Transcript
Speaker: Hi Curious Objects listeners, we've got a great show coming up for you today with Thomas Jane, but first I want to give you a quick sneak peek of another podcast that I think you'll love called The Object.
Speaker: This is an award-winning podcast from the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Speaker: They tell stories of art and artists throughout history with style and wit.
Speaker: You can hear new episodes of The Object every month.
Speaker: And stay tuned at the end of this episode to hear a little bit of the object where they dig into a story of mystery and discovery around the famous bronze horses on St.
Speaker: Mark's Basilica in Venice.
Speaker: This episode is also brought to you by the Decorative Arts Trust, a non-profit organization that promotes and fosters the appreciation and study of the arts through visual and in-person programs and grant making.
Speaker: For more information, visit decorativeartstrust.org.
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Curious Optics, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: We spend a lot of time on this program talking about old things, where they came from, why they are the way they are.
Speaker: We've spent a lot less time talking about what you actually do with them right here, right now.
Speaker: Now, you've heard me preach about using antiques rather than letting them languish in the storage closet because they're too precious.
Speaker: Well, my guest today is Thomas Jane, and he is an expert in how to do just that, to take old things and deep knowledge about them and put it into practice.
Speaker: In other words, he is an interior designer.
Speaker: He is the namesake of Jane Design Studios and the author of a really beautiful book from Monticelli Press called Classical Principles for Modern Design, Lessons from Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman's The Decoration of Houses.
Speaker: And if you're not already familiar with Thomas and his work, the first thing to be aware of is just how seriously he is committed to understanding decorative arts in design history and fitting his work into the context and frameworks established by centuries of study and tradition, while at the same time not being mindlessly chained to them.
Speaker: His resume includes Winterthur, Historic Deerfield, and the Getty.
Speaker: He is really my kind of designer.
Speaker: And to be honest, if you're listening to this show, he is probably your kind of designer too.
Speaker: Thomas Jane, welcome to Curious Objects.
Speaker: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker: I never thought of myself as an antiques user, but you have to have a substance that you use.
Speaker: I think antiques is a good one.
Speaker: I advertise antiques like I advertise patent medicine.
Speaker: It's good for your health.
Speaker: It might contain a little alcohol and it'll make you happy.
Speaker: Not to mention green.
Speaker: Very environmentally conscious.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So, OK, we have a lot to talk about today and we're going to take a deep dive into the world of home design and decoration over the last hundred years and specifically at the roles that antiques have played in that story.
Speaker: But I want to start by just clarifying one thing.
Speaker: You talk a lot about historical inspiration.
Speaker: Your book is called Classical Principles of Modern Design.
Speaker: You incorporate historical objects into the design work that you do.
Speaker: But generally speaking, you're not doing what one would describe as reproductions.
Speaker: So how would you describe your approach?
Speaker: Meaning what we called the period room where you try to make a house or a room completely furnished with antiques, often of the same date.
Speaker: It was a decorating goal in the 20th century by many collectors from, say, Jane Reitzman, when she collected French furniture for her own house and then for, of course, the Metropolitan Museum or even Henry Francis DuPont, where
Speaker: He tried to make rooms full of 18th century furniture to be instructional.
Speaker: All these things are the same date, and look how they interrelate.
Speaker: And collectors, and to some degree just private individuals, would ascribe to the same goals.
Speaker: There was a great interest in colonial furniture engendered by Williamsburg and their famous craft house where they sold
Speaker: probably a million pieces of reproduction early American furniture for post-World War II houses.
Speaker: And that was a decorating standard or ideal.
Speaker: Today, I think that we understand that
Speaker: It was rare historically to have a room that was all one date, that most people had things from different times and generations to furnish their house because furniture was expensive and there was also sentiment.
Speaker: And only the very, very rich would buy all new furniture, if you will.
Speaker: Or poor people who would buy all new furniture of poor quality and it would have to be replaced often.
Speaker: So we've really, really at a mark now where we mix up old and new, both for appearance and availability and
Speaker: I guess taste.
Speaker: I do believe that you can't make a great, for today, I don't think it's possible to make a room that is successful, that doesn't have something from our own time and generation, but also something that's old.
Speaker: I think the duality really makes a successful interior, the mixture of the two.
Speaker: And you can really see that in the images of your work in your book.
Speaker: Of course, you know, on your website and Instagram, anyone who takes a look can pretty clearly see the way that you play with
Speaker: combinations of old and new.
Speaker: And we'll get to that topic specifically a little bit later.
Speaker: But really, you know, I want to poke your brain a little and get into the history aspect of this.
Speaker: And
Speaker: how people of past generations have approached the art of designing interiors and how those approaches have changed over time.
Speaker: And what we really are going to focus on today is the last hundred years.
Speaker: But as your book is called Classical Principles of Modern Design, can you give us just a quick overview, starting with the classical period, if we think about
Speaker: ancient Greek and Roman spaces.
Speaker: And sort of tell us about the philosophy of interior design that you'd associate with that period.
Speaker: And then sort of bring us up closer to the present day.
Speaker: This is just going to be a whirlwind tour.
Speaker: So, you know, buckle your seatbelt.
Speaker: I always like to point out that the
Speaker: Greeks were incorporating Egyptian things into their interiors and their buildings.
Speaker: And the Romans were definitely sampling ancient Greece.
Speaker: And that whole Greco-Roman Egyptian tradition was then re-adapted during the Renaissance and delivered to the 18th century.
Speaker: And there was invention along the way, but the elements largely remained the same until the 20th century and the advent of modernism.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And then there was a demarcation between things that were machine-like or made by the machine and the things that were organic.
Speaker: And generally, those things that were organic belonged to the ancient tradition of classicism.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And maybe the sort of core story to start with today has to do with a shift that happens, you know, around 120 years ago with the advent of what we think of as the Gilded Age.
Speaker: And I wanted to jump sort of in our very, very brief survey of interior design history.
Speaker: I wanted to jump straight to one of the sort of closing chapter, which is to say the year 1897.
Speaker: And that's the year in which Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman published their guidebook, The Decoration of Houses, about which you are one of the leading thinkers.
Speaker: But something was really changing in that period around the end of the 19th and into the early 20th century.
Speaker: And there was a new formality or formalism of thinking.
Speaker: about inhabiting spaces.
Speaker: And one of the things they were trying to do was really, well, I think you could describe the book as a kind of a corrective against Victorianism or fussiness, general fussiness.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I mean, what, yeah, so what were they responding to or rebelling against in that book?
Speaker: I mean, the greatest example for me is Edith Wharton's parents' house.
Speaker: She was Jones, as in keeping up with the Joneses.
Speaker: And her parents lived in a house on the, I think it was on 23rd Street or it was in the West 30s.
Speaker: And when you look at the pictures, you'll see it's just...
Speaker: it's full on high Victorian taste with, with portiers and swags and swags, swags of silk damas crowded with furniture.
Speaker: It was, you know, pretty much everything that you would think of in the Gilded Age in full excess.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: Edith Wharton pretty much, you know, you often rebel against your parents' taste, and certainly this was the case where she called out that taste as being overwrought, and she and Aud and Cobb both argued that the reason was is that architects had given up on interior decoration and interior spaces.
Speaker: They would do exteriors, but then they would allow the interiors to be
Speaker: decorated by upholsters and furniture merchants.
Speaker: And they became crowded and confused.
Speaker: And they were both happy that in the 1890s that people were starting to look at historic buildings and rooms as models for better results.
Speaker: And they were very enthusiastic about the future because they said the best models were being selected and therefore the best results were happening.
Speaker: And in their argument, they pointed out all the great public buildings that were going up, like the New York Public Library, the great Chicago Exposition, were all indicators of how classical models were being applied to use in America that eschewed the
Speaker: you know, larded on Victorianists then.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and so it's interesting that, I mean, this is happening during a period of time that we call the Gilded Age, literally named after its excesses and inequalities.
Speaker: So were the ideas that Wharton and Codman were disseminating, were those applicable outside of the great houses of Fifth Avenue and Newport and such?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: They felt that even the simplest houses could have a classical idiom about them, and they pointed out that even the simplest carpenter's manual would show how to make a cornice or crown molding and a base board, which would emulate a column.
Speaker: They said that it could be done with great simplicity, but the effect was universal.
Speaker: So they really felt that a great room had those classical details, and that it was additive after that.
Speaker: And they also felt that furniture had to function, that functionality was the key part of a room.
Speaker: You didn't just put furniture in to fill space.
Speaker: You used furniture for the purpose of the room.
Speaker: So, I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker: When we first started, you and I, talking about this subject, you brought up a term that I don't know if you coined this or not, but I really like the notion, which is democratic connoisseurship.
Speaker: And so, you know, I want to get you to talk a little about that and tell us what you mean by it.
Speaker: And in the context of this, you know, Gilded Age, you know, aesthetic moment, if you think about what you might call a typical American middle class home in 1900, 1910, you know,
Speaker: The styles that they were embracing, to what extent were those imitative of the wealthy homes they were seeing?
Speaker: And to what extent was there sort of a separate middle class aesthetic versus standing in opposition to the sort of 1% or Gilded Age aesthetic?
Speaker: Are those different things?
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Well, I think everything, every man-made object reflects the time and generation.
Speaker: So it's all in the same mix.
Speaker: And every community had...
Speaker: grand mansions that were on the pattern of Newport, if not the same size.
Speaker: I always think of Newport as being the arch type of Gilded Age mansions, but, you know, Fifth Avenue, San Francisco, all the big American cities had neighborhoods with palace-like houses.
Speaker: And then there were middle-class neighborhoods that
Speaker: might not have the same great porticos and columns, but it had a lot of the same essential parts.
Speaker: I think everyone, the aspiration was to have a front hall and a living room and a dining room and
Speaker: If you could afford it, you had a bedroom with a sitting room.
Speaker: And those are the key things.
Speaker: And sometimes Americans just wanted really big bedrooms without sitting rooms, but Edith Wharton thought that was better if you had a sitting room.
Speaker: So I think that there was a universal desire to have certain elements and that they be classically parlayed, whether it be, let's say,
Speaker: the Vanderbilt mansion which was pretty excessive to um you know a regular house on a regular street in a small town I'm not really answering your question um um
Speaker: No, I mean, that's driving in the direction.
Speaker: I mean, I think sort of, you know, if the focal point of the history we're trying to tell today has to do with the objects being used in these houses,
Speaker: You know, one of the key differences between a Fifth Avenue mansion and a middle class American home is the types of objects that their inhabitants could afford to put in them.
Speaker: So, you know, in Newport and Fifth Avenue and the great San Francisco homes,
Speaker: You know, these were homes that were piled high with the finest English and French furniture, Italian paintings, you name it.
Speaker: But, you know, what about American antiques?
Speaker: You know, people are maybe for the first time starting to think seriously about collecting things.
Speaker: Americana, as we would call it today.
Speaker: You know, you might start to see some even some of these early reproductions of reproductions of early American pieces.
Speaker: But what you know, was colonial American furniture seen by by 1910 as something that you might want to have in your home?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So that's a whole timeline.
Speaker: The interest in Americana, American furniture, that's very telling.
Speaker: American furniture and Americana in our interiors starts pretty early when people start keeping relics that are associated with the early period.
Speaker: and it could be a chest that was believed to come over on the Mayflower or pieces of silver associated with the Patriot of the American Revolution.
Speaker: And they were freestanding, so you might have an early American chair in your French drawing room to prove that you had this early American connection.
Speaker: Eventually,
Speaker: it became more embracing where all old furniture, all American furniture represented at time and period and people collected it partly out of a sense of history, but it also became part of the American aesthetic.
Speaker: And I think that's where artists started collecting Americana for its simplicity of line and its style.
Speaker: And it had a sort of
Speaker: worked well with a modern aesthetic.
Speaker: Especially shaker furniture and simpler 18th century furniture was embraced by the artistic community.
Speaker: And that's where Americana leaves being a relic, just being interesting as relics to being an interior design aesthetic.
Speaker: And at that point, there's this whole period called the colonial revival where people start decorating their houses in a colonial taste.
Speaker: And lots and lots of furniture is made that's called colonial.
Speaker: And that tradition really has stopped.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and so how does, if we think about the evolution of architectural styles, how does that play into taste for furniture specifically?
Speaker: I mean, by the 1920s, we're already hearing from Le Corbusier about open floor plans and spacious windows.
Speaker: And that's not, you don't necessarily, if you have a window covering your whole wall, it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for sideboards and China hutches.
Speaker: Does that have an influence on how people are thinking about their spaces?
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: I mean, there was, modernism wasn't widely incorporated in American homes until after the Second War.
Speaker: And I think most people wanted formal rooms until then.
Speaker: They wanted a dining room with a sideboard and a dining table that would seat 12 and a parlor or a reception room that was formal.
Speaker: And really after the war, the open plan and modern furniture took a role.
Speaker: And you had basically two dueling tastes.
Speaker: You had sort of modern ranch houses or colonial Cape Cod type houses were being built almost in equal number.
Speaker: So I think that's the bifurcation.
Speaker: And the modern houses would have Scandinavian furniture and the colonial houses would have reproduction colonial furniture.
Speaker: And occasionally there'd be a mix up, but not very often.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and there are other things happening at this time, too, in terms of means of production.
Speaker: So in a previous episode, I spoke with Glenn Adamson about his book, Craft in American History.
Speaker: And he describes this curious phenomenon when there's sort of a period when mass manufacturing hasn't quite dominated the economy for decorative arts, but furniture makers are starting to produce objects in multiples and sometimes many multiples.
Speaker: And then eventually there's this shift where bespoke, one of a kind objects become the exception rather than the rule in American homes.
Speaker: So, you know, and I think it's hard to put an exact date on when that happens, but what do you say, and just sort of as a general impression, what does that shift do to the practice of interior design?
Speaker: Well, you can certainly see it today, where modern furniture has reproduced
Speaker: in great numbers.
Speaker: You have the phenomenon of design within reach where you can go in and pick out a whole house full of furniture.
Speaker: It's all modern and it all looks good in combination.
Speaker: And that really
Speaker: That's really the market right now.
Speaker: And then the other competitor is things like Restoration Hardware.
Speaker: If you want soft furniture that's not as modern, but apparently more comfortable.
Speaker: So that eclipses pretty much all the bench made or personally made things, except for people who are well-to-do or have a very strong interest in craft.
Speaker: So it's hard to refute.
Speaker: That's one thing good about antiques, though.
Speaker: If you do decide, you know, if you are obligated or you do decide to rely on retail sources, just introducing a few old things can immediately add personality and contrast.
Speaker: And I think that's happening more and more where you see interiors with a few old things at least just to offset the repetitiveness of what's being manufactured.
Speaker: Certainly restoration hardware always interjects a few seemingly old things into their interiors in order to give that quality.
Speaker: Well, that's interesting.
Speaker: I wonder to what extent restoration hardware and that sort of approach, is that reacting?
Speaker: I mean, I guess every aesthetic period is, in a sense, reacting to what...
Speaker: preceded it but there's this um generation i think of as being roughly between the end of world war ii and the vietnam war which um just feels to me like a low point in in home design at least in america and and i think of
Speaker: shag carpeting and tassels and mustard yellow tiles.
Speaker: Am I missing something?
Speaker: Or were there actually interesting ideas being explored in that period?
Speaker: Were there good designers?
Speaker: So what dates are you saying again?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's say between about... What's the banal period?
Speaker: Well, correct me again if I'm wrong, but in my mind, I guess it's somewhere between about 1950 and 1975, 1980.
Speaker: Well, I mean, there's all that great architecture.
Speaker: I mean, look at all those fantastic modern houses like the Ames house and all the Neutra houses and all the
Speaker: There are a lot of great... Cranbrook, you know, there's... I guess Cranbrook's a little earlier, but there are a lot of great modern interiors being made in America, and there are less and less houses that are being made in the classical taste, and
Speaker: And the ones that are being built kind of look hollow.
Speaker: The classical tradition is not regularly practiced.
Speaker: They generally look... They don't look as good.
Speaker: I think there's some major decorative monuments in that period.
Speaker: But the low-end taste, not low-end, but the popular taste...
Speaker: because I guess there's so much of it.
Speaker: How many avocado green appliances can you look at or macrame plant hangers or all that stuff's having a revival because people didn't grow up with it.
Speaker: It looks sort of interesting and fresh.
Speaker: I haven't seen any avocado green appliances yet.
Speaker: But, God, that's a hard question.
Speaker: I don't,
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't think we really know yet.
Speaker: But, I mean, there's a lot of 70s furniture is popular.
Speaker: I mean, the whole phenomenon of Palm Springs.
Speaker: Look at Palm Springs, how popular that is.
Speaker: And all that stuff is basically the dates we're talking about from after the Second War to the present.
Speaker: And it's full of modern houses.
Speaker: There's virtually no antiques in Palm Springs.
Speaker: And look how applauded that is.
Speaker: Yeah, that's an interesting point.
Speaker: And there are some people that are sophisticated and possibly that do have some old things mixed in with their modern furniture.
Speaker: But I would say that's 5% or 10%.
Speaker: It's a resort and people tend to not want to have serious things in those houses.
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Speaker: So let's take another seemingly dominant trend, which comes in the years following that period with the arrival of mid-century modernism in America, which, you know, I mean, it really dominates the design world for a very long time.
Speaker: arguably up to the present.
Speaker: I mean, you mentioned design within reach, certainly the IKEA aesthetic is highly prevalent.
Speaker: I mean, why is that?
Speaker: Why has mid-century modernism, even if you could argue maybe that it's starting to lose some purchase now, but it's been well over a generation now that mid-century modernism has sort of taken the
Speaker: the leading role in popular American conceptions of interiors.
Speaker: Is that just because it fits easily into a white cube apartment?
Speaker: I think it's good to compare...
Speaker: Collecting reproduction Georgian furniture to make a house and collecting modern furniture to make a house.
Speaker: I think it was appealing.
Speaker: Both were appealing to people because they knew if they bought the formula, they'd have a good looking house.
Speaker: And so, I know countless people who picked out all their furniture from the Williamsburg craft house catalog and then bought it all and their houses look good.
Speaker: And the same with modern furniture.
Speaker: You picked out the modern stuff you wanted and it all went together and you got a pleasing interior.
Speaker: So I think that is, I think the formula, a successful formula for, you know, having a decent looking house are both, are both those styles.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: So you're, you're saying it has a lot to do with just sort of ease the ability for a normal person to create a good looking interior without too much work.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, it's fraught too, because people were not trained artistically like we once were.
Speaker: So middle class, you're not trained to make aesthetic decisions.
Speaker: We rarely teach art in school right now.
Speaker: You don't learn to mix colors or paint or arrange things or make things.
Speaker: So when you start to furnish your house, you're really at ground zero about how to do it.
Speaker: Especially if your parents were hippies, they probably didn't have decorated houses.
Speaker: So you do reach for some sort of formula that you're guaranteed some sort of success at.
Speaker: And I do think going and buying, collecting modern furniture from retail sources, you can make a pretty decent looking house.
Speaker: Will it really reflect your personality or be individual?
Speaker: No, but it will look good.
Speaker: I think that's where we differ.
Speaker: I always design a house so it functions.
Speaker: making sure that they're all the right pieces of furniture and furnishings are present in the floor plan so it works.
Speaker: And then it's choice of what goes in those places.
Speaker: And I always try to have some things that are old and some things that are new.
Speaker: And that's, it's like creating a collage or a sculpture, the objects have to interplay with each other.
Speaker: and look good.
Speaker: And this goes back to one of the classic combinations that we all have seen is the pair of Barcelona chairs by Muse van der Rohe and a Chinese cabinet.
Speaker: That's just such a classic example of old and new that we all know.
Speaker: And in a way, that's what we do every day is not so much the exact thing, but the idea of combining
Speaker: a modern thing with an old thing for pleasing effect.
Speaker: And also I do feel like antiques give you a lot more value in terms of decoration and quality than most new modern furniture.
Speaker: Well, so, yeah, I want to talk about this because, you know, it is it's sort of popular in some circles, at least these days, to talk about eclectic style and drawing things from different places and different periods and putting them together.
Speaker: But that's not the easiest thing to pull off for us mere mortals who aren't professional interior designers.
Speaker: Whereas your rooms, as you say, you often will bring in pieces that represent different decades, different centuries, different continents, even though Edith Wharton certainly frowned on that.
Speaker: So what's your magic for making that work?
Speaker: And what would you say to Edith Wharton if she criticized you for that?
Speaker: Well, I wrote my book with Ted Luce.
Speaker: He was my co-author, and he decided that Edith Wharton was vinegary.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But, okay, so let's go back to the history of decoration.
Speaker: If you start in...
Speaker: Roman times, if you start in classic times, there's already a mixture of people adapting things from previous times and generations and using them in their houses.
Speaker: And by the 18th century, people are collecting antiquities to use as decoration.
Speaker: And so there's always this play of old and new in interiors.
Speaker: And when we get to the present,
Speaker: I find that there's always the best decoration is ancient and modern or old and new things.
Speaker: And that comes from historic tradition.
Speaker: Now, Edith Wharton, yeah, she wasn't, she didn't say that all the furniture had to be one style, but she said it had to harmonize.
Speaker: I do think that,
Speaker: I never really read her I never read Wharton as being it all had to be French or all had to be English but I think she wanted it all to be classical she eschewed the Rococo and the Victorian so that did get you down to neoclassicism and all of its forms but for us
Speaker: We have a broader, that's a big question.
Speaker: I think today, this is one of the things that I find really important.
Speaker: I wrote about this a couple of times when I wrote the book on influential American interiors and then in my own book, in my monograph, and then about, and to a certain degree in classical principles, and that is what is American decoration?
Speaker: And that was a big question.
Speaker: In fact, I asked Wendell Garrett, you know, the longtime editor of Antiques, and what is American decoration?
Speaker: And we had this long philosophical conversation about it.
Speaker: And it turns out that American decoration is a set of things, but it's not defined.
Speaker: It's comfort.
Speaker: It's functionality.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: often times the simple use of materials in an artistic way.
Speaker: And the other thing we hit upon is in American decoration, you can pretty much decorate your house any way you want to, and no one will criticize you because that is what I call democratic decoration, meaning that there's no national standard on how your house should look.
Speaker: And that allows for a lot of invention and personal expression.
Speaker: And that's what allows us to use modern furniture, antique furniture, or a combination of modern furniture.
Speaker: We pretty much have carte blanche about how we mix it up.
Speaker: And that's what's genius about American decor.
Speaker: And I think that's what we've really run with at Jane Design Studio is the idea that you can pretty much have whatever you want.
Speaker: And it's how you arrange it to look handsome and beautiful.
Speaker: And what looks handsome and beautiful is to what suits your eye.
Speaker: And in fact, houses have become more and more private.
Speaker: So the only people that really see them are the people who live there.
Speaker: having parties at home, at least in New York, has become rarer and rarer.
Speaker: And so they're even more personal for that reason.
Speaker: You have no exterior expectations.
Speaker: And that's liberating in some ways.
Speaker: And also causes people not to decorate because there's really no value or return for it.
Speaker: how it all sorts out after this pandemic.
Speaker: And I think people might entertain more at home than before.
Speaker: And therefore they all need to redecorate.
Speaker: That was a little joke.
Speaker: Oh, well, I certainly feel that way.
Speaker: I mean, I have had small gatherings and look forward at some point in the, I hope not too distant future to having larger gatherings.
Speaker: And I'm certainly feeling,
Speaker: motivated to rethink the space that I live in for my guests benefit, but also for mine.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And actually, you know, I wanted to ask, but before I let you go, if you could give me some practical advice, which who knows might be helpful to other listeners as well.
Speaker: But, you know, I'm I'm in my 30s and I live in a small rental apartment in Brooklyn.
Speaker: And I care about the space that I live in.
Speaker: And, you know, I want it to be comfortable and I want it to look good.
Speaker: But of course, you know, there are serious limits both to what I can afford and also what I can justify investing into a place that who knows how long I'll even live here.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So what do you think I should be prioritizing in terms of, you know, the objects that I'm investing in that I want to live with here?
Speaker: Well, it's
Speaker: I mean, there's this classic taste.
Speaker: The traditional or classic advice for people who are
Speaker: younger and setting up household is, you know, once you have your basic needs met, that each purchase or each addition be something you really love and is of good quality.
Speaker: And that is the path.
Speaker: And if you buy things you really like and that are well made, they'll help you furnish the house you're in and then eventually, you know, a larger house should you acquire one.
Speaker: But there's
Speaker: There's been a trend to just go buy whole sets, you know, whole, like go to, go to crate and barrel or go to some retail source and just buy the whole kit and then throw it out in five years.
Speaker: Um, which of course is horrible for the environment and is, is a terrible investment because you spent this large amount of money on stuff that you're only getting five years use out of.
Speaker: So really, if you can get to the point of buying things that will last your whole life,
Speaker: you're ahead of the game.
Speaker: And so that's my general advice is to buy things you love and buy the best quality.
Speaker: And rather than buy a lot, go slow and acquire things that are great.
Speaker: And it's pretty easy to buy beautiful things right now because the antiques market is...
Speaker: Really, a buyer's market, you can get really, really nice things for very little money.
Speaker: We buy countless objects now in the office that are under $500 that are really nice.
Speaker: So it's an exciting time, if you're interested in little things, to acquire them because you can buy the best quality for $500.
Speaker: for not much money.
Speaker: And if you are okay with some minor imperfection to get a beautiful object, you're even better off in terms of collecting.
Speaker: So I always just try to encourage people to buy the best they can afford and maybe not buy as much.
Speaker: As long as you have a place to sit and you have a dining table and chairs and a bed and maybe a comfortable place to sit, then from then on, it's additive.
Speaker: Everything else is gravy.
Speaker: Well, it's like collecting decorative arts and paintings that are the same.
Speaker: You buy something you love with the best quality and it grows and stays with you.
Speaker: Now,
Speaker: That's my general advice.
Speaker: But the other thing is to give yourself the freedom of changing your mind.
Speaker: You don't have to love everything you buy in your 20s when you're in your 30s.
Speaker: And you're bound to make some mistakes.
Speaker: And that's okay.
Speaker: And that's how your taste changes and matures.
Speaker: So don't be freaked out that you're buying something you have to live with for the rest of your life, but generally buy things with an eye to do the rest of your life, but also say, oh, well, I outgrew some specific taste and you can move on.
Speaker: There's impunity in that.
Speaker: So I can get rid of my crate and barrel dining table.
Speaker: You have a crate and barrel dining table?
Speaker: I'm afraid so.
Speaker: But look at it.
Speaker: Does it look good?
Speaker: Does it work?
Speaker: There's no crime in that.
Speaker: I thought it did about eight years ago.
Speaker: Not so much anymore.
Speaker: Well, then you got your use out of it, and maybe you can get an 18th century one very soon.
Speaker: You could, you know, for the price of it.
Speaker: You can buy.
Speaker: No, I know, I know.
Speaker: You can buy an 18th century dining table for the same price as the table at Crate and Barrel, which is crazy.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, when I bought this, I guess it was more like 10 years ago, I hadn't been introduced to the wonderful world of antiques.
Speaker: So I didn't realize what a terrible opportunity I was wasting.
Speaker: Also, I work for an old line decorator named Albert Hadley, and we bought things everywhere.
Speaker: Crate and barrel is a great and reliable source.
Speaker: Sometimes restoration of hardware, certainly design within reach.
Speaker: Those are all good things.
Speaker: It's just how you put them into a mix that is what's telling.
Speaker: It's a lot like
Speaker: Something like fashion where you can go in and buy the whole outfit or you can buy parts of the outfit and combine it to make it your own taste.
Speaker: It's somewhat analogous to that.
Speaker: And all the advice literature about, all the advice now about fashion is to buy a few good pieces and save the environment and don't buy countless cheap t-shirts.
Speaker: And I think furniture follows that model too.
Speaker: Well, you're speaking my language, and I really appreciate that advice, and I hope listeners will find that helpful.
Speaker: The Declaration of Houses is really hard to read because it's so dense, but I encourage everyone to have a copy of it and read the chapters individually and backwards and forwards, and you can use my book as a concordance if you want, but I think if you take that on,
Speaker: you'll have a really nice understanding of traditional decoration and design that will inform all your design decisions for really your lifetime because it's a point of reference.
Speaker: It's not that everything in there is what you want to do, but at least you have it as a baseline.
Speaker: It's like any advice, you know, you know, or any advice or vocabulary.
Speaker: You learn the vocabulary, you learn the advice, and then you play it against your own life and what works for you.
Speaker: And I think that's really what I'm...
Speaker: A summary of what I think is that we know the rules, we know all about classicism, we know about historic decoration, but we make contemporary rooms for modern people.
Speaker: And that means sometimes it's doing things differently, but we know what it's based on.
Speaker: And that's what I think makes the best decoration for today.
Speaker: Well, I think that's a great note to end on.
Speaker: Thomas Jane, thank you so much.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: It was fun.
Speaker: That's our show for today.
Speaker: Thanks for listening.
Speaker: Now stick around to hear a snippet of the object podcast.
Speaker: You can find the full episode on SoundCloud or Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker: On the 13th of December in 1815, the emperor of the Austrian empire floats across Venice standing on a seashell.
Speaker: naked except for a robe he's holding rather loosely over his body as though someone in the crowd has thrown it to him like dude put this on his name is francis i and he has four gilded bronze horses with him which he will take to the basilica of saint mark's the ancient church with the bell tower and pigeons
Speaker: where the horses still are today, one of the most famous symbols of Venice.
Speaker: And then, presumably, Francis would ascend to heaven on his nautical chariot.
Speaker: Look what I did, you mortals.
Speaker: Well, that's how the scene is depicted anyway, in an engraving from the time.
Speaker: What really happens, if you want to be all factual about it, is that the four bronze horses arrive on a raft, pulled around the east end of Venice,
Speaker: And when they come to the little plaza by the Basilica of St.
Speaker: Mark's, they're unloaded and pulled through ranks of soldiers toward the church, and the soldiers haul them atop the balcony, a loggia over the entrance, to the sound of gun salutes and cannon fire.
Speaker: It's a big deal because the horses had been taken by Napoleon 18 years earlier in 1797.
Speaker: And now, with the dictator's defeat, the symbols of Venice have come back.
Speaker: No thanks, really, to Francis.
Speaker: But whatever.
Speaker: Over the next few decades, tourists come to see the horses and artists paint them.
Speaker: And they become, like so much of Venice, something that seems to have always been there.
Speaker: Until, in the 1870s, Charles Carl Coleman, an American, decides to paint a picture of them.
Speaker: Coleman goes up to the balcony and paints not just the four bronze horses, but the balcony itself.
Speaker: And in his picture he puts some chunks of decorative marble and bits of broken columns of one ancient origin or another lying around the balcony.
Speaker: And he shows how the columns supporting the horse's feet are each a little different, taken from here and there.
Speaker: As if to say, these horses, like himself, are not from around here.
Speaker: And he's right.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit, and I'm Ben Miller.
