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Blended Spirits: A Curious Objects Cocktail Hour at the Winter Show
14 Plays4 years ago
From an early Renaissance list of statutes stipulating the amount of wine that every man, woman, and child of Bologna would receive daily, to a chunky twentieth-century cocktail ring, you’ll hear about wacky objects and the wild stories behind them from some of the Winter Show’s most irreverent dealers: Daniel Crouch (Daniel Crouch Rare Books), Carrie Imberman (Kentshire), and Keegan Goepfert (Les Enluminures).
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Transcript
Introduction to Curious Objects Live
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the third annual Curious Objects Live podcast event with the winner's show.
00:00:16
Speaker
I can't believe that this is our third year and our third live show.
00:00:21
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.
00:00:29
Speaker
For example, none of us are wearing pants.
00:00:32
Speaker
Also, we usually save the cocktails for after the show, but this time we've started before.
00:00:36
Speaker
for the show, so you might notice that the panelists are a little extra scholarly tonight.
00:00:43
Speaker
And in addition to this live event, our discussion is being recorded to publish as the next episode of the Curious Objects podcast.
00:00:50
Speaker
That is, unless something goes terribly wrong.
00:00:53
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.
00:01:06
Speaker
Seriously though, I'm thrilled to be part of this fantastic lineup of Winter Show virtual events.
00:01:11
Speaker
A huge thank you to Helen Allen for making it possible and to today's panelists.
Meet the Panelists
00:01:17
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.
00:01:32
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.
00:01:45
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.
00:01:57
Speaker
Look in female.
00:01:59
Speaker
And I, of course, am Ben Miller, dealer in antique English and American silver and jewelry at SJ Shrubsall here in New York.
00:02:09
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.
00:02:22
Speaker
Now, Helen will remind you that these are indeed very, very rare occasions, but... It never happens.
00:02:32
Speaker
But it is true that it never happens.
00:02:33
Speaker
The show's never empty.
00:02:34
Speaker
It's always filled with throngs of people, right?
00:02:37
Speaker
Daniel, you're looking so serious.
00:02:40
Speaker
It doesn't happen for very long.
00:02:43
Speaker
What do you think happens when a bunch of antiques dealers are lounging around with nothing to entertain ourselves but each other?
00:02:51
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.
00:03:05
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.
00:03:11
Speaker
So today we're going to introduce you to a few alcohol-related objects from our respective inventories.
00:03:19
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.
Daniel Crouch on Historical Wine Map
00:03:26
Speaker
Daniel, why don't you tell us about this very interesting map that you're presenting for us?
00:03:31
Speaker
Certainly I will.
00:03:32
Speaker
The map is now appearing like I am virtually from Oxford.
00:03:35
Speaker
The good news is it may be five o'clock somewhere, but it's 10 p.m.
00:03:38
Speaker
now.
00:03:39
Speaker
So unlike Mark, I haven't got half a bottle of wine I've deliberately emptied half of.
00:03:44
Speaker
I have very carefully emptied my other half and I'm working on the second.
00:03:49
Speaker
So I'm going to take you on a journey, but this journey is not just in space.
00:03:53
Speaker
I'm going to take you on a journey in time as well.
00:03:56
Speaker
And we are going back to one of my favorite places.
00:04:01
Speaker
We are going to the Gironde in France and we are going to Bordeaux.
00:04:07
Speaker
And this map here is the carte vinicole of 1855.
00:04:12
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.
00:04:20
Speaker
And this was a genius idea of Napoleon III, not the very short Napoleon, the slightly taller Napoleon, who was his nephew.
00:04:30
Speaker
And his plan in line with the great exhibition in Paris of 1855 was to classify the wines of France.
00:04:38
Speaker
When he said the wines of France, he really meant the reds of Bordeaux and a couple of whites for good measure.
00:04:43
Speaker
And this map shows the Gironde River and this map and this procedure is how the clarets were classified.
00:04:51
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.
00:05:01
Speaker
And it was done on the basis of nothing more sophisticated than reputation and price.
00:05:08
Speaker
And they were divided into five classifications, premier coup down to cinquième coup.
00:05:13
Speaker
And you'll see originally,
00:05:15
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.
00:05:26
Speaker
Nothing to do with the fact that the richest man in the world at the time happened to buy the vineyard.
00:05:32
Speaker
The two main areas of interest on this map.
00:05:34
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.
00:05:45
Speaker
because it's really a bit rubbish doing a little visual tour on a podcast, really.
00:05:50
Speaker
Sorry, I didn't realise that little detail.
00:05:53
Speaker
In Pouillac and on the left bank, that's the region where the Red Wangs are.
00:06:02
Speaker
And then further to the south of Bordeaux, you'll see down beyond Cadillac, not the car,
00:06:10
Speaker
where we have the white wines.
00:06:12
Speaker
And you'll see here, for those that have this on screen, Chateau du Chem.
00:06:17
Speaker
And the wine, the map rather wonderfully provides details of both.
00:06:22
Speaker
And so here in the bottom right is a picture of Chateau du Chem.
00:06:25
Speaker
A little anecdote to go with this.
00:06:27
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.
00:06:39
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.
00:06:50
Speaker
Some 30 years later, I found the father of my friend drunk after recording in town, walking back to his house.
00:07:01
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.
00:07:08
Speaker
You always had great taste.
00:07:11
Speaker
I said, oh, why?
00:07:12
Speaker
He says, when you raided my wine cellar, you really did some damage.
00:07:17
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.
00:07:31
Speaker
Some damage was done.
00:07:33
Speaker
And so I look at this back with a great deal of fondness.
00:07:35
Speaker
And then...
00:07:38
Speaker
the five grids of color code, going to the key.
00:07:41
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,
00:07:53
Speaker
and then rather wonderfully, all of the famous Lignards.
00:07:56
Speaker
It was like a wine cellar of my dreams up here on the left banks of the Gironde.
00:08:03
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.
00:08:12
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.
00:08:22
Speaker
So if anyone has any questions.
00:08:24
Speaker
So, Damiel, yeah, why was this map actually made?
00:08:28
Speaker
I mean, who was it made for?
00:08:30
Speaker
Who was the intended audience?
00:08:31
Speaker
Is it documentary?
00:08:32
Speaker
Is it...
00:08:34
Speaker
It was made in 1855 at the time of the great exhibition in Paris.
00:08:40
Speaker
And it was made really as a marketing tool for the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce.
00:08:45
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.
00:08:53
Speaker
People love things when they're graded, when they're better.
00:08:56
Speaker
And this classification, which was really a marketing tool done nearly 200 years ago now,
00:09:03
Speaker
They've held true.
00:09:04
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.
00:09:15
Speaker
And in your opinion, are the more expensive wines the better ones?
00:09:19
Speaker
I haven't tried them all yet.
00:09:20
Speaker
I'm working on that.
00:09:22
Speaker
In various.
00:09:24
Speaker
Well, it's a hell of a picture.
00:09:25
Speaker
Thank you, Daniel.
00:09:27
Speaker
Why don't we jump over to Kerry?
Carrie Emberman on 1920s Cocktail Ring
00:09:28
Speaker
You've got something a little more glitzy for us.
00:09:32
Speaker
Um, so I brought to the party, um, a cocktail ring because it seemed germane.
00:09:41
Speaker
And, uh, because I wanted to talk a little bit about the history of the cocktail ring.
00:09:46
Speaker
This particular one is platinum with a, I would almost say kind of a mild color change Ceylon sapphire in it.
00:09:55
Speaker
That's about eight carats.
00:09:57
Speaker
It's French, which actually, um,
00:10:00
Speaker
The genesis of the cocktail ring is American, but everyone catches on and everyone starts doing it.
00:10:09
Speaker
Historically, the cocktail ring starts 1920s America during prohibition because they come up with cocktails.
00:10:22
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.
00:10:34
Speaker
So you made cocktails to disguise the taste of the terrible alcohol.
00:10:41
Speaker
I myself don't drink cocktails.
00:10:42
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,
00:10:52
Speaker
The more I thought about it, if you were a flapper in the 20s, it's kind of the original right hand ring.
00:11:02
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.
00:11:11
Speaker
And to that end, it was very typically sort of a gem set ring.
00:11:17
Speaker
For whatever reason, they were typically colored gemstones.
00:11:22
Speaker
This one is, it takes up a lot of real estate on the finger.
00:11:26
Speaker
And it's really like, look at me.
00:11:29
Speaker
And it's not supposed to be an engagement ring.
00:11:30
Speaker
It's just supposed to be like, good time, Charlie.
00:11:33
Speaker
I have my ring.
00:11:34
Speaker
I'm drinking my cocktail.
00:11:37
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
00:11:48
Speaker
You were fun.
00:11:49
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.
00:12:01
Speaker
They're meant to commemorate occasions, sentiment.
00:12:06
Speaker
That's typically how we think about rings.
00:12:09
Speaker
We think about them as memento mori in memoriam.
00:12:13
Speaker
We think about them to, there's a whole genre of like,
00:12:19
Speaker
acrostic rings that exist to communicate little secret messages.
00:12:23
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.
00:12:34
Speaker
But this is like the first time that a ring comes along just for fun.
00:12:39
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.
00:12:48
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.
00:13:02
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.
00:13:18
Speaker
It's really, to my mind, I think the first time that a ring comes around that is supposed to communicate that.
00:13:26
Speaker
So I'm a fun gal.
00:13:28
Speaker
I would happily wear this ring.
00:13:31
Speaker
I don't know what else I can...
00:13:34
Speaker
blather on about, but- I'd wear that ring too.
00:13:36
Speaker
Thanks, thanks Keegan.
00:13:39
Speaker
I think it would look lovely as a man's pinky ring as well.
00:13:42
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.
00:13:56
Speaker
They're like, as my mom always says, they're like little,
00:14:00
Speaker
We both inherited my father's little like cocktail wiener hands.
00:14:04
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.
00:14:12
Speaker
I love being able to see my own jewelry.
00:14:15
Speaker
So that's what I got.
00:14:19
Speaker
And, you know, I think I'm overdue for a cocktail, but reporting live from New York, it's me, Carrie.
00:14:28
Speaker
I can't shy.
00:14:30
Speaker
Carrie, can men wear cocktail rings too or?
00:14:34
Speaker
Sure, why not?
00:14:36
Speaker
I mean, booze is an equal opportunity sport.
00:14:40
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.
00:14:54
Speaker
So cheers to that.
00:14:56
Speaker
You made us seem sophisticated, Ben.
00:14:59
Speaker
Tell me about the design of this ring.
00:15:02
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.
00:15:12
Speaker
It's stylistically, instead of being a romantic thing, you start seeing, particularly in this ring, which looks comically miniature when I'm...
00:15:22
Speaker
you're starting to see sort of like one toe in the industrial, sort of the real industrialized modern design of the 30s.
00:15:34
Speaker
You're seeing clean lines.
00:15:36
Speaker
It looks very efficient.
00:15:39
Speaker
It's a fast looking ring for a fast gal.
00:15:44
Speaker
And you see a lot of the real hallmarks of the deco period, which are these
00:15:52
Speaker
geometric, sort of abstract, structured, very sculptural elements that come into play around this time.
00:16:02
Speaker
This is probably dead on like 1930.
00:16:07
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.
00:16:20
Speaker
because they are specifically not necessarily like diamond engagement rings, et cetera, et cetera.
00:16:25
Speaker
And later on, as during the war, we move away from platinum, you see them in gold as well.
00:16:31
Speaker
And you see them, they are an exuberant fun thing.
00:16:38
Speaker
Who made it and for whom?
00:16:40
Speaker
I don't know.
00:16:42
Speaker
I know it has French hallmarks on it.
00:16:44
Speaker
So it has a poincon, the French typically mark on the back of their rings here.
00:16:49
Speaker
So it has, you know, a French platinum mark.
00:16:53
Speaker
It is not signed.
00:16:55
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.
00:17:09
Speaker
The French are just working at a complete, they have a completely different mindset about, I would say, quality and proportion specifically.
00:17:22
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.
00:17:31
Speaker
It just looks French.
00:17:33
Speaker
It has that sensibility.
00:17:35
Speaker
French steaming ring, bit classy but large.
00:17:39
Speaker
You know, I'd be just fine with this ring.
00:17:42
Speaker
I'll have you know, Daniel.
00:17:44
Speaker
It's available.
00:17:47
Speaker
Okay, can we hop over to Keegan and go way, way back in time for a minute?
00:17:54
Speaker
That's okay.
00:17:55
Speaker
We can do that.
00:17:56
Speaker
It's only Chicago for like six hours for me.
00:18:00
Speaker
So what have you got for us, Keegan?
Keegan Gottfried on Italian Wine Manuscript
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah, not a ring.
00:18:10
Speaker
Well, I have a scrappy manuscript, but a very interesting one and totally fitting our theme today.
00:18:18
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.
00:18:27
Speaker
Or, yeah, I mean, we've had some great imagery, but I think this one just really nails it.
00:18:34
Speaker
And it's so interesting.
00:18:36
Speaker
This is a manuscript in vellum.
00:18:41
Speaker
probably about the size of a shoe box, like a man's sneaker box, or that's the dimensions.
00:18:47
Speaker
It's written in the, you know, circa 1425 in Italy, probably Bologna.
00:18:55
Speaker
And it is the statutes for regulating the wine trade and transportation of wine in Bologna.
00:19:03
Speaker
So statutes meaning laws and regulations, but it really gives us some really fascinating insights into people's relationship with wine.
00:19:15
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.
00:19:27
Speaker
If we enjoy alcohol, we're probably gonna be taxed unless we're making it ourselves.
00:19:31
Speaker
So this is a really very rare document that survives.
00:19:37
Speaker
There aren't very many of these that exist.
00:19:40
Speaker
If they do, they're in Italian or other public collections where a lot of these statutes for particular cities live.
00:19:50
Speaker
So, I mean,
00:19:52
Speaker
This is written in Italian.
00:19:54
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.
00:20:06
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.
00:20:18
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.
00:20:30
Speaker
OK, so you can't get down a water product.
00:20:32
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
00:20:47
Speaker
Egyptians and Mesopotamians, they, they would have thought we were just complete heathens, not mixing, um, our wine with water.
00:20:56
Speaker
It was in back in antiquity, you always cut your wine with water.
00:21:00
Speaker
It was common practice.
00:21:03
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.
00:21:11
Speaker
Um,
00:21:12
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.
00:21:21
Speaker
you know, with a strong product.
00:21:23
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.
00:21:33
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.
00:21:46
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.
00:21:59
Speaker
So anyone want to guess how much wine you receive per day as a citizen of Bologna?
00:22:05
Speaker
Any guess?
00:22:06
Speaker
Daniel?
00:22:07
Speaker
I'm going with 750 centiliters.
00:22:10
Speaker
Okay, Carrie?
00:22:12
Speaker
I have no clue.
00:22:13
Speaker
I mean, I would give it to the kids first.
00:22:16
Speaker
Ben?
00:22:16
Speaker
Is this like universal basic income?
00:22:19
Speaker
Like this is the baseline that you start with?
00:22:21
Speaker
Kind of.
00:22:21
Speaker
I mean, you're said you get perks.
00:22:23
Speaker
You get perks.
00:22:24
Speaker
You get wine for free.
00:22:25
Speaker
They had a plague, so you have to have a UBI visit every plague.
00:22:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm guessing three drams apiece.
00:22:37
Speaker
Okay, so it's actually two liters of wine per day.
00:22:41
Speaker
Two liters.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah, I kid you not.
00:22:43
Speaker
And it's stated in the statutes.
00:22:46
Speaker
And children are able to get, under 14 years of age, get 1.5 liters.
00:22:55
Speaker
So they get just a little bit less than the adults.
00:22:57
Speaker
So give you an indication of who is drinking wine in the early 15th century Italy.
00:23:05
Speaker
But it's really fascinating.
00:23:06
Speaker
I went to a private collector who actually collects wine, both in the bottle and then books all about it.
00:23:19
Speaker
As you saw from Daniel, there's such a rich history.
00:23:24
Speaker
I actually got a present.
00:23:25
Speaker
I got the wine encyclopedia this Christmas, last Christmas, which was fascinating.
00:23:30
Speaker
It's a great one.
00:23:32
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.
00:23:42
Speaker
I mean, another big part of it is like the regulations for men who are moving wine throughout Emilia Romano.
00:23:51
Speaker
It's really it's it's it's cool.
00:23:55
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.
00:24:04
Speaker
I mean, that, well, that goes individually, but that you're actually allowed to get for free.
00:24:09
Speaker
I mean, so, I mean, that's cool.
00:24:12
Speaker
So, I mean, it looks really scrappy as a manuscript.
00:24:15
Speaker
It's not full of all the gold and gilding, but the content is so fascinating.
00:24:20
Speaker
Anyway, so that's what I, that's what I'm offering today.
00:24:24
Speaker
Were women included in the wine ration?
00:24:27
Speaker
Yes, they were.
00:24:27
Speaker
All citizens, men and women and children.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yes.
00:24:32
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.
00:24:41
Speaker
And then she was pregnant or breastfeeding for the better part of four years.
00:24:45
Speaker
And after four years, she wanted to sell my bottle.
00:24:50
Speaker
We had to open a second bottle every night.
00:24:52
Speaker
That way lies bad news.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah, we try to share, but it ends up at, well, we do share, but it comes out like a bottle of peace.
00:25:02
Speaker
The Beaujolais Nouveau is in season right now, so that's what we've been drinking.
00:25:07
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.
00:25:17
Speaker
And I really believe that's true, 100%.
00:25:19
Speaker
I love wine, so.
00:25:22
Speaker
I've always enjoyed that quote from Dorothy Parker.
00:25:26
Speaker
One martini, two at the most, three I'm under the table, four I'm under the host.
00:25:33
Speaker
Well, I'm looking forward to making a Mark's cocktail too at some point when I have the time.
00:25:42
Speaker
We've got a question here for you, Keegan.
00:25:46
Speaker
Shoot, what's the question?
00:25:48
Speaker
So who got the free wine?
00:25:52
Speaker
Everyone.
00:25:52
Speaker
Who got the free wine.
00:25:53
Speaker
You get a wine.
00:25:54
Speaker
Everyone did, yeah.
00:25:56
Speaker
There's nothing more than I love getting free wine.
00:26:00
Speaker
You know, so...
00:26:02
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.
00:26:13
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.
00:26:26
Speaker
And men from all over Europe would travel there to study law at the university.
00:26:34
Speaker
It's the oldest university in the world, isn't it?
00:26:38
Speaker
Yes, I think so.
00:26:41
Speaker
Is it?
00:26:42
Speaker
No, I thought it was an English university that was the oldest.
00:26:45
Speaker
No, I'm afraid not.
00:26:46
Speaker
Is it Bologna?
00:26:47
Speaker
Oxford and Cambridge come shortly afterwards.
00:26:51
Speaker
Good for them.
00:26:51
Speaker
I love Bologna.
00:26:53
Speaker
Let's go.
00:26:56
Speaker
Someone's actually saying that Salamanca is.
00:26:58
Speaker
Salamanca, okay.
00:27:01
Speaker
Bologna's pretty old.
00:27:04
Speaker
I think we're quickly turning into another kind of event here, the history of universities.
00:27:12
Speaker
There's a question about, was there a ledger that kept track of who got the wine?
00:27:17
Speaker
Not that I'm aware of.
00:27:18
Speaker
And those types of documents may exist perhaps, but not in this document.
00:27:28
Speaker
And one other question that someone just actually emailed to me.
00:27:33
Speaker
The question was, so Bologna, everyone got free wine.
00:27:37
Speaker
Is that throughout Italy or was that just specific or do we not know?
00:27:44
Speaker
That's just specific to the city.
00:27:48
Speaker
And of course, they had more lands than just within the city walls within that region.
00:27:54
Speaker
So yeah, it doesn't include an area outside of their city limits.
00:28:01
Speaker
Well, this has really been an education.
00:28:05
Speaker
I think our policymakers could really take some lessons from what Keegan's been telling us about medieval Italy.
00:28:12
Speaker
I think it's my turn now to show off a little.
Ben Miller on English Silver Strainer
00:28:17
Speaker
And as some of you know, I'm a dealer in antique English and American silver.
00:28:26
Speaker
What I've brought to show and tell today is a piece of antique English silver
00:28:32
Speaker
Um, this is an object which dates back to, uh, 1751.
00:28:38
Speaker
Nice thing about, um, silver, uh, from England is that we typically know exactly what year it was made.
00:28:44
Speaker
We also typically know who made it.
00:28:46
Speaker
And in this case, it was made by a silversmith named Paul Crespin.
00:28:50
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.
00:28:59
Speaker
Um, it is, uh,
00:29:01
Speaker
highly apropos of today's conversation.
00:29:04
Speaker
It might look a bit like a colander, and that's not entirely inaccurate.
00:29:09
Speaker
It's actually what sometime in the late 19th century, antique steelers decided to call a strainer.
00:29:17
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
00:29:29
Speaker
punch and for wine.
00:29:32
Speaker
So in fact the best indication we have is that these types of objects were actually used for straining oranges and sometimes lemons.
00:29:42
Speaker
The notion was well of course you can make a punch.
00:29:45
Speaker
Mark showed us a sort of a version of a punch earlier which involves some straining.
00:29:54
Speaker
So it's familiar to a contemporary drinker.
00:29:58
Speaker
But back in the 18th century, they also liked punches.
00:30:02
Speaker
They also liked doing all kinds of wild and wacky things with their wine.
00:30:08
Speaker
We're not talking about the erudite wine connoisseurs of the 1850s that Daniel has told us about.
00:30:20
Speaker
We're talking about people who really just wanted a good buzz and they wanted it fast.
00:30:24
Speaker
Sometimes what that meant was adding copious quantities of sugar
00:30:28
Speaker
to their wine.
00:30:30
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.
00:30:42
Speaker
And if that gives you the willies, well, yeah, me too.
00:30:46
Speaker
But these strainers became popular.
00:30:49
Speaker
There are a couple of them dating from the 17th century, but mostly you find them in the mid 18th century.
00:30:54
Speaker
And the handles, which are typically quite long,
00:30:58
Speaker
are meant to bridge the size of a bowl.
00:31:01
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.
00:31:19
Speaker
Now, if you're thinking, well, okay, sounds good, but wouldn't this all have been done in the kitchen?
00:31:28
Speaker
And why would they need a nice piece of silver in the kitchen?
00:31:32
Speaker
It's true, you know, in the kitchen, implements, cooking implements, wouldn't have been made out of silver.
00:31:38
Speaker
There was no point in paying for your servants to have silver.
00:31:41
Speaker
The silver was there to show off to your fellow or aristocratic buddies.
00:31:47
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
00:31:58
Speaker
very expensive material that the implements were made from.
00:32:02
Speaker
You can also see this incredibly sophisticated pattern of piercing.
00:32:08
Speaker
So the, you know, of course you need the liquid to go through, you need to stop the seed.
00:32:12
Speaker
So you need little perforations, much like a colander.
00:32:16
Speaker
But why stop there?
00:32:18
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.
00:32:27
Speaker
in these objects.
00:32:29
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.
00:32:38
Speaker
So you would pierce the surface of this silver and then stick a very narrow saw blade and saw out every individual perforation.
00:32:51
Speaker
So this was done by hand, laboriously over the course of dozens, if not hundreds of hours.
00:32:56
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.
00:33:06
Speaker
So we're really talking about an incredible level of skill and consistency.
00:33:13
Speaker
This particular strainer is really one of the best examples of that piercing that I've seen from the mid 18th century.
00:33:23
Speaker
It's incredibly ambitious, incredibly elaborate.
00:33:27
Speaker
and I think just really haunting and beautiful.
00:33:33
Speaker
I mean, you wonder almost if it's wasted on a piece that's sort of dumped into a bowl.
00:33:41
Speaker
Crespin, you know, this silversmith was a Huguenot immigrant to England, you know, fleeing France after the revocation of the Edict of Dante.
00:33:52
Speaker
You know, the
00:33:55
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.
00:34:06
Speaker
And fortunately for the English, they brought many of their best craftsmen with them.
00:34:12
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
00:34:20
Speaker
political and religious squabble.
00:34:23
Speaker
But he brought within all of the techniques and the refinement of continental silversmiths and put it to use in England.
00:34:31
Speaker
He actually ended up working on the Royal Commission.
00:34:36
Speaker
So, you know, rose to serious heights in the world of 18th century craftsmanship.
00:34:44
Speaker
So there you have it.
00:34:46
Speaker
I love this piece.
00:34:48
Speaker
I think, you know,
00:34:50
Speaker
I probably shouldn't say this, but it's a piece that we've owned at the shop for a very long time.
00:34:55
Speaker
We bought it a long time ago, paid a fair bit of money for it, thinking it's a wonderful, wonderful object.
00:35:00
Speaker
And it turns out it's one of these funny sort of specialized things that it's difficult to drum up interest for.
00:35:08
Speaker
I can't figure why.
00:35:10
Speaker
To me, it's really just a stupendous and beautiful, beautiful object and a marker of this wonderful period of
00:35:19
Speaker
both creativity, but just unbelievable technical mastery among English silversmiths.
00:35:26
Speaker
Ben, what year was it from?
00:35:28
Speaker
We have a question from one of the... Yeah, the year is 1751.
00:35:30
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.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:46
Speaker
So hopefully somebody who's listening to this right now is going to want to purchase this piece.
00:35:54
Speaker
Hopefully someone is going to want to purchase some of the other pieces that you have talked about on this program.
00:36:02
Speaker
And as per our agreement, I imagine, Daniel and Carrie and Keegan, that you'll give me my fair commission on those sales.
00:36:12
Speaker
Bottle on the wings.
00:36:15
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:36:15
Speaker
And I know you say that the punch was cooked in the common areas.
00:36:20
Speaker
It just so happens that I have a little print on my laptop.
00:36:26
Speaker
Oh, look at that.
00:36:27
Speaker
Which is William Hogarth's Modern Midnight Conversation, where you can see punch in practice.
00:36:35
Speaker
That's fantastic.
00:36:36
Speaker
You'll notice that there's a scene very similar to my house at about 11 o'clock last night.
00:36:41
Speaker
But more clearly.
00:36:43
Speaker
And why do I have this on my laptop?
00:36:46
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.
00:36:57
Speaker
Or after Captain Cook's first voyage.
00:37:00
Speaker
So this is now in the National Library in Australia.
00:37:03
Speaker
So I think what they need for the simple late Georgian design of this, this is 1772, is a Rococo strainer.
00:37:11
Speaker
Excellent idea, Daniel.
00:37:13
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.
00:37:19
Speaker
The three antique dealers on the desert island with one chair.
00:37:24
Speaker
They all made a very good living and died rich men.
00:37:33
Speaker
I do see a question in the chat about the little bird on this strainer here on the
00:37:40
Speaker
there's a little engraved picture of a bird, and that's simply a family crest.
00:37:44
Speaker
It's a mark of ownership.
00:37:48
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.
00:38:00
Speaker
Crests are much more difficult to pin down because many different families may have shared
00:38:06
Speaker
the same or very similar crests.
00:38:07
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.
00:38:18
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.
00:38:34
Speaker
There's always a big overlap
00:38:36
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.
00:38:49
Speaker
Well, that's how, you know, that's how global trade and genocide work.
00:38:54
Speaker
Hand in hand.
00:38:56
Speaker
We had another question.
00:38:57
Speaker
I think it was actually from when Keegan was speaking about Bologna.
00:39:03
Speaker
There was a question, was everyone a citizen?
00:39:06
Speaker
or were they wealthy landowners?
00:39:10
Speaker
Or do we know?
00:39:10
Speaker
That's a good question.
00:39:13
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.
00:39:24
Speaker
And they might be from,
00:39:27
Speaker
other parts of Italy, from other parts of Europe, and people and students also.
00:39:34
Speaker
So I would think there is only a small part of the population of Bologna that are actually citizens.
00:39:42
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,
00:39:52
Speaker
other parts of Europe, they're probably not citizens of Bologna.
00:39:56
Speaker
So I don't think they would have been entitled for their free wine.
00:39:59
Speaker
They'd have to actually pay for it, which is a drag.
00:40:03
Speaker
Gosh, I mean, what's even the point of being in Bologna if you don't get your free wine?
00:40:09
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.
00:40:17
Speaker
The food, the wine, everything is good there.
00:40:23
Speaker
All right, well, now we're turning into a travel show.
00:40:25
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.
00:40:39
Speaker
Thank you, everyone, so much for joining me.
00:40:41
Speaker
Thank you to the panelists.
00:40:43
Speaker
This has been
Event Conclusion and Future Episode Tease
00:40:44
Speaker
a great deal of fun.
00:40:44
Speaker
I hope it's been at least a little bit educational.
00:40:49
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.
00:40:57
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.
00:41:08
Speaker
So I think we're all very grateful for that.
00:41:21
Speaker
And thank you to everyone who's been listening on the podcast.
00:41:24
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.
00:41:33
Speaker
In the meantime, today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
00:41:38
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:41:40
Speaker
And I'm Ben Miller.