all that.
Speaker: And he was inspired by it and he was inspirational.
Speaker: I think.
Speaker: Yeah, he had real vision, but he also drove his staff to challenge themselves and to work incredibly hard to innovate.
Speaker: I mean, you see that in all of the descriptions.
Speaker: Novelty and originality were the sort of North Star for what they were doing.
Speaker: And they dared to,
Speaker: think and do things nobody else had been doing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so the core of this exhibition really is this idea of Moore as a collector.
Speaker: And he was an obsessive collector of decorative arts from all over the world.
Speaker: I mean, we're talking about antiquities from Greece and Rome, Islamic metalwork, rugs, Venetian glass, and
Speaker: Chinese ceramics, I mean, of course, all kinds of Japanese works which become critical in the development of more style.
Speaker: I mean, Medill, was this just a collection for his own sort of personal amusement and entertainment, or did he have a larger ambition as he was putting these pieces together?
Speaker: You ask a great question.
Speaker: He definitely had larger ambition, and it was to inspire himself and his staff to
Speaker: think and work in new ways.
Speaker: And it's important to remember there weren't museums.
Speaker: So public viewing of art wasn't an option for somebody who is learning how to be a silversmith or a
Speaker: decorative painter or whatever it might be.
Speaker: And so he wanted to address that lack of access and felt like what he was collecting was to show that which was technically virtuosic, beautiful.
Speaker: I mean, he's collecting as a formalist saying anything that could inspire him or his staff, he's acquiring.
Speaker: So he bought things that were rare and incredibly important and really mundane.
Speaker: You know, I think it's really important to remember, and I would drive this point home with your audience.
Speaker: If you're a designer today, you spend a lot of time on Instagram, on TikTok, on Pinterest, creating mood boards, visual mood boards.
Speaker: Back then, that is not a possibility.
Speaker: So you had to actually acquire the object or you had to acquire the book
Speaker: And then you had to do something that I'm not sure how many designers know how to do this today.
Speaker: You'd have to sketch the darn thing to remember it.
Speaker: You know, if it wasn't in front of you forever, you'd just sketch it.
Speaker: You couldn't take a picture with your camera.
Speaker: And that's the beauty of what Moore is doing.
Speaker: So can we go back to the two objects for a second?
Speaker: Because I really want to talk a little bit about my feelings about them, because I think Medill did a great job of setting the table of what they look like.
Speaker: But for me,
Speaker: The puffer fish has always been very girlsy.
Speaker: It reminds me of a 13 year old girl making a face at her parents, you know, with the pursed lips and the whole thing.
Speaker: And the frog has always been very boysy, rolling his eyes up in the air, like, you know, what the heck?
Speaker: Why is this?
Speaker: Where's the dang dragonfly that I've been chasing?
Speaker: And
Speaker: What is so odd is, and Medill didn't mention this, it's part of a set.
Speaker: So you've got an octopus coffee pot that is lost.
Speaker: If anyone listening knows where it is, you know what my Instagram account name is.
Speaker: Please use it.
Speaker: Or send it to me.
Speaker: We'll fight over it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I really do more attention to the house on this one.
Speaker: And then there's a skate tray, which was made later, which we do know where it is.
Speaker: And they sit together quite nicely as a family.
Speaker: But I don't know, Medill, do you disagree with my boy and girl characterization of the coffee or the sugar in the creamer?
Speaker: No, not at all.
Speaker: And and it is it's that
Speaker: the fact that they have this very human emotion, they speak to absolutely everyone who comes into the show because you recognize that sort of eye rolling and impatience or wanting to move it along and gobble up the insects flying by.
Speaker: I would say if there's an object or pair of curious objects that are most
Speaker: popular with our visitors, it's the frog and the puffer fish.
Speaker: So for me, it's, you know, for those of our listeners studying for their SATs, these two pieces define the word anthropomorphic for me, which, you know, I'm going to use this as the lever because Medill knows that I've been waiting to talk about it.
Speaker: As much as I love Edward Moore, it's Charles Osborne, which for me has really took that core style that Moore had
Speaker: and pushed it in that direction.
Speaker: Because I really do feel like these are Osborne designs that were inspired by Dresser's writings on the grotesque and also by the fact that Moore had all these marvelous objects in his collection.
Speaker: So I've always wanted to say to Medill, do you feel, do you disagree with my characterization that Moore sort of took the style and launched it, but it's,
Speaker: it's Osborne that really took it to the next level.
Speaker: And I want to, Mitchell, just before you jump in and give your, I'm sure, fabulous answer to that question, I want to help our listeners out with a little bit of context around these figures, because we've talked about Edward C. Moore, but of course, you know, the Tiffany Design Department was more than just one person, and Moore was actually quite a potent mentor.
Speaker: We mentioned Christopher Dresser,
Speaker: earlier on, and he ended up being involved in various ways with the company.
Speaker: Anna Marie has now mentioned Charles Osborne as well.
Speaker: Medill, could you just give us a little bit of a sort of lineage, a genealogy of designers, sort of stemming from more, Tiffany?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So as you say, there were a number of designers.
Speaker: And what's interesting about Osborne, who I think Anna Marie's right was probably
Speaker: the most creative of the people working with and for Moore is he had been a silversmith working at another silversmithing firm and he resigns sort of.
Speaker: And in the letter, he talks about the fact that the only way he's going to get better at his work is to study with Moore.
Speaker: But he clearly was seen as a special and gifted silversmith because they gave him
Speaker: the freedom to not necessarily just work at Tiffany.
Speaker: So he's continuing to work for a firm called Whiting at the same time.
Speaker: So there are, there are a number of silversmiths who come fully trained or who learn as young boys.
Speaker: And it is all men and boys at this point who, who learn from more, but Osborne came
Speaker: with very special gifts and they had something I would describe almost as a partnership in terms of each of them pushing the other to learn and work.
Speaker: Now, so the frog and the puffer fish, I mean, they are like, they're very funny, right?
Speaker: They're extremely humorous pieces.
Speaker: They, I mean, anthropomorphic is a great term for them.
Speaker: They remind me actually of like Miyazaki animations.
Speaker: And I wonder if Miyazaki has seen them because I think they, you know, they could fit right into one of his films.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, you know, they're part of this stylistic group that in the Tiffany records are described as grotesque.
Speaker: And I wonder if, Anna Marie, maybe you want to tell us a little more about this idea of grotesque design.
Speaker: What does that mean?
Speaker: So Dresser was, so he wrote a book in...
Speaker: 1876, studies in design.
Speaker: And at the very end, there was a two page chapter called on the treatment of the grotesque, where he very clearly outlines what humor in Japanese art is and how to kind of build on that humor.
Speaker: And for him, it was all about taking the natural world and sort of
Speaker: making it whimsical.
Speaker: And I love that word whimsy to describe these designs because by and large, they are all they're all going to bring a smile to your face.
Speaker: There's nothing unhappy about them.
Speaker: You know, there's a pig picture where
Speaker: The dragonflies landed on the pig's snout.
Speaker: There's a penguin picture.
Speaker: We've seen bookmarks that are elephants with the long elephant trunk being the page holder.
Speaker: I mean, egg cups with chicken feet.
Speaker: If you see a piece of silver and it's stamped Tiffany and it's some animal that makes you smile, it's Osborne and it's grotesque.
Speaker: And I think it's probably some of the
Speaker: best silver that the company made on that era because it's so innovative and so interesting.
Speaker: And so, and here's a funny thing to say about silver that people consider, I hate this word, museum quality.
Speaker: It's so approachable.
Speaker: You don't have to have a PhD in art history to get it.
Speaker: You just like it because of what it is.
Speaker: But if you look at Moore's collection, particularly of Japanese art,
Speaker: he found the whimsy of the way they characterize the natural world and the anthropomorphism and the, all of that irresistible.
Speaker: And his collection is full of objects with that make you laugh where the there's, there's one, one work of ceramic where there's a parade making fun of feudal lords because they're all depicted as grasshoppers and those kinds of,
Speaker: of works say everything about how much he loved that Japanese whimsy about the way the natural world could comment on and engage us in the human world.
Speaker: And I love how in the exhibition, you've put that grasshopper pot right across from the puffer fish and the frog.
Speaker: So you really see that communication.
Speaker: I'm curious, speaking of grotesque, these natural motifs, they become really core to the identity of Tiffany's pieces, both the silver and the jewelry.
Speaker: And they leaned into the creepy crawlies and the decay and the rot and
Speaker: you know, all of these ideas that would become really crucial to the emergence of the Art Nouveau movement.
Speaker: And I wonder, you know, when you think of a great French jeweler like René Lalique, you know, using dragonflies and beetles and decayed leaves,
Speaker: Tiffany was doing all that 10, 15 years earlier, including in their jewelry.
Speaker: So I wonder how much credit should we give to Tiffany to sort of for pioneering that idea of, I don't know, grossing out the customer?
Speaker: Well, I want to circle back for a second to sort of Edward Moore and his brilliant introduction of Japanesque, because I think one of the key elements
Speaker: pieces of his legacy is the fact that Japanese jewelry or jewelry inspired by the art of Japan was some of the earliest fashion jewelry in the United States.
Speaker: And I think Tiffany's reputation was built on the fact that they were creating these beautiful gold bangles with cattails around it or with dragonflies around it or with parasol shaped brooches.
Speaker: What's interesting for me is that the idea of the grotesque in jewelry and the anthropomorphic grotesque really pauses and reignites itself sometime.
Speaker: And this is in Tiffany history, in the 1960s with Claflin, who is a jewelry designer who does lots of animal figures.
Speaker: The dragonflies and the creepy crawlies kind of keys into the Gilded Age and all of Europe's fascination with nature in general.
Speaker: But for me, a key moment in Tiffany history is when Moore starts to design fashion jewelry and New Yorkers are snapping it up.
Speaker: And that's not something that we talk about very much because in our mind at Tiffany jewelry is always got stones in it.
Speaker: But honest to gosh, you know that that gold jewelry was paying the rent and they're making bangles and brooches and anything that they can want to buy.
Speaker: Yeah, and so, I mean, over the decades, over the last century, Tiffany, they gradually de-emphasized the decorative arts in favor of jewelry.
Speaker: And now, of course, most people, including I think many of our listeners, will think of Tiffany primarily as a jewelry company.
Speaker: And Anna-Marie, I wonder if you could just give us a sort of Cliff Notes version of how that came about.
Speaker: You know, I would debate that comment.
Speaker: I think we were always known as the place you could come to for your wedding band and your wedding gifts, your wedding registry, your china and your crystal.
Speaker: I think Tiffany's longevity is directly correlated to their ability to evolve and to be relevant to American taste.
Speaker: And I am very, very, very adamant that we are an American luxury house.
Speaker: even though the brand is owned by French owners right now, Americans live quite differently, I think, than Europeans, than Asians, than South Americans.
Speaker: And I think the brand has always been very attuned to the way we live.
Speaker: Right now, we're living in a moment where, Ben, you and I have talked a little bit about this.
Speaker: I think I've talked a little bit about it to Medill.
Speaker: We see the next generation now entertaining at home a little bit more than they used to.
Speaker: And that desire for, oh, maybe I should have a serving bowl for the chips.
Speaker: Or, oh, he just brought me flowers.
Speaker: What am I going to put them in?
Speaker: A solo red solo cup?
Speaker: Oh, maybe I need a vase.
Speaker: I just had friends over for a movie last night and we ate olives out of a, you know, a Gorham olive dish.
Speaker: Good for you!
Speaker: And it's just so satisfying, you know?
Speaker: Fantastic.
Speaker: It's not Tiffany, sorry, but working on that.
Speaker: We all cut a birthday cake once a year.
Speaker: Why are we using a plain knife when we can have a sterling silver cake server?
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And I think the brand still satisfies that and is beginning to once again get into that moment in Americans' lives.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: And Medill, what happened to Moore's collection?
Speaker: I mean, how did that come to be at the Met and what's going to happen to it after the show?
Speaker: So it came to the Met immediately after his death.
Speaker: He had designated that it was to go to a museum and his family gave it to the Met in 1891.
Speaker: And in many cases, it's some of the earliest of that type of material to be at the Met.
Speaker: And the collection was
Speaker: includes things that are stars of various galleries and they will go back to those galleries and lots of material that lives in storage.
Speaker: So it is always on view, some of it, and some of it has had its brief moment in the sun and will remain available for study, but probably not out on view.
Speaker: So Medill, there was originally a more room at the Met, right?
Speaker: Or a more display?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: In the early days, the Met really was sort of a collection of collections.
Speaker: So the Edward Moore collection was seen as integral to the Met's mission of educating, elevating the quality of American design, et cetera.
Speaker: And so it was shown together until things were put into storage during World War II.
Speaker: And it was at that point that we had various specialized departments had developed and we communicated with
Speaker: the descendants of Moore to say, can we then distribute it to the Asian department, to the Department of Islamic art, to Greek and Roman, et cetera.
Speaker: But until then it was all shown, all 2000 plus objects were shown together in a single gallery.
Speaker: What do we think that contemporary artists and designers could learn by studying Edward Moore's example?
Speaker: You know, the eye is a muscle.
Speaker: I think it's very easy when you're looking through the lens of your phone to not take a moment to look at the object before you snap that picture.
Speaker: And I think the beauty of the exhibition is you can interact with an object that you rarely see because it's in a private collection or in storage, as Medill said.
Speaker: I would hope that people are looking, which I think is a skill that people forget they need.
Speaker: It's the first thing I tell people that don't like museums or say, you know, I never go to museums.
Speaker: The eye is a muscle.
Speaker: Let's look together.
Speaker: Tell me what you see.
Speaker: What do you see when you see that puffer fish?
Speaker: Do you see that 13 year old girl making a face at her parents?
Speaker: Well, and I think it's been really interesting.
Speaker: Artists and designers are loving this exhibition because it does manifest the creative process and whether it's one object that speaks to them or groups of objects, but seeing played out in space the way in which all kinds of different objects inspire an idea.
Speaker: And it's not a one-to-one.
Speaker: You're not copying something.
Speaker: You're just taking a bunch of different ideas and they become fodder for
Speaker: for your own creativity.
Speaker: I think that is manifest to people who might find their way into the show without any interest in silver necessarily, but, but they see creativity kind of made, made explicit.
Speaker: And, and that I think is something that really does resonate with artists and designers today.
Speaker: So, you know, people forget, and I think it's kind of like,
Speaker: jargon in the museum curator world that when curators like Medill arrange an exhibition is a carefully thought out process.
Speaker: And I always say when I'm bringing someone to a special exhibition, the objects are here to talk to each other.
Speaker: Look, look, it's not just this piece is next to this piece because they fit together in the case.
Speaker: There is a reason that Medill put the puffer fish across from the,
Speaker: Let's look at that together.
Speaker: How are they talking to each other?
Speaker: Is there enough space for them to talk?
Speaker: Are they screaming at each other?
Speaker: How many times, Medill, if you've gone into an exhibition, you've gone, oh my God, this is so noisy.
Speaker: It's too much in this group.
Speaker: Medill really did a great job of giving the object space and the chance to have conversations.
Speaker: So when you're walking through this,
Speaker: Look at the conversations that are happening.
Speaker: These pieces haven't been together for a really long time.
Speaker: They're talking to each other and saying things they haven't said in a while.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: I just have to reinforce that because I think that's such a keen observation.
Speaker: And I've, I've not seen very many museum exhibitions that do such a sort of keen and, and carefully considered job of really seeing how these objects play with each other.
Speaker: And that makes it such a, I mean, even for somebody like me, who's, who's quite familiar with the material, um,
Speaker: um still it feels like a totally novel experience to walk through and see the the lines of communication in the physical space so i just yeah i have to say a huge congratulations and thank you madel for making that possible for us no thank you that that was my hope and you never know if it will happen and when we started installing you could hear them talking to each other and i do want to
Speaker: call out our exhibition designers because there are all kinds of scholarly reasons that you want things together, but this is fundamentally visual.
Speaker: And I gave them a lot of room.
Speaker: I said, anyone with two eyes can make decisions about what these objects are saying to each other.
Speaker: So it became very collaborative as we all shared our thoughts as to which works wanted to be next to what, and I ended up having the final
Speaker: say or veto, but it was a really rich collaborative undertaking.
Speaker: This is a great exhibition, I think, to bring kids to because there's so much for them to look at that will entertain them.
Speaker: And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited about it, because it's not a stat.
Speaker: I'm sorry, English silver doesn't rock my boat.
Speaker: Blasphemy.
Speaker: I know, I know.
Speaker: But this is a great
Speaker: all in the family, you know, let's go and let's go to the Met.
Speaker: Let's go see an exhibition.
Speaker: And then you're finished and we're going for ice cream.
Speaker: Like, it's great.
Speaker: Yeah, well, you know, connecting past generations and future generations.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: That frog wants ice cream too.
Speaker: Oh yeah, he is waiting for it.
Speaker: His sister's fighting with him.
Speaker: Okay, before this spirals completely out of control, I think that's a good note to end on.
Speaker: And I just want to say thank you to Medill Harvey and Anna-Marie Sendeki for joining me to talk about this wonderful exhibition, the rich material and this fascinating history.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support from Sarah Bellotta.
Speaker: Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: And I'm Ben Miller.
