Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
SPECIAL EPISODE 4: Licking Glass, Smelling Silver, and Other Tricks of the Trade
70 Plays6 years ago
Art historian Isabelle Kent regales Ben with the tale of five stained-glass roundels gracing the windows of her childhood home in London's Bedford Park, and he tells her all about his pair of telescoping Sheffield plate candelabra. Bonus tidbit: tips on how to distinguish between a bogus antique and the genuine item.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Curious Objects' with Isabel Kent
00:00:11
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to Curious Objects.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:15
Speaker
And with me is Isabel Kent, who is an art historian, a specialist in Spanish art, but whose interests are broad ranging, and who runs an Instagram account, Izzy underscore Kent, which I find infinitely educational.
Impact of Quarantine on Perception of Objects
00:00:38
Speaker
So I was excited to do a special episode with Isabel because we are cooped up in our homes.
00:00:45
Speaker
We are spending a lot of time with our own objects and the objects that fill our houses.
00:00:53
Speaker
And that means that many of us are paying a lot more attention than we normally do to our physical surroundings and some cases being driven wild by that crack in the ceiling or that creaky floorboard.
00:01:10
Speaker
But in other cases, we're, I think, finding new appreciation and new excitement around certain objects.
00:01:17
Speaker
And so we're actually just going to have a little chat about objects in our respective homes that have caught our attention recently and that have some interesting stories to tell around them.
Isabel's Quarantine Experience in Bedford Park
00:01:31
Speaker
So, Isabel, hi, and welcome to the podcast.
00:01:34
Speaker
Hi, Ben.
00:01:35
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:01:37
Speaker
It's a pleasure.
00:01:37
Speaker
And so tell me, start by telling me where exactly you are, because this isn't where you normally spend your days.
00:01:45
Speaker
No.
00:01:45
Speaker
So I am currently in an area of West London called Bedford Park.
00:01:50
Speaker
I'm in my family home.
00:01:51
Speaker
This is the home that I grew up in.
00:01:52
Speaker
I've moved back here for the quarantine period.
00:01:55
Speaker
I'm here with me and my partner looking after this house and having a wonderful time getting to know the objects that surrounded me as I was growing
Architectural Significance of Bedford Park
00:02:05
Speaker
up.
00:02:05
Speaker
And start with the house itself.
00:02:07
Speaker
It's an arts and crafts period of construction, right?
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, so Bedford Park is a really important area for people who are enthusiasts of city planning.
00:02:18
Speaker
So I don't know if any of your listeners love city planning, but it was designed to the first garden suburb.
00:02:25
Speaker
And it was the brainchild of a man called Jonathan Carr, who was a developer.
00:02:30
Speaker
And he thought around 1875, he started having this idea of creating a enclave of houses that were affordable,
00:02:40
Speaker
but they were also beautiful and aesthetic.
00:02:43
Speaker
And so he got on board the foremost architect of the day, who was Norman Shaw, and they together designed this area in the style of Queen Anne.
00:02:55
Speaker
And so you have a lot of very beautiful houses, all in the style of Queen Anne, or almost all in that style.
00:03:02
Speaker
And then some other architects came on board too.
00:03:05
Speaker
So you have Voise, this incredible house by Voise in the area.
00:03:09
Speaker
And what Carr also wanted to do was really create a sense of community, like a village community.
00:03:14
Speaker
And so there's a pub, the Tabard, which is quite a famous pub.
00:03:19
Speaker
There's the church, St Michael and All Angels, which looks like this huge barn with furniture that's with pews that are
00:03:30
Speaker
in the style of home furnishings somewhat.
00:03:33
Speaker
I mean, it's really bizarre, very arts and crafts and very beautiful with an attention to detail.
00:03:40
Speaker
And so actually one of the great joys of this quarantine we get in England, we get one hour of state sanctioned exercise a day.
00:03:49
Speaker
And I've been using that to wander around this area and peek into people's houses and look at the design of their houses.
00:03:59
Speaker
And it's been a real joy to see that and see all these different styles.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's fantastic.
00:04:05
Speaker
Beautiful architecture.
00:04:07
Speaker
But you've been, of course, spending a lot of time in the house where you're in right now.
Exploration of Stained Glass Roundels
00:04:12
Speaker
And there's an interesting detail about that house that you told me about last week.
00:04:17
Speaker
It's totally fascinating.
00:04:18
Speaker
So tell me about this set of objects.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, so the objects I wanted to talk about are these five stained glass roundels that are in this bay window space in the living room of my house.
00:04:34
Speaker
And stained glass is not unusual in this area.
00:04:37
Speaker
There's a lot of arts and crafts stained glass.
00:04:40
Speaker
A lot of the major English artists of the arts and crafts lived in Bedford Park after it had been designed, so they installed these things.
00:04:49
Speaker
But this is not arts and crafts stained glass.
00:04:51
Speaker
This is quite a bit earlier.
00:04:54
Speaker
And these five roundels, three of them are from probably around 1510 to 1530.
00:05:00
Speaker
They're Netherlandish roundels.
00:05:03
Speaker
So quite a few hundred years earlier than this period.
00:05:08
Speaker
Well, exactly.
00:05:09
Speaker
And it's really curious, these objects.
00:05:10
Speaker
And then the other two are German mid-17th century roundels.
00:05:14
Speaker
They're actually oval roundels.
00:05:17
Speaker
But I think they still count.
00:05:19
Speaker
And they're all five of these.
00:05:23
Speaker
I find them really curious.
00:05:24
Speaker
And I remember being enchanted by them as a young child and then getting used to them as, you know, the background of your home.
00:05:31
Speaker
You just ignore them and then coming back, spending some more time now in this house of my childhood,
00:05:37
Speaker
looking a little bit closer and thinking, wow, these things are really extraordinary and really out of place.
00:05:42
Speaker
So these are religious scenes, and we'll get into talking a little bit about what they actually depict.
00:05:48
Speaker
But just to reiterate, so there are two that are early 16th century, so 500 plus years old now.
00:05:56
Speaker
Three of them.
00:05:57
Speaker
Sorry, three of them that are 500 plus years old, and then another two that are German, about 350 years old.
00:06:03
Speaker
But they were all installed in the house when it was constructed, you think?
00:06:08
Speaker
No, I think that they were installed probably around 1900.
00:06:12
Speaker
This house that I was currently in was built in 1883.
00:06:17
Speaker
But I think it was the second owner of this house that installed these roundels.
00:06:22
Speaker
So the first owner was actually the master builder.
00:06:25
Speaker
And then a priest moved in and he converted the ground floor into one flat and then the floor above into a flat for his lover, who was a Navy man, I think, member of the merchant Navy.
00:06:39
Speaker
And so they were in a homosexual relationship together, which was, of course, illegal in Britain at the time.
00:06:45
Speaker
And particularly for a priest, I think would be especially sensitive.
00:06:49
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:06:51
Speaker
I think so too.
00:06:51
Speaker
That's probably why he had them in two different flats.
00:06:54
Speaker
Although I'm sure they could get between them pretty easily.
00:06:59
Speaker
But these two men, they travelled very widely.
00:07:02
Speaker
They were clearly very fond of travelling, very fond of collecting objects and looking at art.
00:07:08
Speaker
And I don't know exactly where they would have bought these roundels, possibly on their travels, or possibly they were floating around in London.
00:07:16
Speaker
In the 19th century, these stained glass roundels became quite popular with antiquarians in England.
00:07:22
Speaker
And so perhaps there were some on the market at that time.
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:27
Speaker
You know, I'm curious as to when these might have made their way into England, because, you know, certainly all kinds of European objects were being brought in earlier in that century through the Grand Tour.
00:07:40
Speaker
But do you think that's how I mean, this is this is on the late side for for what we think of as as like the proper Grand Tour period.
00:07:49
Speaker
So how do you think they might have ended up where you are?
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's really difficult to say for sure.
00:07:58
Speaker
But grand tourists did pick up these objects if they were passing through the Netherlands or the Dutch Republic.
00:08:08
Speaker
And there are some of these objects in British stately homes.
00:08:11
Speaker
So you do find them installed into the glass in stately homes.
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:15
Speaker
But also antiquarians collected these objects.
00:08:17
Speaker
So maybe this was an interest to those antiquarian or print collectors.
00:08:22
Speaker
A lot of these stained glass roundels are based on contemporary prints from the time.
00:08:28
Speaker
And so I wonder if that also appealed to the to the print collector of the 19th century.
00:08:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:34
Speaker
OK.
00:08:35
Speaker
All right.
00:08:35
Speaker
So but so one way or another, they end up in England and then they they wind up in this home and are installed by this priest.
00:08:45
Speaker
And as as I mentioned before, they are religious scenes.
00:08:48
Speaker
But could you could you tell me more about
Artistic Analysis of the Prudence Roundel
00:08:50
Speaker
that?
00:08:50
Speaker
What did the Randalls actually depict?
00:08:53
Speaker
So the three Netherlandish roundels, two of them are religious, but one of them is actually not.
00:08:59
Speaker
And that, I think, is the most curious one.
00:09:01
Speaker
I'll start off with the religious ones.
00:09:03
Speaker
So we have, there's a roundel of John the Baptist.
00:09:08
Speaker
It's about, just to give a sense of the size, they're about 20 centimetres in diameter, which I looked up in inches because
00:09:15
Speaker
This is American view.
00:09:17
Speaker
That's eight inches.
00:09:17
Speaker
Eight inches.
00:09:18
Speaker
Roughly eight inches.
00:09:21
Speaker
And so we have John the Baptist.
00:09:22
Speaker
This one is probably the most sketchy in terms of or the least the least good draftsmanship is the John the Baptist one.
00:09:32
Speaker
But you have John the Baptist.
00:09:33
Speaker
He's standing there.
00:09:34
Speaker
He's pointing down.
00:09:34
Speaker
There's a lamb at his feet.
00:09:36
Speaker
So he's pointing at the lamb, which is, of course, a reference to the Ece Anios Dei, the Behold the Lamb of God.
00:09:43
Speaker
But then most curiously is that there's a clergyman, a very young clergyman kneeling next to the John the Baptist figure.
00:09:52
Speaker
With a very interesting haircut.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, this bob or this even a bowl cut maybe.
00:09:58
Speaker
I think it looks like a quarantine haircut that his mum has done.
00:10:00
Speaker
Can't get to the barber.
00:10:02
Speaker
That's right.
00:10:05
Speaker
And do you think he's taunted?
00:10:07
Speaker
It looks like he's got a little bald patch right on top.
00:10:11
Speaker
I think that's right.
00:10:13
Speaker
And meanwhile, John the Baptist himself has a beard that looks about like mine after weeks of quarantine.
00:10:19
Speaker
Well, you have a pretty impressive beard right now, Ben.
00:10:24
Speaker
So who's this clergyman?
00:10:26
Speaker
What is he doing in the background?
00:10:28
Speaker
So he's pretty curious.
00:10:29
Speaker
I've been trying to figure out who he might be.
00:10:33
Speaker
I think probably the most likely is that he commissioned this piece of stained glass, possibly for the church where he worked.
00:10:44
Speaker
And I wonder if he might have been called John.
00:10:46
Speaker
And so this is kind of a saint being the namesake of the man who commissioned it.
00:10:52
Speaker
Interesting.
00:10:53
Speaker
And I think he's probably a deacon.
00:10:55
Speaker
I think he's quite low in the church by the sense of his age, but also what he's wearing.
00:11:03
Speaker
So I wonder if, you know, these sorts of roundel objects weren't ludicrously expensive.
00:11:09
Speaker
It wasn't like commissioning a whole window for stained glass.
00:11:13
Speaker
You could commission something like this and be able to install it for, I think, a pretty affordable sign.
00:11:20
Speaker
So maybe that was his way of...
00:11:24
Speaker
placing himself into this church.
00:11:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:28
Speaker
Nice to have a picture of yourself with John the Baptist.
00:11:32
Speaker
Exactly.
00:11:33
Speaker
Even if it is a pretty scruffy John the Baptist.
00:11:35
Speaker
That's right.
00:11:36
Speaker
I mean, you see this in illuminated manuscripts all the time, right?
00:11:41
Speaker
In books of hours and things where patrons will place themselves in historical scenes or in scenes from the Bible.
00:11:53
Speaker
You know, there's Jesus and next to him is the Count of thus and such.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:58
Speaker
Exactly.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's been a really popular thing to do for many, many centuries before this roundel would have been created.
00:12:05
Speaker
So you see it exactly in illuminated manuscripts, you see it in medieval stained glass, you probably would have seen it in medieval wall paintings if more of them survived.
00:12:14
Speaker
But I can bring to mind a couple where that appears.
00:12:17
Speaker
And yeah, it's a very, it's a very popular thing to do.
00:12:20
Speaker
Because if you're
00:12:22
Speaker
spending so much money on dedicating or if you're spending so much money on a work of art you want to place yourself there and it's it increases the intercession for your soul the praying for your soul and shows shows the good work that you've done yeah with this patronage yeah god is watching okay so let's so um shall we move on to to the next roundel what's what's the next one that you want to tell us about
00:12:47
Speaker
So this is the other Netherlandish religious roundel.
00:12:52
Speaker
And this one I had a little bit more difficulty in terms of identifying the subject.
00:12:58
Speaker
It shows a young boy saint.
00:13:01
Speaker
He's got the halo.
00:13:02
Speaker
So, you know, he's the he's the saint in the scene.
00:13:04
Speaker
And he seems he seems to be he's holding the hand of an abbot.
00:13:09
Speaker
Hmm.
00:13:10
Speaker
And then behind them.
00:13:11
Speaker
Who has a proper miter on his head.
00:13:15
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:13:16
Speaker
So he's got a miter.
00:13:18
Speaker
He's got very lavish robes.
00:13:20
Speaker
I think it looks like a sort of fur trim on his robes.
00:13:24
Speaker
And he has a belt with a knife hanging off it.
00:13:27
Speaker
I mean, he looks like a pretty dapper chap.
00:13:30
Speaker
Yes, he's been a very successful abbot.
00:13:32
Speaker
Exactly.
00:13:33
Speaker
And I initially thought it was a bishop.
00:13:36
Speaker
Right, that's what I assumed as well.
00:13:37
Speaker
So how do you know it's an athlete?
00:13:39
Speaker
Well, I luckily asked someone who knew more than me.
00:13:44
Speaker
And I asked this gentleman called Paul Taylor, who works at the Warburg Institute.
00:13:49
Speaker
And I was actually asking for his help identifying the scene because it's quite hard to know who this might be, what it might be depicting.
00:13:56
Speaker
The other detail, just to point out before I tell you what Paul thinks the scene is,
00:14:03
Speaker
I give him full credit for this, is that behind the child saint and the abbot is a crying woman, a very finely dressed crying woman.
00:14:15
Speaker
She has a very lavish headdress on, this kind of round padding on her head.
00:14:22
Speaker
And so what Paul said it probably is, is a scene from the early life of a saint who, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a monk.
00:14:34
Speaker
Oh, I see.
00:14:35
Speaker
So he's leaving home and going to join a monastery.
00:14:40
Speaker
Exactly.
00:14:40
Speaker
And that would make sense because you have this fence that seems to cut him off from the mother figure.
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:48
Speaker
And...
00:14:49
Speaker
And there's a sort of a, you know, a stone wall with turrets behind them, behind the figures.
00:14:56
Speaker
Is that, do you think that's the monastery or?
00:14:59
Speaker
I think it might be the monastery, but although it looks quite a lot like a castle.
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:05
Speaker
So it's not, it's not very monastic looking.
00:15:07
Speaker
Right.
00:15:09
Speaker
Maybe it's just a particularly well fortified monastery.
00:15:13
Speaker
Maybe it's the artist's idea of what a monastery back in the day looked like.
00:15:18
Speaker
I don't think this is a contemporary saint.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a little bit of anachronism maybe.
00:15:25
Speaker
Interesting.
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:27
Speaker
And so there are a couple of saints that, well, quite a lot of saints that it could be, because this sort of story of a young boy going against the wishes of his parents to follow God is a really popular saintly journey.
00:15:40
Speaker
But one possibility is that it could be St.
00:15:42
Speaker
Boniface.
00:15:44
Speaker
And St.
00:15:44
Speaker
Boniface then becomes a major saint for Germany.
00:15:47
Speaker
And so this being made in that area, or made in the Netherlands, so nearby, that could make sense.
00:15:54
Speaker
But it's definitely not confirmed.
00:15:59
Speaker
But that's what we think is going on.
00:16:00
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:01
Speaker
So listeners, it's definitely St.
00:16:03
Speaker
Boniface.
00:16:06
Speaker
Yeah, thanks, Ben.
00:16:07
Speaker
If you take one thing away from this episode, that roundel is St.
00:16:11
Speaker
Boniface.
00:16:11
Speaker
Okay, so let's go on.
00:16:14
Speaker
You say there's one more Dutch roundel, right?
00:16:17
Speaker
There's one more, and this, I think, is the most curious of all, because this is of the virtue prudentia, the allegorical figure.
00:16:27
Speaker
Prudentia, or prudence, in our language, in the English language, is one of the four cardinal virtues.
00:16:35
Speaker
So you have prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice as the cardinal virtues.
00:16:39
Speaker
I don't have them, but maybe you do.
00:16:41
Speaker
You don't have them.
00:16:45
Speaker
I think you're pretty virtuous, Ben.
00:16:47
Speaker
Yes, well, it's... Up for debate.
00:16:51
Speaker
We'll just leave that one alone for now.
00:16:54
Speaker
So, and Prudence is often depicted as a two-faced, literally two-faced person.
00:17:03
Speaker
And that is the case in this round.
00:17:05
Speaker
It's a figure with a face on the front and the face on the back, which, you know, maybe we're more familiar with Janus as the two-faced god looking forward and backward through time.
00:17:15
Speaker
But why does Prudence have two faces?
00:17:21
Speaker
Well, I think it's that ability to see ahead and to act prudently.
00:17:27
Speaker
And so you have this young, usually a female face.
00:17:29
Speaker
Here it's slightly hard to tell, but I think it's meant to be a female face.
00:17:33
Speaker
And then an old man's face on the back of the head.
00:17:38
Speaker
So there's a sort of an androgynous element as well.
00:17:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:43
Speaker
Well, it is an allegorical figure.
00:17:45
Speaker
I mean, it's not meant to depict someone who actually existed.
00:17:49
Speaker
It's meant to depict this ideal with all of these different attributes.
00:17:53
Speaker
And it includes a lot of those attributes.
00:17:55
Speaker
So you have a mirror, you have a compass, so a compass to be able to make a circle.
00:18:03
Speaker
You call them compasses in America, don't you?
00:18:04
Speaker
Yes, that's right.
00:18:06
Speaker
Just checking.
00:18:09
Speaker
And then quite interestingly, there's a wyvern down the bottom and prudence is often depicted with a snake.
00:18:15
Speaker
But in this case, it's a wyvern, which is like a dragon creature, but just with two legs.
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:22
Speaker
And the reason for these specific attributes, because prudence is not always painted with a compass and is not always painted with a wyvern, is
00:18:31
Speaker
The reason for these two is because of the print source.
00:18:34
Speaker
And I managed to find the print source that this is based on.
00:18:38
Speaker
This is so cool.
00:18:38
Speaker
This round was based on.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:40
Speaker
And it's from a pack of playing cards, from quite a famous pack of playing cards, actually, called the Mantegna Tarocchi or Tarocchi.
00:18:50
Speaker
which sound quite similar to tarot cards because they are quite linked to tarot cards, or the modern idea of tarot cards.
00:18:57
Speaker
And this was a set of playing cards made around 1470, 1480.
00:19:04
Speaker
in Italy.
00:19:06
Speaker
And they were very popular.
00:19:07
Speaker
And then in the 1530s, a German set of these playing cards was made.
00:19:12
Speaker
So a German engraver copied his set of the Italian playing cards.
00:19:18
Speaker
But when you copy an image onto an engraving plate, the image that you get is the reverse of your original image.
00:19:25
Speaker
It gets flipped over, right.
00:19:27
Speaker
Exactly.
00:19:28
Speaker
And so I think that this stained glass painter was looking at the German set of cards because his prudence is facing that way, as opposed to the way of the original Italian cards.
00:19:46
Speaker
So that gives us a date for this particular roundel to around 1530, 1540.
00:19:50
Speaker
That's fantastic.
00:19:52
Speaker
That's what I'm thinking.
00:19:54
Speaker
Wow, that's some good sleuthing.
00:19:55
Speaker
How do you track down the playing cards?
00:19:58
Speaker
Google is our friend.
00:20:01
Speaker
The playing cards, the British Museum has a large set of these playing cards.
00:20:05
Speaker
And so I was looking at the Italian set thinking, oh, brilliant, I found the copy.
00:20:10
Speaker
But this reverse of the composition was clear.
00:20:13
Speaker
And then I saw that there was this German set that was made in the early 16th century.
00:20:18
Speaker
Fascinating.
00:20:21
Speaker
Yeah, that gives some clues.
00:20:23
Speaker
But it's fun just trying to trace back the iconography.
00:20:26
Speaker
Yeah, this is real detective work.
00:20:27
Speaker
I love it.
00:20:29
Speaker
Okay, so then we have two other roundels.
00:20:34
Speaker
I want to say a couple more things on the Prudence roundel.
00:20:38
Speaker
But what I really like about the Prudentia roundel is it's clearly very high quality.
00:20:43
Speaker
So unlike the other two roundels where it's a little bit more sketchy, they're also smaller.
00:20:48
Speaker
The Prudentia roundel is very big and it's very beautifully painted.
00:20:55
Speaker
And I say painted because this stained glass technique, you have a single pane of glass, you paint in black on the front and it sort of fuses when it's fired.
00:21:07
Speaker
And then it has this yellow staining effect called silver stain, which I'm bringing up because of you, Ben, because of your love for silver.
00:21:18
Speaker
Let's shoehorn silver into this some way.
00:21:20
Speaker
You know what makes me happy.
00:21:24
Speaker
Silver staining is a technique where you get a silver alloy, so it can be...
00:21:30
Speaker
it can be sort of silver nitrate, sorry, where you get a silver compound.
00:21:36
Speaker
So it can be silver nitrate or silver chloride and you mix it with a binding and then you put it on the reverse side of the stained glass.
00:21:43
Speaker
And after you've heated it, what it does is it stains the glass yellow.
00:21:50
Speaker
And so this particular Prudentia roundel
00:21:53
Speaker
has very beautifully placed yellow staining.
00:21:57
Speaker
Sometimes it can be done quite roughly, but here the artist has really taken a lot of effort in making this roundel.
00:22:03
Speaker
Yeah, there's very fine detail and, you know, a pretty interesting range of autumnal colours.
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, he's really worked.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's a very inviting scene, I have to say.
00:22:19
Speaker
And also he's clearly looking and combining a lot of different print sources because this pack of playing cards was quite roughly made.
00:22:27
Speaker
But this Prudentia figure, while clearly based on the composition, is much more intricate.
00:22:32
Speaker
And then the trees behind really have a very Durer-esque experience.
00:22:37
Speaker
effect.
00:22:37
Speaker
Jura's prints would have been floating around all of these workshops.
00:22:41
Speaker
I'm sure they would have been very familiar.
00:22:43
Speaker
And the trees are really done in that style.
00:22:45
Speaker
And so I think this artist has gone to great lengths to combine a bunch of different sources to create this roundel.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:54
Speaker
And I wonder if it was part of a larger set as well, because it would be unusual to have Prudence just by herself.
00:22:59
Speaker
Sure.
00:23:00
Speaker
I think it would at least be with the other cardinal virtues and then maybe with all the virtues.
00:23:04
Speaker
So it could have been quite a large, lavish set.
00:23:07
Speaker
So, yeah, it might have been a set of four or even more than that.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:12
Speaker
Interesting.
00:23:13
Speaker
I love how you're able to draw out this actually quite detailed picture of what the sort of the circumstances were around the production of the roundel.
00:23:24
Speaker
I mean, this is sort of the fun of art history, right, is you're able to create a story.
00:23:32
Speaker
drawing on what at first glance seems like very limited information just a single picture and yet you know here now we know all about these these playing cards and these various print sources and the workshops that the artist was working in and yeah um yeah it's uh it's quite fun the wonderful thing about art history i mean i'm sure you find this ben with your work is it's kind of like a lens and you can
00:23:56
Speaker
put things through, through the glass pane, let's call it that since we're looking at glass panes, but you can look at it from a social perspective or from the materiality or cultural elements or in terms of the sort of connoisseurial approach.
00:24:12
Speaker
and looking at print sources.
00:24:13
Speaker
I mean, there are so many different ways that you can approach an object like this.
00:24:16
Speaker
And it's picking up the little tiny threads and I'm mixing my metaphors here, but it's a really wonderful thing to try and do.
00:24:24
Speaker
And I think the nice thing about this quarantine and this project of looking into these roundels a little bit more has really revealed a lot more than what first meets the eye.
00:24:34
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Antiques Magazine's Online Initiatives
00:24:46
Speaker
As you know, Curious Objects is published by The Magazine Antiques, the publication of record in the world of fine and decorative arts for almost 100 years.
00:24:53
Speaker
The folks at The Magazine Antiques are as concerned as you are about COVID-19, and they are rolling out a series of online projects to help you cope while you're stuck at home.
00:25:03
Speaker
Check out themagazineantiques.com, where they post new and archival stories daily.
00:25:08
Speaker
They've built a new page, Antiques of the Week, which showcases exceptional individual items from dealers who are still buying and selling even if their shows have been canceled.
00:25:16
Speaker
There's also an antique of the day selected by the brilliant editor-at-large Glenn Adamson, who was my guest on Curious Objects back in June of 2019.
00:25:26
Speaker
The antique of the day is posted on the magazine Antiques Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
00:25:31
Speaker
And if that's not enough for you, they also have a weekly newsletter called The Wandering Eye.
00:25:35
Speaker
That's a compendium of topical, antiques-focused articles from across the web.
00:25:39
Speaker
It's a great read.
00:25:41
Speaker
And last but not least, subscribe to the magazine and get the upcoming May and June issue of the Magazine Antiques delivered to your mailbox.
00:25:48
Speaker
That way you are also supporting the United States Postal Service.
00:25:53
Speaker
Because after all, there's nothing more comforting than curling up with a good magazine while you wait out the end of the world.
Historical Context of Old Sheffield Plate Candelabra
00:26:13
Speaker
And since you brought up silver, I'm going to take that as an excuse to talk about myself.
00:26:23
Speaker
Well, you know, the objects that so we wanted to talk about our experiences of objects in our own homes.
00:26:33
Speaker
And I love stained glass because, you know, they're works of art.
00:26:39
Speaker
But I'm actually...
00:26:41
Speaker
I wanted to talk a little about decorative art.
00:26:44
Speaker
You know, as I am a silver specialist, I have a certain number of silver objects in my home, which I very much enjoy.
00:26:53
Speaker
And there's one object, well, it's actually a pair of objects that are a pair of candelabra.
00:26:59
Speaker
that I find quite interesting.
00:27:01
Speaker
They're what we call silver-plated.
00:27:04
Speaker
So that means they're actually made of sheets of copper with sheets of silver fused to them.
00:27:13
Speaker
And this is a technique that was developed in the 18th century in England.
00:27:18
Speaker
You know, silver is very expensive, always has been.
00:27:23
Speaker
And so, you know, for a long time, if you wanted a silver object at home, you had to be willing to pay a lot of money for it.
00:27:30
Speaker
But in the mid 18th century, this technique was developed called silver plating, where they essentially realized that the chemical properties of silver and copper
00:27:43
Speaker
allow those two metals to be fused together and then worked as if they were a single sheet.
00:27:50
Speaker
And so you could take a thin sheet of silver and a thick sheet of copper and hammer it just like you would hammer a regular old sheet of silver.
00:27:58
Speaker
create an object that looks like it's made of silver, but most of the weight of it is actually copper, which is much cheaper.
00:28:04
Speaker
So this is a way that silversmiths could start to produce objects that were much more, well, you could say down market, I suppose, but mass market, you know, that were... Yeah, affordable.
00:28:15
Speaker
Yeah, affordable, relatively speaking.
00:28:17
Speaker
I mean, they were still expensive, but they weren't nearly as expensive as, you know, the dining services that you associate with.
00:28:27
Speaker
with nobles, with royalty, you know, pieces that really required massive fortunes to invest in.
00:28:35
Speaker
So this pair is what we call Old Sheffield Plate.
00:28:41
Speaker
So Sheffield was the city where this production was really pioneered.
00:28:45
Speaker
Can I neck of the woods?
00:28:47
Speaker
Yeah, there you go.
00:28:49
Speaker
At least on the same island that I'm currently on.
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah, right, exactly.
00:28:55
Speaker
Yeah, and the most famous figure associated with the development of Old Sheffield Plate is a fellow named Matthew Bolton, whose portrait appears on the 50-pound note.
00:29:09
Speaker
He is most famous, actually, for working with James Watt to develop the steam engine and commercialize that.
00:29:15
Speaker
So he was really a very successful industrialist, but he was also, you know, his real passion was silversmithing.
00:29:21
Speaker
And he created this Soho Manufactory, which was an enormous production facility where they churn out, well, all kinds of objects, but among them, Old Sheffield Play.
00:29:35
Speaker
Now, I don't know if these candelabra that I have were made in the Soho Manufactory.
00:29:40
Speaker
They're not marked, and oftentimes pieces by Matthew Bolton are marked.
00:29:46
Speaker
So they might have been made by another silversmith, or they might have been made by Bolton.
00:29:51
Speaker
Without a mark, you can't really say for certain.
00:29:55
Speaker
But what's really interesting about them, they're formed in a neoclassical style.
00:29:59
Speaker
They have...
00:30:01
Speaker
two branches.
00:30:03
Speaker
They're sort of twisty branches that spiral around each other.
00:30:08
Speaker
And then in between them in the center, there's an urn, which is just this very typical figure of neoclassical design, neoclassical architecture.
00:30:19
Speaker
You see it in Robert Adam.
00:30:22
Speaker
It's the epitome of symmetry and elegance and restraint.
00:30:29
Speaker
What's really unusual about these candelabra is that they are telescoping.
00:30:35
Speaker
And what I mean by that is the column that holds up the branches that the candlesticks sit in actually moves up and down.
00:30:45
Speaker
So it's made out of cylinders that fit inside each other so you can raise and lower it.
00:30:51
Speaker
And it's kind of wacky.
00:30:53
Speaker
It's kind of kitschy.
00:30:55
Speaker
I think the idea was, you know, you ought to be able to set your table however you like.
00:31:01
Speaker
And sometimes that means you want, you know, high set candelabra to cast light down from above across maybe a large group of diners.
00:31:11
Speaker
And other times maybe you're having an intimate dinner with just your close family and you want to set them low down to create a more intimate environment.
00:31:24
Speaker
I don't know...
00:31:26
Speaker
how popular these really were.
00:31:30
Speaker
You see examples of them in sterling silver.
00:31:32
Speaker
You see some examples in Old Sheffield Plate.
00:31:37
Speaker
They're not that common.
00:31:39
Speaker
And actually, although I can't say that these candelabra are worth an enormous amount of money, they are actually fairly rare, which makes me like them all the more.
00:31:50
Speaker
But I just, you know, I like these quirky pieces that were sort of, you know, an experiment in design that didn't last very long.
00:32:01
Speaker
You know, it was sort of abandoned fairly quickly.
00:32:05
Speaker
But I love the idea that in 1780 or 1790, you know, there's a silversmith who said, you know, we've been stuck all too long with this old idea of candelabra and candlesticks that are just one height.
00:32:20
Speaker
Time to make cantalabra that can be as many heights as you want.
00:32:25
Speaker
So now, yeah, no, go ahead.
00:32:29
Speaker
I was going to ask, do you think it ties in with that curiosity effect of some silver table designs?
00:32:35
Speaker
You know, you'll have these really elaborate things that kind of can draw in conversation.
00:32:40
Speaker
And do you think something like this, was it purely mechanical?
00:32:42
Speaker
Was it purely for a function?
00:32:44
Speaker
Or do you think it was kind of to show your friends that you have this nifty cantalabra?
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder about that.
00:32:50
Speaker
I mean, you know, this is a period when certainly you see all kinds of interesting industrial style home decorations, right?
00:32:59
Speaker
I mean, models of steam engines were very popular in wood, in metal, even in silver.
00:33:10
Speaker
And I sort of wonder if this wasn't a...
00:33:14
Speaker
you know a fun little party trick right maybe at a certain point in the evening the host will just sort of casually stand up and lower the candelabra and catch everyone off guard yes well it's it's a mild pleasure but um we take our entertainment where we can get it
00:33:37
Speaker
Definitely.
00:33:38
Speaker
And can you give me a sense of who would this who would be buying this?
00:33:43
Speaker
You know, what level of society was it?
00:33:45
Speaker
You said that they're more affordable than the high silver.
00:33:48
Speaker
Does this kind of coincide with that growing upper middle class, you know, growing nouveau riche?
00:33:53
Speaker
That's exactly right.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, there's still a certain amount of silver metal that goes into the creation of silver plate.
00:34:01
Speaker
So there is an expense there.
00:34:03
Speaker
And there is still an expense involved in the craftsmanship.
00:34:08
Speaker
You know, although people like Matthew Bolton were starting to standardize and industrialize the manufacturing process, it remained the case that a piece like this
00:34:21
Speaker
demanded a large amount of handiwork.
00:34:24
Speaker
Now, if you're talking about sterling silver dinner services, for example,
00:34:30
Speaker
The cost of the handiwork is fairly small relative to the cost of the raw materials.
00:34:37
Speaker
The advent of silver plate shifts that equation on its head.
00:34:42
Speaker
So now the raw materials, although they still cost some money, really the bulk of the expense is now the manufacturing.
00:34:53
Speaker
They're not going to be affordable enough that most people in Britain could casually buy a pair.
00:35:02
Speaker
But they're attainable for the middle class, the upper middle class, mercantile people, business people, industrial people, managers, people who are starting to accumulate a little bit of capital and who want to impress their friends.
00:35:22
Speaker
And that's really where Old Sheffield Plate gains its commercial foothold.
00:35:29
Speaker
It's a way of showing off elegance to your friends without going to the enormous expense of buying large quantities of silver that might bankrupt you.
00:35:39
Speaker
How long does Old Sheffield plates remain popular?
00:35:44
Speaker
Well, forever.
00:35:45
Speaker
I mean, it's still made today.
00:35:48
Speaker
Now, today it's generally made with a different technique, you know, using electroplating, so a chemical process.
00:35:54
Speaker
It's usually not made by actually fusing together sheets of copper and silver and then hammering them by hand.
00:36:01
Speaker
But certainly silver plated material is quite popular today.
00:36:05
Speaker
It's even a medium that artists work in sometimes.
00:36:11
Speaker
And frankly, you know, it's collectible.
00:36:15
Speaker
I think especially for someone who's interested in antique English silver, Old Sheffield Plate is a great place to start because you can find a lot of the same forms that you find in sterling silver.
Collectibility and Elegance of Old Sheffield Plate
00:36:26
Speaker
and a lot of the same techniques, a lot of the same kinds of craftsmanship, but it tends to be a lot more affordable.
00:36:35
Speaker
And there are cases, actually, where there are objects in Old Sheffield Plate that were so elaborate and large, frankly, that they would have been impractical to make in silver.
00:36:48
Speaker
So you find forms that exist only in Old Sheffield Plate.
00:36:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:54
Speaker
and such as well so uh you know you might find for example um soup tureens that are half again as large as a soup tureen that that would be made in sterling right um tea urns um you know just sort of towering heavy enormous objects ponderous things that um
00:37:20
Speaker
You know, maybe there are silver examples out there, but they're very few and far between.
00:37:27
Speaker
And, you know, again, we think of Old Sheffield plate as being a sort of a lower class of object compared to sterling.
00:37:33
Speaker
But there are pieces of Old Sheffield plate in the Royal Collection.
00:37:38
Speaker
There are pieces of Old Sheffield plate that are ambassadorial.
00:37:42
Speaker
you know, it wasn't just for the struggling upper middle class, right?
00:37:48
Speaker
I mean, these objects were sometimes made for dukes and earls and ambassadors and royalty.
00:37:55
Speaker
So, you know, the sort of knee-jerk reaction of looking down on it, I think, is a little misplaced.
00:38:03
Speaker
Can I ask a really basic question?
00:38:04
Speaker
Please.
00:38:05
Speaker
Which is, if I were...
00:38:08
Speaker
seeing a piece of old Sheffield plate in an antiques shop, how would I know that it wasn't silver?
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:15
Speaker
So there are a couple of ways to approach that.
00:38:20
Speaker
The most basic is you look for hallmarks.
00:38:24
Speaker
And sterling silver made in Britain since the 14th century has been legally required to be marked with regulatory marks that confirm that it's actually silver.
00:38:39
Speaker
Old Sheffield plate doesn't have those marks.
00:38:42
Speaker
Now, it might have other marks on it.
00:38:44
Speaker
It might have pseudo hallmarks even that are intended to maybe not to fool exactly, but to sort of make them look a little more like Sterling at a glance.
00:38:56
Speaker
Hmm.
00:38:58
Speaker
But you won't find the typical English silver hallmarks on pieces of Old Sheffield plate.
00:39:05
Speaker
So if you see those hallmarks, then you know it's not Old Sheffield plate.
00:39:09
Speaker
You can often find signs of copper showing through the silver.
00:39:14
Speaker
Because over time, you know, as you polish a piece of silver, you're actually removing a little bit of the material bit by bit.
00:39:21
Speaker
And the silver on a piece of old Sheffield plate is thin enough that on parts of the object that get a lot of wear, you can often start to see little hints of orange.
00:39:32
Speaker
Or in some cases, it actually will just pop all the way through and you'll see whole areas of copper.
00:39:40
Speaker
People say that you can actually smell it.
00:39:46
Speaker
that a piece of old sheffield plate you can smell the copper coming through i have a terrible sense of smell so i can't verify that um but you're welcome to give that a shot next time i'm in new york i'm gonna be sniffing your silver i'll try and tell you can do a blind tasting it'll be like a wine taste exactly just with uh old sheffield or sterling
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you can smell, you could lick it.
00:40:11
Speaker
That might give you some evidence.
00:40:13
Speaker
That goes back to what we were previously talking about, about stained glass.
00:40:17
Speaker
This is before we started recording, but we're talking about the way you can sometimes tell the age of different pieces of stained glasses by licking them to feel the texture.
00:40:25
Speaker
Yes.
00:40:26
Speaker
That's what my professor used to say.
00:40:30
Speaker
You know, we have all kinds of funny tools in this business.
00:40:34
Speaker
The first thing that I do, this is a little trade secret.
00:40:36
Speaker
The first thing I do when I'm looking at a piece of antique silver is I hold it up to my mouth and I breathe on it.
00:40:43
Speaker
And the goal there is to, you know, you fog up the surface.
00:40:47
Speaker
And often that can reveal imperfections.
00:40:51
Speaker
If, for example, you know, if there was a coat of arms on the object that's been removed and you breathe over it, you can often see discoloration where the coat of arms used to be.
00:41:03
Speaker
So it's a nice sort of first clue that there might be something going on there.
00:41:09
Speaker
Very sneaky.
00:41:10
Speaker
I'll need to try that out.
00:41:11
Speaker
Sadly, I don't have any incredible pieces of silver in my collection to start breathing on.
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah, well, we'll work on that.
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:41:21
Speaker
I think you're converting me.
00:41:24
Speaker
Okay, so after this little diversion, I want to get back because there are still two more roundels that you haven't told me about that I'm eager to hear about.
00:41:34
Speaker
And these are the oval ones that are 17th century, right?
00:41:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:39
Speaker
Yeah, so these are very conveniently dated.
00:41:43
Speaker
They've got a little date mark on them.
00:41:45
Speaker
And these are both religious as well.
00:41:46
Speaker
So yeah, these are from 1655 is the date.
00:41:50
Speaker
And these aren't silver stained.
00:41:53
Speaker
These are purely monochrome.
00:41:55
Speaker
So they just have that black painting, but it's done much more delicately than the earlier roundels.
00:42:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:04
Speaker
Taking out Prudentia, which is a special one, but most of the earlier roundels.
00:42:09
Speaker
And these really, more than anything, can tell you that these roundels are based on print sources, because they look like prints, almost.
00:42:18
Speaker
They look like prints that have been printed onto glass.
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:23
Speaker
Right.
00:42:23
Speaker
They have that kind of shading and cross-hatching that you'd expect.
00:42:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:30
Speaker
And very clear delineation in terms of all the lines are very clearly illustrated.
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:35
Speaker
Like a colouring book.
00:42:37
Speaker
Exactly.
00:42:38
Speaker
Exactly.
00:42:38
Speaker
But they are very beautiful, very Baroque in their style.
00:42:42
Speaker
And they depict one is the Annunciation.
00:42:46
Speaker
And you have the Virgin, as you do in the Annunciation, and the angel Gabriel, and then above you have God and the Holy Ghost who's coming down to impregnate the Virgin Mary.
00:42:56
Speaker
And then you have an open book which says, forgive my Latin pronunciation, ecce ankyla domini fiat mihul fecundum verbum tuum.
00:43:08
Speaker
I'm saying that in very British style Latin, which any Italian listening will cry.
00:43:14
Speaker
Anglican ecclesiastical pronunciation there.
00:43:17
Speaker
Exactly.
00:43:18
Speaker
And I'm sure our listeners already know what that means.
00:43:21
Speaker
But for my sake, could you give me a little translation?
00:43:25
Speaker
Sure.
00:43:25
Speaker
So this is this is the line.
00:43:26
Speaker
Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word.
00:43:31
Speaker
Right.
00:43:31
Speaker
It's a very important line in the Bible where Gabriel has come down and letting the letting the virgin know that she is about to bear the son of God.
00:43:42
Speaker
Interesting that the verse describing the scene is in the scene.
00:43:46
Speaker
It's a little self-referential element there.
00:43:52
Speaker
Yeah, well, you often you often have this in the in scenes of the Annunciation, well into the Baroque, you know, often we think that it's quite a medieval thing to have writing within a religious scene, but it's it's pretty common.
00:44:06
Speaker
And it would certainly.
00:44:08
Speaker
help identify it if this was uh if this composition um is from a printed bible which is what i suspect it was from um then you'd expect words to be included yeah right in these plates in this way
00:44:27
Speaker
So that's the first one.
00:44:28
Speaker
And actually something I just want to pick out here is these prints, sorry, these roundels are all quite damaged.
00:44:36
Speaker
You'll see if you take a look at the photos of these that they're quite heavily leaded.
00:44:42
Speaker
And in this enunciation, you can actually see where a piece of glass was lost and it's been quite crudely, a new one has been crudely inserted and painted on to disguise it.
00:44:52
Speaker
Can you see which one that is?
00:44:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's Gabriel's left arm, right?
00:44:57
Speaker
Exactly.
00:44:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:57
Speaker
Just and it shows the robes and the end of the wing, but it's completely different.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yeah, discoloured.
00:45:03
Speaker
In a different colour.
00:45:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:05
Speaker
It has this sort of brown tinge.
00:45:08
Speaker
So, I mean, this happens very often with stained glass in general, but particularly with these roundels.
00:45:15
Speaker
They were easier to travel.
00:45:16
Speaker
A lot of stained glass stays in situ for a long time, unless you have the Reformation and everything's being smashed up.
00:45:23
Speaker
But with these roundels, they're quite portable as stained glass goes.
00:45:26
Speaker
And so they do get more damaged.
00:45:31
Speaker
Actually, if you're listening from New York, one of the great collections of particularly the early Neverlandish roundels is
00:45:38
Speaker
uh is at the met at the cloisters museum so i definitely recommend absolutely check that out always the trips to cloisters is always worth it once once quarantine is lifted maybe those are online i'm sure they're online yeah they must be um
00:45:54
Speaker
And yes, and then the other one of these German roundels.
00:45:57
Speaker
Shall I go on to that one?
00:45:58
Speaker
Yes, please.
00:46:00
Speaker
This is of two saints.
00:46:02
Speaker
The first is John the Evangelist.
00:46:05
Speaker
He's pretty easy to identify because he's got the chalice with a snake coming out of it.
00:46:11
Speaker
And this is from the story that John was given a poisoned chalice and then he blessed it and the poison ran away in the form of a snake.
00:46:21
Speaker
It's a neat trick.
00:46:23
Speaker
Exactly, exactly.
00:46:25
Speaker
So that's that's how you can identify him.
00:46:28
Speaker
But the other woman, I definitely would not have been able to identify without what is written below without her being identified because she is some Adelaide or Adelheid, as it's called here.
00:46:42
Speaker
And she's given me pause and I'm a little bit confused by this because St Adelheid was a saint from the 10th century.
00:46:52
Speaker
She was the wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I.
00:46:57
Speaker
This is Adelaide of Italy.
00:47:00
Speaker
And if I've got it right that that's who this woman is meant to be, I don't think she's a martyr saint.
00:47:05
Speaker
And yet this woman is holding a palm, which is the sign of being a martyr saint.
00:47:12
Speaker
So what I wonder is if this roundel, this is pure speculation, but if the person commissioning it really wanted...
Artistic Interpretation of St. Adelaide Roundel
00:47:21
Speaker
St Adelaide, but the printmaker or the, sorry, the painter, the glass, the glassmaker couldn't find a representation of St Adelaide because she wasn't, you know, astronomically popular.
00:47:33
Speaker
Perhaps he was just using a random, you know, a portrait of a female saint that he happened to have and inserted it in.
00:47:41
Speaker
Because certainly this combination of John and St Adelaide is not
00:47:46
Speaker
not a common one.
00:47:47
Speaker
It's not when you'd like to come across.
00:47:49
Speaker
They don't have any sort of natural affiliation.
00:47:52
Speaker
No, no, exactly.
00:47:54
Speaker
So I wonder if it's a similar situation to what we were talking about with the deacon who maybe, you know, I was postulating he might have been called John.
00:48:05
Speaker
And perhaps the person commissioning this maybe was very fond of St Adelaide, but...
00:48:14
Speaker
So this is... Yeah, but the painter... This is John and... Didn't know what Adelaide should look like.
00:48:18
Speaker
Miscellaneous female saint.
00:48:20
Speaker
Exactly.
00:48:21
Speaker
Miscellaneous female saint who then below it's written that this is who she's meant to be.
00:48:26
Speaker
She's meant to be St Adelaide, but otherwise you'd have no idea.
00:48:30
Speaker
And they also have a nice little pastoral scene behind them with a church in the background.
00:48:36
Speaker
It's really quite lovely.
00:48:37
Speaker
I mean, it's...
Family Connection to the Prudence Roundel
00:48:40
Speaker
I think so too.
00:48:40
Speaker
I think it's very beautiful and it's a wonderful fluke to be living in a house that just happened to have these roundels installed in the windows when my mother moved in however many decades ago.
00:48:53
Speaker
So yeah, it's really... Yeah, what a treat.
00:48:56
Speaker
I have to say, I'm a little envious.
00:49:00
Speaker
I know, I wish my flat came with some free roundels too, but thankfully I got to enjoy them growing up and seeing these.
00:49:09
Speaker
In fact, it's a bit of a funny story.
00:49:11
Speaker
My parents, they're art enthusiasts, but they're not art collectors.
00:49:17
Speaker
And my mother, she was very young when she moved into half of the ground floor.
00:49:22
Speaker
So Bedford Park was incredibly run down in the mid 20th century.
00:49:27
Speaker
And she moved into half the ground floor.
00:49:28
Speaker
Most of the house was bedsits.
00:49:31
Speaker
And the reason she moved into this particular flat is because the day before she went to go to the viewing, she had her tarot read.
00:49:45
Speaker
She had the tarot card reading.
00:49:46
Speaker
And this is the kind of hippie generation that we're talking about.
00:49:51
Speaker
And so she had this tarot reading and in the position of home was the hermit card.
00:49:57
Speaker
which is meant to represent prudence.
00:50:00
Speaker
And she and her friend who was doing the tarot reading for her couldn't figure out what made her prudent because she wasn't a particular prudent person at this stage of her life.
00:50:09
Speaker
And they really couldn't figure it out.
00:50:11
Speaker
And then she went, she was looking for a place to stay.
00:50:14
Speaker
And she went to this flat and the sun was shining directly through the roundel of the prudentia roundel.
00:50:21
Speaker
And she was like, wow, this is just a sign.
00:50:22
Speaker
She didn't realize it was a 16th century, early 16th century, Netherlandish round, or she just thought, you know, this clearly it was foretold in my tarot cards.
00:50:32
Speaker
And then I now discover that the figure of Prudentia is based on these, on these early tarocchi cards, the Italian ones.
00:50:43
Speaker
It all exactly brings it full circle.
00:50:46
Speaker
The usefulness of having an art historian as a daughter.
00:50:48
Speaker
That is a hell of a story.
00:50:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:51
Speaker
So not only do we have the gay couple who first bought these and installed them in the house, it then connects to the personal side too.
00:50:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:00
Speaker
Gosh, what a fun mother-daughter bonding experience.
00:51:05
Speaker
I know, I know.
00:51:06
Speaker
When I was telling her that I was doing this little research, she, yeah, she whipped out that story.
00:51:11
Speaker
And I thought, I've got to include that.
00:51:13
Speaker
I love it.
00:51:15
Speaker
It's not the pure art history.
00:51:16
Speaker
It's not what I usually go in for.
00:51:18
Speaker
But it's a nice bit of eccentricity that, you know, can give objects a little bit more personal, you know, very personal depth.
00:51:25
Speaker
I don't think if I ever sold these, I don't think anyone would mind.
00:51:29
Speaker
But yeah, for me, they're really special.
00:51:32
Speaker
Well, thanks for sharing them with us and taking us on that little journey.
00:51:37
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:51:38
Speaker
And thanks for telling me about your telescopic candelabra.
00:51:42
Speaker
They're fascinating.
00:51:43
Speaker
And I can't wait to see them when finally this quarantine is lifted and they can come to New York again.
00:51:48
Speaker
Something for us to look forward to.
00:51:49
Speaker
Exactly.
Social Media Handles for Object Images
00:51:50
Speaker
And for listeners, they can find you on Instagram again at I-Z-E-Y underscore K-E-N-T.
00:51:59
Speaker
And so I imagine you'll probably have some pictures of the roundels up there at some point.
00:52:05
Speaker
Yeah, when you put up the podcast, I'll put up some of the roundels.
00:52:09
Speaker
And I'll do that as well at Objective Interest.
00:52:12
Speaker
So please check those out.
00:52:14
Speaker
They're very pretty.
00:52:15
Speaker
And I'll put up a picture of the candelabra too while I'm at it.
00:52:17
Speaker
Why not?
00:52:19
Speaker
Well, Isabel, thanks so much for joining me.
00:52:20
Speaker
It's been a pleasure.
00:52:21
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:52:23
Speaker
It's been lovely speaking with you and sharing the sharing the roundels and hearing about your candelabra.
00:52:30
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
00:52:33
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit and I'm your host, Ben Miller.