Transcript
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to the third annual Curious Objects Live podcast event with the winner's show.
Speaker: I can't believe that this is our third year and our third live show.
Speaker: Now, of course, this is our first time doing it virtually, so for those of you who have been with us in past Januaries, you can expect a few differences.
Speaker: For example, none of us are wearing pants.
Speaker: Also, we usually save the cocktails for after the show, but this time we've started before.
Speaker: for the show, so you might notice that the panelists are a little extra scholarly tonight.
Speaker: And in addition to this live event, our discussion is being recorded to publish as the next episode of the Curious Objects podcast.
Speaker: That is, unless something goes terribly wrong.
Speaker: And whether you're with us live or listening to this in podcast form, well, it is five o'clock somewhere, and this panel is called Blended Spirits, so I think you know what to do.
Speaker: Seriously though, I'm thrilled to be part of this fantastic lineup of Winter Show virtual events.
Speaker: A huge thank you to Helen Allen for making it possible and to today's panelists.
Speaker: In the red corner, hailing from Oxford, representing Daniel Crouch, rare books, purveyor of maps, atlases, globes, charts, plans, prints, crayon drawings, napkin sketches, we have the coincidentally named Daniel Crouch.
Speaker: In the blue corner, beaming in from Chicago, from Lays en Lumineur, specializing in illuminated manuscripts, ancient jewelry, books of ours, and just generally really old shit, the one and only Keegan Gottfried.
Speaker: And in the other corner here in New York, representing Kentshire Galleries, dealers in estate jewelry, the one who makes you say, thank God they included a woman on this panel, Carrie Emberman.
Speaker: Look in female.
Speaker: And I, of course, am Ben Miller, dealer in antique English and American silver and jewelry at SJ Shrubsall here in New York.
Speaker: Now, one element of the winter show that you might not have heard about is what happens on those very rare occasions when there are no visitors in the aisle and we dealers are left to our own devices.
Speaker: Now, Helen will remind you that these are indeed very, very rare occasions, but... It never happens.
Speaker: But it is true that it never happens.
Speaker: The show's never empty.
Speaker: It's always filled with throngs of people, right?
Speaker: Daniel, you're looking so serious.
Speaker: It doesn't happen for very long.
Speaker: What do you think happens when a bunch of antiques dealers are lounging around with nothing to entertain ourselves but each other?
Speaker: Well, obscenity laws prevent me from being too specific, but today we are going to show you a bit of the behind-the-scenes chatter that a fly on the wall might hear at the winter show on, say, a slow Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker: And it's true, one of the things that we do sometimes talk about is the actual objects that we have brought to the show.
Speaker: So today we're going to introduce you to a few alcohol-related objects from our respective inventories.
Speaker: Now, of course, I'm eager to talk about the object that I brought, but I don't want to be selfish, so I'm going to kick things over to Daniel.
Speaker: Daniel, why don't you tell us about this very interesting map that you're presenting for us?
Speaker: Certainly I will.
Speaker: The map is now appearing like I am virtually from Oxford.
Speaker: The good news is it may be five o'clock somewhere, but it's 10 p.m.
Speaker: now.
Speaker: So unlike Mark, I haven't got half a bottle of wine I've deliberately emptied half of.
Speaker: I have very carefully emptied my other half and I'm working on the second.
Speaker: So I'm going to take you on a journey, but this journey is not just in space.
Speaker: I'm going to take you on a journey in time as well.
Speaker: And we are going back to one of my favorite places.
Speaker: We are going to the Gironde in France and we are going to Bordeaux.
Speaker: And this map here is the carte vinicole of 1855.
Speaker: And for those of you who drink as much as I do, you will know that 1855 was the year in which French wines were classified.
Speaker: And this was a genius idea of Napoleon III, not the very short Napoleon, the slightly taller Napoleon, who was his nephew.
Speaker: And his plan in line with the great exhibition in Paris of 1855 was to classify the wines of France.
Speaker: When he said the wines of France, he really meant the reds of Bordeaux and a couple of whites for good measure.
Speaker: And this map shows the Gironde River and this map and this procedure is how the clarets were classified.
Speaker: And this was done by a Mr. Dufour Dubergier, who was the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Bordeaux, it's a cunning marketing ploy.
Speaker: And it was done on the basis of nothing more sophisticated than reputation and price.
Speaker: And they were divided into five classifications, premier coup down to cinquième coup.
Speaker: And you'll see originally,
Speaker: There were four Premier Cru, and the more astute of you will know that there are now five because Mütter-Rothschild was elevated to become one of the top five.
Speaker: Nothing to do with the fact that the richest man in the world at the time happened to buy the vineyard.
Speaker: The two main areas of interest on this map.
Speaker: Oh, and just a note, also for those listening to this in podcast form, you can see pictures of this map and everything else we're talking about at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: because it's really a bit rubbish doing a little visual tour on a podcast, really.
Speaker: Sorry, I didn't realise that little detail.
Speaker: In Pouillac and on the left bank, that's the region where the Red Wangs are.
Speaker: And then further to the south of Bordeaux, you'll see down beyond Cadillac, not the car,
Speaker: where we have the white wines.
Speaker: And you'll see here, for those that have this on screen, Chateau du Chem.
Speaker: And the wine, the map rather wonderfully provides details of both.
Speaker: And so here in the bottom right is a picture of Chateau du Chem.
Speaker: A little anecdote to go with this.
Speaker: When I was at school many, many years ago, a very good friend of mine's father was a solarist at Queens College here in Oxford, where I am, and he kept a very fine cellar.
Speaker: And as a 13, 14 year old Daniel, I persuaded my friend to, while his parents were out for the afternoon, to let us go wandering in the cellar.
Speaker: Some 30 years later, I found the father of my friend drunk after recording in town, walking back to his house.
Speaker: And he slapped me on the back in a very jovial mood with a cigar and an undone bow tie and said, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, I always liked you.
Speaker: You always had great taste.
Speaker: I said, oh, why?
Speaker: He says, when you raided my wine cellar, you really did some damage.
Speaker: And it turns out those sweet little innocent half bottles of white wine that I've been drinking were none other than his very fine Chateau de Chemin collection about 30 years ago at about three or $400 a pop.
Speaker: Some damage was done.
Speaker: And so I look at this back with a great deal of fondness.
Speaker: And then...
Speaker: the five grids of color code, going to the key.
Speaker: And then we go up to the top and we have a much more detailed inset map that shows Chateau Lafitte, little vignette, Chateau Margaux,
Speaker: and then rather wonderfully, all of the famous Lignards.
Speaker: It was like a wine cellar of my dreams up here on the left banks of the Gironde.
Speaker: And so I couldn't contribute to a cocktail with a cocktail map, but given that I can't drink spirits anymore anyway, I thought it was a good idea to go with a red wine.
Speaker: And so that is my drinking object for the ages and would have been in the winter show this year, we're not for the fact that we are all homebound and zoom bound.
Speaker: So if anyone has any questions.
Speaker: So, Damiel, yeah, why was this map actually made?
Speaker: I mean, who was it made for?
Speaker: Who was the intended audience?
Speaker: Is it documentary?
Speaker: Is it...
Speaker: It was made in 1855 at the time of the great exhibition in Paris.
Speaker: And it was made really as a marketing tool for the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce.
Speaker: And it was made by the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Bordeaux to bring their wines above all others by giving them a classification.
Speaker: People love things when they're graded, when they're better.
Speaker: And this classification, which was really a marketing tool done nearly 200 years ago now,
Speaker: They've held true.
Speaker: And you've got investors around the world buying these very wines because they appeared on this very map in 1855 in those classifications because that year they were the most expensive ones.
Speaker: And in your opinion, are the more expensive wines the better ones?
Speaker: I haven't tried them all yet.
Speaker: I'm working on that.
Speaker: In various.
Speaker: Well, it's a hell of a picture.
Speaker: Thank you, Daniel.
Speaker: Why don't we jump over to Kerry?
Speaker: You've got something a little more glitzy for us.
Speaker: Um, so I brought to the party, um, a cocktail ring because it seemed germane.
Speaker: And, uh, because I wanted to talk a little bit about the history of the cocktail ring.
Speaker: This particular one is platinum with a, I would almost say kind of a mild color change Ceylon sapphire in it.
Speaker: That's about eight carats.
Speaker: It's French, which actually, um,
Speaker: The genesis of the cocktail ring is American, but everyone catches on and everyone starts doing it.
Speaker: Historically, the cocktail ring starts 1920s America during prohibition because they come up with cocktails.
Speaker: I don't know this, everyone's probably gonna like drag out this old chestnut, but cocktails were invented because the alcohol that they were using like bathtub gin, this kind of thing was undrinkable.
Speaker: So you made cocktails to disguise the taste of the terrible alcohol.
Speaker: I myself don't drink cocktails.
Speaker: I'm a Mezcal gal, but were I to drink a cocktail and I was in the twenties, I would be wearing this cocktail ring, which,
Speaker: The more I thought about it, if you were a flapper in the 20s, it's kind of the original right hand ring.
Speaker: So you would wear it to sort of draw attention to the fact that you were holding a cocktail and that you were like a wild gal.
Speaker: And to that end, it was very typically sort of a gem set ring.
Speaker: For whatever reason, they were typically colored gemstones.
Speaker: This one is, it takes up a lot of real estate on the finger.
Speaker: And it's really like, look at me.
Speaker: And it's not supposed to be an engagement ring.
Speaker: It's just supposed to be like, good time, Charlie.
Speaker: I have my ring.
Speaker: I'm drinking my cocktail.
Speaker: It's supposed to call attention to the cocktail and to the fact that you were sort of an empowered gal who was busy drinking cocktails all day long because you were
Speaker: You were fun.
Speaker: And the more I thought about it, the more I actually thought, if you think about the history of rings since the dawn of time, they're meant to sort of symbolize eternity.
Speaker: They're meant to commemorate occasions, sentiment.
Speaker: That's typically how we think about rings.
Speaker: We think about them as memento mori in memoriam.
Speaker: We think about them to, there's a whole genre of like,
Speaker: acrostic rings that exist to communicate little secret messages.
Speaker: Then a turn of the century engagement rings come along, which were handily developed by the diamond industry to get you to buy rings.
Speaker: But this is like the first time that a ring comes along just for fun.
Speaker: It's not really supposed to be conveying any other sentiment other than I drink booze and I'm fun and I've got money.
Speaker: So, and this trend continues from prohibition in America and then sort of takes root, as I said, this ring in particular is French, but, and it really holds on until the fifties.
Speaker: And it's kind of, while dovetailing with the idea of women's lib or women taking on a new role in society, it's also just supposed to be fun.
Speaker: It's really, to my mind, I think the first time that a ring comes around that is supposed to communicate that.
Speaker: So I'm a fun gal.
Speaker: I would happily wear this ring.
Speaker: I don't know what else I can...
Speaker: blather on about, but- I'd wear that ring too.
Speaker: Thanks, thanks Keegan.
Speaker: I think it would look lovely as a man's pinky ring as well.
Speaker: But, you know, I, as a gal that, this is my own personal ring, but I'm often wearing a cocktail ring because even though I have- Is your mom gonna get money and you're- Well, you know, I actually have the hands of the cryptkeeper.
Speaker: They're like, as my mom always says, they're like little,
Speaker: We both inherited my father's little like cocktail wiener hands.
Speaker: But for some reason that does not stop me from drawing attention to my truly hideous hands all the time because I love wearing rings.
Speaker: I love being able to see my own jewelry.
Speaker: So that's what I got.
Speaker: And, you know, I think I'm overdue for a cocktail, but reporting live from New York, it's me, Carrie.
Speaker: I can't shy.
Speaker: Carrie, can men wear cocktail rings too or?
Speaker: Sure, why not?
Speaker: I mean, booze is an equal opportunity sport.
Speaker: And I was amazed that when you were doing the intro for the whole, how you made it seem like all of us dealers when it's a quiet moment are just talking about our own inventory instead of drinking, which is the actual truth of it.
Speaker: So cheers to that.
Speaker: You made us seem sophisticated, Ben.
Speaker: Tell me about the design of this ring.
Speaker: Because, I mean, you talked about rings sort of in the, toward the end of the 19th century, you start to see engagement rings, but that's a very different style from... Exactly.
Speaker: It's stylistically, instead of being a romantic thing, you start seeing, particularly in this ring, which looks comically miniature when I'm...
Speaker: you're starting to see sort of like one toe in the industrial, sort of the real industrialized modern design of the 30s.
Speaker: You're seeing clean lines.
Speaker: It looks very efficient.
Speaker: It's a fast looking ring for a fast gal.
Speaker: And you see a lot of the real hallmarks of the deco period, which are these
Speaker: geometric, sort of abstract, structured, very sculptural elements that come into play around this time.
Speaker: This is probably dead on like 1930.
Speaker: So you're kind of, you're already past like the true prohibition, but it's looking, it's, this is to my mind, sort of a classic cocktail ring.
Speaker: because they are specifically not necessarily like diamond engagement rings, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: And later on, as during the war, we move away from platinum, you see them in gold as well.
Speaker: And you see them, they are an exuberant fun thing.
Speaker: Who made it and for whom?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I know it has French hallmarks on it.
Speaker: So it has a poincon, the French typically mark on the back of their rings here.
Speaker: So it has, you know, a French platinum mark.
Speaker: It is not signed.
Speaker: To my mind, when I'm looking at, when I'm looking at French jewelry in general, I already feel like I'm looking at something that is made to a much higher standard than the rest of the world thinks about jewelry.
Speaker: The French are just working at a complete, they have a completely different mindset about, I would say, quality and proportion specifically.
Speaker: I would guess that, were I to be encountering this ring for the first time, I probably didn't even look to see if it had French hallmarks.
Speaker: It just looks French.
Speaker: It has that sensibility.
Speaker: French steaming ring, bit classy but large.
Speaker: You know, I'd be just fine with this ring.
Speaker: I'll have you know, Daniel.
Speaker: It's available.
Speaker: Okay, can we hop over to Keegan and go way, way back in time for a minute?
Speaker: That's okay.
Speaker: We can do that.
Speaker: It's only Chicago for like six hours for me.
Speaker: So what have you got for us, Keegan?
Speaker: Yeah, not a ring.
Speaker: Well, I have a scrappy manuscript, but a very interesting one and totally fitting our theme today.
Speaker: I mean, I could have brought a book of hours with a calendar with scenes of like someone picking grapes or making grapes, some little tiny picture.
Speaker: Or, yeah, I mean, we've had some great imagery, but I think this one just really nails it.
Speaker: And it's so interesting.
Speaker: This is a manuscript in vellum.
Speaker: probably about the size of a shoe box, like a man's sneaker box, or that's the dimensions.
Speaker: It's written in the, you know, circa 1425 in Italy, probably Bologna.
Speaker: And it is the statutes for regulating the wine trade and transportation of wine in Bologna.
Speaker: So statutes meaning laws and regulations, but it really gives us some really fascinating insights into people's relationship with wine.
Speaker: I mean, heck, I mean, even when I go and buy wine in Chicago, which has the highest tax on alcohol in the United States, it's something that we encounter.
Speaker: If we enjoy alcohol, we're probably gonna be taxed unless we're making it ourselves.
Speaker: So this is a really very rare document that survives.
Speaker: There aren't very many of these that exist.
Speaker: If they do, they're in Italian or other public collections where a lot of these statutes for particular cities live.
Speaker: So, I mean,
Speaker: This is written in Italian.
Speaker: It's really gonna be used for the interaction between, you know, city, the governing officials and the guilds, and then how they're going to then interact with the citizens of Bologna.
Speaker: So, you know, it regulates the cost of wine for individuals, the cost of wholesale wine, the special prices that people in the military get for their wine.
Speaker: A big one, big one, really important is that they go on and on about is actually about the rules concerning the mixing of water with wine.
Speaker: OK, so you can't get down a water product.
Speaker: OK, this is really important, which is funny because in the history of wine, if you look back to antiquity, the Romans, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, even the, you know, the
Speaker: Egyptians and Mesopotamians, they, they would have thought we were just complete heathens, not mixing, um, our wine with water.
Speaker: It was in back in antiquity, you always cut your wine with water.
Speaker: It was common practice.
Speaker: So here, I think it's for different reasons where they're trying to make sure that these merchants aren't taking advantage of the public.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But then I thought, well, you know, I was always taught in history, well, they're mixing wine with water, which they might actually be doing at home.
Speaker: you know, with a strong product.
Speaker: And wine also had a much higher alcohol content than we think of today where, you know, if you're drinking natural wine, it has to be under 12.5% alcohol, you know.
Speaker: Anyway, so you would think that they were mixing their alcohol with water to, you know, help fight like cholera, you know, water sources being clean, you know, the alcohol limiting the bacteria.
Speaker: Another really interesting thing that this goes into are the rules and regulation for how much wine a citizen of Bologna will receive daily and children.
Speaker: So anyone want to guess how much wine you receive per day as a citizen of Bologna?
Speaker: Any guess?
Speaker: Daniel?
Speaker: I'm going with 750 centiliters.
Speaker: Okay, Carrie?
Speaker: I have no clue.
Speaker: I mean, I would give it to the kids first.
Speaker: Ben?
Speaker: Is this like universal basic income?
Speaker: Like this is the baseline that you start with?
Speaker: Kind of.
Speaker: I mean, you're said you get perks.
Speaker: You get perks.
Speaker: You get wine for free.
Speaker: They had a plague, so you have to have a UBI visit every plague.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so I'm guessing three drams apiece.
Speaker: Okay, so it's actually two liters of wine per day.
Speaker: Two liters.
Speaker: Yeah, I kid you not.
Speaker: And it's stated in the statutes.
Speaker: And children are able to get, under 14 years of age, get 1.5 liters.
Speaker: So they get just a little bit less than the adults.
Speaker: So give you an indication of who is drinking wine in the early 15th century Italy.
Speaker: But it's really fascinating.
Speaker: I went to a private collector who actually collects wine, both in the bottle and then books all about it.
Speaker: As you saw from Daniel, there's such a rich history.
Speaker: I actually got a present.
Speaker: I got the wine encyclopedia this Christmas, last Christmas, which was fascinating.
Speaker: It's a great one.
Speaker: And so anyways, this is just a really fascinating document that gives us all these insights into not only the trade and the guilds.
Speaker: I mean, another big part of it is like the regulations for men who are moving wine throughout Emilia Romano.
Speaker: It's really it's it's it's cool.
Speaker: So, and also like though, you know, I think the thing that gets me that I like the most is just how much wines people actually were able to consume.
Speaker: I mean, that, well, that goes individually, but that you're actually allowed to get for free.
Speaker: I mean, so, I mean, that's cool.
Speaker: So, I mean, it looks really scrappy as a manuscript.
Speaker: It's not full of all the gold and gilding, but the content is so fascinating.
Speaker: Anyway, so that's what I, that's what I'm offering today.
Speaker: Were women included in the wine ration?
Speaker: Yes, they were.
Speaker: All citizens, men and women and children.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Because the problem in the Crouch household was that 15 years ago, my wife and I used to split a bottle of wine over dinner.
Speaker: And then she was pregnant or breastfeeding for the better part of four years.
Speaker: And after four years, she wanted to sell my bottle.
Speaker: We had to open a second bottle every night.
Speaker: That way lies bad news.
Speaker: Yeah, we try to share, but it ends up at, well, we do share, but it comes out like a bottle of peace.
Speaker: The Beaujolais Nouveau is in season right now, so that's what we've been drinking.
Speaker: Actually, I love this quote from Hemingway too, which he said, a person with increasing knowledge and sensory education may derive infinite enjoyment from wine.
Speaker: And I really believe that's true, 100%.
Speaker: I love wine, so.
Speaker: I've always enjoyed that quote from Dorothy Parker.
Speaker: One martini, two at the most, three I'm under the table, four I'm under the host.
Speaker: Well, I'm looking forward to making a Mark's cocktail too at some point when I have the time.
Speaker: We've got a question here for you, Keegan.
Speaker: Shoot, what's the question?
Speaker: So who got the free wine?
Speaker: Everyone.
Speaker: Who got the free wine.
Speaker: You get a wine.
Speaker: Everyone did, yeah.
Speaker: There's nothing more than I love getting free wine.
Speaker: You know, so...
Speaker: Yes, no, the citizens, if you were a citizen of Bologna, which, you know, Bologna, I mean, had a huge, I mean, for medieval standards, a very large population.
Speaker: They were a huge mercantile city, but also they had the University of Bologna, which is funny that we're getting a statutes, manuscript from Bologna because the university is probably the most famous university in the Middle Ages to study law.
Speaker: And men from all over Europe would travel there to study law at the university.
Speaker: It's the oldest university in the world, isn't it?
Speaker: Yes, I think so.
Speaker: Is it?
Speaker: No, I thought it was an English university that was the oldest.
Speaker: No, I'm afraid not.
Speaker: Is it Bologna?
Speaker: Oxford and Cambridge come shortly afterwards.
Speaker: Good for them.
Speaker: I love Bologna.
Speaker: Let's go.
Speaker: Someone's actually saying that Salamanca is.
Speaker: Salamanca, okay.
Speaker: Bologna's pretty old.
Speaker: I think we're quickly turning into another kind of event here, the history of universities.
Speaker: There's a question about, was there a ledger that kept track of who got the wine?
Speaker: Not that I'm aware of.
Speaker: And those types of documents may exist perhaps, but not in this document.
Speaker: And one other question that someone just actually emailed to me.
Speaker: The question was, so Bologna, everyone got free wine.
Speaker: Is that throughout Italy or was that just specific or do we not know?
Speaker: That's just specific to the city.
Speaker: And of course, they had more lands than just within the city walls within that region.
Speaker: So yeah, it doesn't include an area outside of their city limits.
Speaker: Well, this has really been an education.
Speaker: I think our policymakers could really take some lessons from what Keegan's been telling us about medieval Italy.
Speaker: I think it's my turn now to show off a little.
Speaker: And as some of you know, I'm a dealer in antique English and American silver.
Speaker: What I've brought to show and tell today is a piece of antique English silver
Speaker: Um, this is an object which dates back to, uh, 1751.
Speaker: Nice thing about, um, silver, uh, from England is that we typically know exactly what year it was made.
Speaker: We also typically know who made it.
Speaker: And in this case, it was made by a silversmith named Paul Crespin.
Speaker: And I'll tell you a little bit more about him in a moment, but you might, um, be interested to know first off, uh, just what the hell this thing is.
Speaker: Um, it is, uh,
Speaker: highly apropos of today's conversation.
Speaker: It might look a bit like a colander, and that's not entirely inaccurate.
Speaker: It's actually what sometime in the late 19th century, antique steelers decided to call a strainer.
Speaker: Now, you might use your strainer for boiled vegetables or the like, but this kind of strainer was really used for alcohol and specifically
Speaker: punch and for wine.
Speaker: So in fact the best indication we have is that these types of objects were actually used for straining oranges and sometimes lemons.
Speaker: The notion was well of course you can make a punch.
Speaker: Mark showed us a sort of a version of a punch earlier which involves some straining.
Speaker: So it's familiar to a contemporary drinker.
Speaker: But back in the 18th century, they also liked punches.
Speaker: They also liked doing all kinds of wild and wacky things with their wine.
Speaker: We're not talking about the erudite wine connoisseurs of the 1850s that Daniel has told us about.
Speaker: We're talking about people who really just wanted a good buzz and they wanted it fast.
Speaker: Sometimes what that meant was adding copious quantities of sugar
Speaker: to their wine.
Speaker: So in the 17th century, you find sugar boxes that were kept on the table out of which you would take spoonfuls of sugar and dump them straight into your glass of wine and stir it up for drinking at the table.
Speaker: And if that gives you the willies, well, yeah, me too.
Speaker: But these strainers became popular.
Speaker: There are a couple of them dating from the 17th century, but mostly you find them in the mid 18th century.
Speaker: And the handles, which are typically quite long,
Speaker: are meant to bridge the size of a bowl.
Speaker: So you place the strainer over the bowl, you squeeze your orange into it, and you wind up with either a sophisticated and delicious punch, or you end up with a flavored wine, mulled wine, something along those lines.
Speaker: Now, if you're thinking, well, okay, sounds good, but wouldn't this all have been done in the kitchen?
Speaker: And why would they need a nice piece of silver in the kitchen?
Speaker: It's true, you know, in the kitchen, implements, cooking implements, wouldn't have been made out of silver.
Speaker: There was no point in paying for your servants to have silver.
Speaker: The silver was there to show off to your fellow or aristocratic buddies.
Speaker: So in fact, you know, the very existence of these objects suggests to us that these punches were actually being mixed up in common areas, hence the
Speaker: very expensive material that the implements were made from.
Speaker: You can also see this incredibly sophisticated pattern of piercing.
Speaker: So the, you know, of course you need the liquid to go through, you need to stop the seed.
Speaker: So you need little perforations, much like a colander.
Speaker: But why stop there?
Speaker: So what they did, what the English silversmiths in the mid 18th century did was there was a kind of arms race of increasing sophistication in the patterns of piercing.
Speaker: in these objects.
Speaker: And the remarkable thing to me about this is to create that pattern of piercing, the tool that they used was actually a saw.
Speaker: So you would pierce the surface of this silver and then stick a very narrow saw blade and saw out every individual perforation.
Speaker: So this was done by hand, laboriously over the course of dozens, if not hundreds of hours.
Speaker: And of course, one slip of your wrist, you cut between one perforation and the next, the entire piece is ruined and you have to start over.
Speaker: So we're really talking about an incredible level of skill and consistency.
Speaker: This particular strainer is really one of the best examples of that piercing that I've seen from the mid 18th century.
Speaker: It's incredibly ambitious, incredibly elaborate.
Speaker: and I think just really haunting and beautiful.
Speaker: I mean, you wonder almost if it's wasted on a piece that's sort of dumped into a bowl.
Speaker: Crespin, you know, this silversmith was a Huguenot immigrant to England, you know, fleeing France after the revocation of the Edict of Dante.
Speaker: You know, the
Speaker: tamping down on religious freedom, which led so many French Protestants to cross the Channel, either to go to the Netherlands or across the Channel into England.
Speaker: And fortunately for the English, they brought many of their best craftsmen with them.
Speaker: So a craftsman is just a great example of a silversmith who would never have found himself in England if it weren't for this
Speaker: political and religious squabble.
Speaker: But he brought within all of the techniques and the refinement of continental silversmiths and put it to use in England.
Speaker: He actually ended up working on the Royal Commission.
Speaker: So, you know, rose to serious heights in the world of 18th century craftsmanship.
Speaker: So there you have it.
Speaker: I love this piece.
Speaker: I think, you know,
Speaker: I probably shouldn't say this, but it's a piece that we've owned at the shop for a very long time.
Speaker: We bought it a long time ago, paid a fair bit of money for it, thinking it's a wonderful, wonderful object.
Speaker: And it turns out it's one of these funny sort of specialized things that it's difficult to drum up interest for.
Speaker: I can't figure why.
Speaker: To me, it's really just a stupendous and beautiful, beautiful object and a marker of this wonderful period of
Speaker: both creativity, but just unbelievable technical mastery among English silversmiths.
Speaker: Ben, what year was it from?
Speaker: We have a question from one of the... Yeah, the year is 1751.
Speaker: So right smack in the middle of what we think of as the Rococo period, when flourishes and embellishments and decoration are in vogue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So hopefully somebody who's listening to this right now is going to want to purchase this piece.
Speaker: Hopefully someone is going to want to purchase some of the other pieces that you have talked about on this program.
Speaker: And as per our agreement, I imagine, Daniel and Carrie and Keegan, that you'll give me my fair commission on those sales.
Speaker: Bottle on the wings.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I know you say that the punch was cooked in the common areas.
Speaker: It just so happens that I have a little print on my laptop.
Speaker: Oh, look at that.
Speaker: Which is William Hogarth's Modern Midnight Conversation, where you can see punch in practice.
Speaker: That's fantastic.
Speaker: You'll notice that there's a scene very similar to my house at about 11 o'clock last night.
Speaker: But more clearly.
Speaker: And why do I have this on my laptop?
Speaker: It's because if you were at the Winter Show last year, you'd have seen we had a punch bowl globe that was made for Joseph Banks on Captain Cook's first voyage.
Speaker: Or after Captain Cook's first voyage.
Speaker: So this is now in the National Library in Australia.
Speaker: So I think what they need for the simple late Georgian design of this, this is 1772, is a Rococo strainer.
Speaker: Excellent idea, Daniel.
Speaker: See, this is the other thing that antique dealers get up to in the aisles of the winter show is buying and selling to each other.
Speaker: The three antique dealers on the desert island with one chair.
Speaker: They all made a very good living and died rich men.
Speaker: I do see a question in the chat about the little bird on this strainer here on the
Speaker: there's a little engraved picture of a bird, and that's simply a family crest.
Speaker: It's a mark of ownership.
Speaker: Unlike a coat of arms, you know, a coat of arms, a full coat of arms can typically in English heraldry be identified with a single individual or certainly with a family.
Speaker: Crests are much more difficult to pin down because many different families may have shared
Speaker: the same or very similar crests.
Speaker: So we can't be quite sure exactly who this was made for, although there is a sort of a list of aristocratic families who would have been candidates for it.
Speaker: It's interesting that it's a Huguenot silversmith because I mean, I know nothing about silver, but at that same period, in about 1745 to 1750, all of the map engravers who were any good working in London were Huguenots.
Speaker: There's always a big overlap
Speaker: Yeah, well, there's a strong argument that the very best silversmiths anytime between about 1705 and 1750, the very best silversmiths in England were generally speaking Huguenot.
Speaker: Well, that's how, you know, that's how global trade and genocide work.
Speaker: Hand in hand.
Speaker: We had another question.
Speaker: I think it was actually from when Keegan was speaking about Bologna.
Speaker: There was a question, was everyone a citizen?
Speaker: or were they wealthy landowners?
Speaker: Or do we know?
Speaker: That's a good question.
Speaker: Probably not everyone that was coming in and out of Bologna were citizens since the document talks specifically of also about merchants coming in and out of the city.
Speaker: And they might be from,
Speaker: other parts of Italy, from other parts of Europe, and people and students also.
Speaker: So I would think there is only a small part of the population of Bologna that are actually citizens.
Speaker: And we know that also because of the university and people coming all over Europe to, they might be from Paris or from London or from,
Speaker: other parts of Europe, they're probably not citizens of Bologna.
Speaker: So I don't think they would have been entitled for their free wine.
Speaker: They'd have to actually pay for it, which is a drag.
Speaker: Gosh, I mean, what's even the point of being in Bologna if you don't get your free wine?
Speaker: I recommend if anybody wants to go and have a gourmand experience and eat and drink, Bologna is a great place to do it.
Speaker: The food, the wine, everything is good there.
Speaker: All right, well, now we're turning into a travel show.
Speaker: So I think we maybe had best cut this short while we still can, particularly given the decreasing level of the cocktail in my glass.
Speaker: Thank you, everyone, so much for joining me.
Speaker: Thank you to the panelists.
Speaker: This has been a great deal of fun.
Speaker: I hope it's been at least a little bit educational.
Speaker: And again, a huge thank you to Helen and to the Winter Show for doing this and the whole series of events that you've been doing.
Speaker: It's, you know, nothing can replace the physical in-person annual show, but what you're doing is a huge breath of fresh air in the middle of the pandemic.
Speaker: So I think we're all very grateful for that.
Speaker: And thank you to everyone who's been listening on the podcast.
Speaker: Next episode, we're going to have an encore interview with Glenn Adamson, who has an exciting new book out about the history of craft in America.
Speaker: In the meantime, today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: And I'm Ben Miller.
