Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to a special episode of Curious Objects.
Speaker: If you're a regular listener, you already know that I'm Ben Miller and that this podcast is brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: And we are celebrating right now because we have arrived at the first anniversary of the podcast.
Speaker: We've decided to treat this as an occasion for a little retrospection.
Speaker: This is, after all, a podcast about antiques.
Speaker: And to give you a compilation of some of the more interesting moments from the last year of Curious Objects.
Speaker: It's been fun for me to listen back through and hear the progression, starting with the technology.
Speaker: The audio quality was pretty rough at the beginning.
Speaker: If you are a regular listener, you've heard some of these moments before, but time has passed, and maybe you've forgotten about the stagecoach that ran over a violin, or the bracelet that Diana Vreeland wore.
Speaker: Here's a free tip about learning about antiques.
Speaker: Revisit what you already know.
Speaker: The 10th or 100th time you look at an object may be the time that you make a new discovery about it.
Speaker: I'm also treating this as an occasion to express my gratitude, first and foremost to all of you listening, and also to the good people at the magazine Antiques, especially my stalwart and often beleaguered editor Sammy Delati for bringing this effort to fruition.
Speaker: And although you hear from them every episode, I do want to say a sincere thank you to all of our sponsors for supporting this effort to bring the good news about antiques to more people around the world.
Speaker: Listeners, make their support worthwhile.
Speaker: There's a reason I'm not advertising mattresses and razors.
Speaker: I really believe in what our advertisers are doing.
Speaker: Remember that you can get in touch with me directly by emailing podcast at themagazineantiques.com or finding me on Instagram at Objective Interest.
Speaker: I love hearing from you.
Speaker: And pictures of the objects that we're talking about are always available at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: One year down and we are just getting started.
Speaker: I will repeat my plea like a broken record.
Speaker: Rate us on Apple Podcasts or whatever app you're using to listen and leave a review.
Speaker: It's the simplest, most effective way to help us get the word out.
Speaker: Ever wondered about the history of the Madonna and Child in fine art?
Speaker: Or about the macabre illustrator that inspired Tim Burton and Lemony Snicket?
Speaker: Freeman's, America's oldest auction house, tells the stories of these and other curious objects.
Speaker: Discover Pennsylvania's craft legacy, go behind the scenes at auctions and exhibitions, and uncover your passion for collecting.
Speaker: Head to freemansauction.com to sign up for their newsletter and get these stories and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Speaker: Winter Tour presents the 55th annual Delaware Antiques Show, November 9th through 11th, at the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington, Delaware, featuring 62 dealers in American antiques and decorative arts, including furniture, paintings, rugs, ceramic, silver, jewelry, and more, plus special lectures and an opening night party.
Speaker: Delaware Antiques Show details and tickets are available at wintertour.org.
Speaker: Now we're going to run through these in chronological order, starting with Michael Pashby.
Speaker: This was the first interview I ever did for Curious Objects.
Speaker: And, well, at the time that we recorded this, I didn't know what the podcast was going to be called or where it was going to be published or whether it was even going to be published at all.
Speaker: So I was very grateful to Michael for being willing to take a little bit of a risk with me and dive into this experiment.
Speaker: Now, when we sat down to try to decide what object to talk about in this pilot episode,
Speaker: I thought, what better place to start than with arguably the most fundamental object in the decorative arts world, the chair.
Speaker: And for the benefit of our listeners who unfortunately can't see us through this microphone, could you give a physical description of that chair?
Speaker: Well, it's what one would normally understand as a Windsor chair.
Speaker: It's got four legs, obviously, but these are particularly well-splayed legs, so it gives it stability.
Speaker: It has spindles to the back, a hooped back, a curved arm,
Speaker: a flat curved seat, shaped seat, and it's got a very interesting stretcher to the base, which is a very shallow curve to the stretcher with supports going to the rear legs.
Speaker: And all of the legs have got very, very fine turning to them.
Speaker: But this one is made of indigenous woods, it's made of beech, ash, primarily of ash, and ash was a very good wood to be steamed and turned.
Speaker: And the seat is, interestingly, is of sycamore, which would indicate that the chair actually had been painted at some stage.
Speaker: Because if it was a much higher quality piece, it would have either been elm to the seat or cherry, something that was more expensive.
Speaker: So it's a standard Windsor chair.
Speaker: Windsor chair is a very interesting thing because most of them are not from Windsor.
Speaker: This type of chair was made in the area of the Thames Valley.
Speaker: The market town of the Thames Valley was Windsor.
Speaker: And chairs were moved to other parts of the country through the market town.
Speaker: And because it was on the Thames, they could be shipped to any part of London or elsewhere in the country.
Speaker: So the name Windsor actually relates to their commercial distribution rather than the actual point of origin.
Speaker: And I think people at the time said, oh, the chair's from Windsor.
Speaker: And over time, chairs which were made in Wales or in the north of England all became known because of the distinctive look of these chairs.
Speaker: They all became known as Windsor chairs.
Speaker: Now, what's interesting about this chair is
Speaker: is it's made by Gillows.
Speaker: They're a fascinating company.
Speaker: When I started to look into them, they were a company that started around 1730.
Speaker: What we have found out since doing some research on these is that Gillows, because they were such an entrepreneurial type of company, when you're sending ships to the Caribbean to buy wood, you don't want to send an empty ship to the Caribbean.
Speaker: You're sending things to me.
Speaker: in that ship, unloading and then bringing the wood back.
Speaker: What Gillows did was they shipped furniture.
Speaker: They were a major supplier to South America and North America through the Caribbean.
Speaker: Gillows used their bases in the Caribbean, mainly in, I believe, in Jamaica.
Speaker: And there are invoices in their records showing that they sent a lot of Windsor chairs to the Caribbean.
Speaker: Now, when they sent those rather sensibly, they didn't send them as chairs.
Speaker: They sent them in component pieces.
Speaker: They had the pieces turned.
Speaker: They didn't paint them because if you painted it, it would get chipped.
Speaker: They sent them down and the furniture was like the old IKEA then, I suppose.
Speaker: They were sent down and they were assembled in the Caribbean.
Speaker: And then they used agents in South America and the southern states to sell the furniture on.
Speaker: What I find interesting is that when these would have been painted, either they would have been stained or they would have been painted in green or some other color, red, white.
Speaker: And one must assume that plenty of these can be found somewhere in America.
Speaker: They haven't been, because I don't think people know that these chairs are here, and they must be assumed.
Speaker: Because of their rather odd shape as well, they may well be assumed to be American
Speaker: American made American made interesting particularly if they are painted because You know people wouldn't necessarily look at the woods.
Speaker: They look at the paint It was the idea of 1790s and it was also a normal piece of furniture It was just and would people have kept these probably not
Speaker: You know, they may have been handed down, but they weren't of any, they weren't a great cabinet, they weren't a great chest of drawers, dining table.
Speaker: It was an ordinary country piece of furniture.
Speaker: You know, a middle class piece of furniture is not an important piece of furniture, but it has a fascinating history and it is so distinctive.
Speaker: The second episode of Curious Objects, we entitled Expert in Everything.
Speaker: Now, that may sound like an ambitious moniker, but it may be the only accurate way to describe the guest for this episode, Stuart Feld, the president of Herschel & Adler, the New York-based firm.
Speaker: We spoke about an early 19th century Boston linen press,
Speaker: But Stuart and his firm handle a huge range of material from furniture to paintings to silver to sculpture from the early 19th century well into the 20th century.
Speaker: So this is just one little peek into Stuart Feld's world.
Speaker: Tell me a little bit about this object.
Speaker: We're sitting in front of it right now, and it's, I have to say, a very imposing, almost regal sort of a piece.
Speaker: Can you give a physical description for our listeners?
Speaker: It is a linen press.
Speaker: It was used to store perhaps household linens, perhaps actually clothes.
Speaker: Clothes were oftentimes folded and put into a linen press rather than hung up in a closet.
Speaker: do today.
Speaker: The piece is made entirely of mahogany and parts of it are quite simple but it has a very, very elaborate entablature with typical Boston carvings of anthemia and lotus leaves and scrolls.
Speaker: All of these elements appear and reappear on Boston neoclassical furniture.
Speaker: Unlike much furniture made in New York, which often has lots of Ormolu and other decoration, much Boston furniture simply relies upon a beautiful selection of woods, a very careful selection of woods for its principal aesthetic design.
Speaker: Motive.
Speaker: Motif.
Speaker: Here you can see in the doors matched pairs of mahogany veneers and the same thing up above and down below.
Speaker: And it represents, this piece represents one of the couple of most beautiful, most important, best Boston neoclassical pieces of case furniture.
Speaker: The doors on the top open to a series of slides, and then there are two small drawers over two long drawers in the base below.
Speaker: And the corners here are defined by columns.
Speaker: And there are columns both above and below, really colonnettes.
Speaker: And the piece retains its original turned mahogany knobs,
Speaker: And I mention those because that is very, very typical of a Boston aesthetic of this period.
Speaker: For years, pieces that came down to us with their original wooden knobs had the knobs taken off and shiny brass knobs were put on to tart up the piece a bit.
Speaker: This piece retains its original knobs, and to the extent that we've ever acquired a piece that had its knobs removed, we tend to find a set of old knobs or have a set made in order to restore it to its original appearance.
Speaker: Happily, that wasn't necessary in this piece.
Speaker: How many comparable pieces would you say there are in the world?
Speaker: Linen presses from Boston in the 1820s.
Speaker: Is this a singularity?
Speaker: Are there a handful of...
Speaker: There are certainly other linen presses and armoires, but I think it's generally acknowledged that this is one of the two finest ones.
Speaker: The other one is in a New York private collection.
Speaker: It was made for David Sears, who lived in a very grand house designed by Alexander Paris on Beacon Street, on Beacon Hill.
Speaker: And that is in the other Boston taste.
Speaker: and is very richly ornamented with many pieces of many Ormolu mounts.
Speaker: So what separates this piece from other pieces made in Boston at the time?
Speaker: What are the unique characteristics?
Speaker: The combination of the form, the monumental scale, the extraordinary selection of woods, all of these add up to what we call quality, and they all come together in a piece that thus deserves the name of Masterpiece.
Speaker: Masterpiece
Speaker: By the third episode, I started to feel that I might actually have a little bit of an idea of what I was doing.
Speaker: My guest I was very excited about was Catherine Purcell of the London firm Wortski.
Speaker: And you can imagine my crushing disappointment when after our interview, I discovered that there were crippling sound quality problems with the recording.
Speaker: Not to be deterred, when Catherine was next in New York, we sat down in person where nothing could possibly go wrong.
Speaker: I had gotten a new set of microphones.
Speaker: I hope you'll appreciate the improvement in sound quality.
Speaker: And I'll tell you what I've often said about Catherine, which is that I would happily listen to her reading the Yellow Pages.
Speaker: But as it happens, she is also one of the world's top experts in French Art Nouveau jewelry.
Speaker: So here is Catherine Purcell speaking about one of the most wonderful pieces of Renée Lalique jewelry that I've ever seen.
Speaker: It takes the form of a pendant on a long chain.
Speaker: The pendant itself is centred with a female bust portrait of a young woman.
Speaker: Most striking is the fact that she is enveloped in branches, supporting pine cones and needles.
Speaker: The pendant is suspended with three pearls, and the chain work echoes the motifs, also bearing pine cones and needles interspersed with pearls.
Speaker: The piece doesn't have a single gemstone in it.
Speaker: It is entirely decorated with enamel in terms of the female portrait.
Speaker: The enamel is principally in dusky shades of blue to grey and her hair is very dark, almost black in colour and the pine
Speaker: The tones themselves are of enamel, which has been etched to give them volume.
Speaker: The branches so envelop her as to almost reveal her face amidst the branches.
Speaker: She's actually clasping one of the branches in her hand.
Speaker: So that is the first appearance of the piece, if you like.
Speaker: Who is the woman?
Speaker: Well, that is the key question, because I've
Speaker: discovered that the woman in question was actually his muse.
Speaker: Her name was Augustine Alice Ledru.
Speaker: At the base of the pendant, the actual little cut-out form from which the centre pearl is suspended is actually a cut-out heart.
Speaker: And I'd actually never seen this feature in a duel by René Lalique before.
Speaker: It led me to think that there must be some kind of romantic association.
Speaker: between him and the sitter, if you like.
Speaker: And I started to read further accounts of female figures in his jewels and it turned out that Augustine Alice did feature in a number of his works of that period.
Speaker: They met in her father's studio because
Speaker: Her father was actually the bronze foundry maker to René Lalique's bronze works.
Speaker: And at the time that this particular pendant was carried out, they had not yet married.
Speaker: They actually met in 1890, but married in 1902.
Speaker: So this is an incredibly personal jewel, and it's by no means incidental.
Speaker: that the motifs in the jewel are actually fir cones and pearls, because pine cones in the language of botany stands for eternity.
Speaker: And the pearl, because Venus was born from a pearl, symbolizes love.
Speaker: So you already have eternal love in this jewel, the heart notwithstanding.
Speaker: Rather charmingly, as you turn the jewel over, you actually find a mirror image of
Speaker: jewel in chased and engraved form which is very typical of René Lalique's attention to detail, the ability and in fact the priority he gives to all aspects of his jewels whether for example making a piece from pliquage au renault but actually designing it as a choker so only the wearer would know
Speaker: that it carries this great sophistication of plicage enamel, which is immediately lost when you wear it right against the skin.
Speaker: So in the same way, only the wearer would have known that the jewel was so elaborately finished on the reverse.
Speaker: Up to this point, all of my interviews had been with antique dealers, and I was interested in broadening the scope of the podcast.
Speaker: Now, I had noticed an article in the magazine Antiques from a little while back that had really fascinated me about a man in Louisiana named Wade Leger.
Speaker: Wade is a do-it-yourself collector, restorer, a man who's concerned not with making money off of the antiques business, but with surrounding himself with objects that are full of importance and beauty and significance to him.
Speaker: For this episode, the quote-unquote curious object was Wade's entire house.
Speaker: It's basically three rooms across the front.
Speaker: The house is 52 feet wide approximately.
Speaker: Three equal-sized rooms, and then behind those three rooms are three additional rooms.
Speaker: And then you have basically a porch that spans the distance in front of the house.
Speaker: But then there's also a porch in the back of the house.
Speaker: And these porches all fall under the same hip roof.
Speaker: And there are no extensions.
Speaker: But on the rear porch, you have a room on each end of the porch or gallery.
Speaker: And those are called cabinets.
Speaker: And they're just small rooms.
Speaker: Today, we use these cabinet rooms as bathrooms.
Speaker: Well, when the house was built, not to say they weren't used as a bathroom, there could have been, you know, chambers and commodes in there, but typically there was a place away from the house for those uses.
Speaker: So these cabinet rooms, I believe, were just, you know, originally maybe storage rooms,
Speaker: This is a house that is actually not in its original location anymore, is that correct?
Speaker: Not at all, no.
Speaker: The house was built closer to New Orleans, and it was a river road house, meaning it was built along the Mississippi River and by a family who made money forming sugar cane.
Speaker: You know, it was originally raised...
Speaker: seven eight feet off the ground for reasons of flood control issues you know back in the 19th century there was no levee so I know flood control whatsoever so in the nineteen I guess thirties the core of engineers decided to increase the size of the levees in that part of the world and they began
Speaker: moving some of these houses and that was the case with this house and the original footprint of this house is actually underwater inside the levee.
Speaker: Do you know the family who built it?
Speaker: I have a photograph dated 1891
Speaker: I believe.
Speaker: And it is a photograph of the family members.
Speaker: And oddly enough, they're standing at the Mississippi and the Mississippi has floating ice in it.
Speaker: Evidently, there was a strong freeze that year.
Speaker: And these family members looks like some brothers and sisters or maybe a man and his wife.
Speaker: They almost look stranded.
Speaker: But as I'm understanding, they're standing, you know, on there at the Mississippi on their property.
Speaker: The house is pretty cool in the fact that the original plaster was still on the walls in the house.
Speaker: Now, this plaster was covered over with board and it was, I guess, sheetrock applied to these boards.
Speaker: And it was in terrible condition.
Speaker: I mean, you can imagine these boards being nailed to plaster and being moved.
Speaker: When the Corps moved it, it was moved, could have been moved by animals, mules, or horses.
Speaker: It's not always, they weren't always moved by machinery.
Speaker: And how do you restore that?
Speaker: You have a decision to make.
Speaker: You can live with it as it is.
Speaker: You can attempt to skim coat over it, which would essentially remove all the color.
Speaker: Or you could take it down and start from scratch.
Speaker: And I chose to take it down and start from scratch.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: Anyways, I was lucky to have enough people to help.
Speaker: And we took this broken plaster down and I kept many samples, obviously.
Speaker: And my hope, I actually did one room in the yellow.
Speaker: And that room was published in the magazine.
Speaker: And it came out great.
Speaker: And you've actually learned quite a bit about 19th century construction methods, right?
Speaker: Oh, you know, suddenly, you know, I was in that reality is what it was.
Speaker: It wasn't anything else.
Speaker: I didn't think about what I was going to do necessarily.
Speaker: I just saw an opportunity to buy the house.
Speaker: And then when I was able to make the deal to move it, I already had the land.
Speaker: I thought, you know, here's my chance if I want it.
Speaker: I thought, well, you know, this is pretty cool.
Speaker: Never wondered about the history of tea in China and Japan, or what was revealed in never-before-seen photographs of a Russian empress in exile?
Speaker: Freeman's, America's oldest auction house, tells the stories of these and other curious objects.
Speaker: Discover how Thomas Aiken's painting, The Gross Clinic, stayed in Philadelphia.
Speaker: The science behind colored diamonds.
Speaker: and much more on their website, freemansauction.com.
Speaker: From modern masters to French furniture, Freemans takes you behind the scenes at auctions and exhibitions, delivering the latest in art market news, events, and stories.
Speaker: Subscribe to their bi-weekly magazine and get it sent straight to your inbox.
Speaker: Visit Freemans at freemansauction.com to learn more.
Speaker: What are you doing the weekend of November 9th through 11th?
Speaker: Here's an idea.
Speaker: Come see me at the Delaware Antiques Show presented by Winterthur.
Speaker: This will be their 55th annual show and this year it will include 62 dealers in American Antiques and Decorative Arts.
Speaker: The firm where I work, ShrubSoul, is exhibiting there as we have for many years.
Speaker: It's one of the highlights of the year in the antiques world and I am excited to be going back.
Speaker: There is a who's who opening night party and lectures by designer Charlotte Moss and by some current fellows at the Winterthur graduate program.
Speaker: Delaware Antique Show details and tickets are available at winterthur.org or even by calling them.
Speaker: So quick, grab your pen.
Speaker: The number is 800-448-3883.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: By now I was starting to feel really enthusiastic about the podcast and about the kinds of stories that could be told through it.
Speaker: And so I decided to branch out even farther.
Speaker: And for this episode, I actually went to Chicago to talk with a man who handles a different kind of antiques.
Speaker: These are collectibles, but they're also functional.
Speaker: In fact, they're serious workhorses.
Speaker: I'm talking about violins.
Speaker: This is Paul Becker of Carl Becker and Son.
Speaker: This is Amadi.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: It's a violin that's made in 1620.
Speaker: 1620.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He was the son of Andre Amadi, who was the grandfather of violins.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because the modern violin really was just coming into being around this time, right?
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: So these are the earliest examples of the modern violin.
Speaker: This instrument's made by Antonio and Hieronymus, which are the sons of Andre.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And Andre is the one you're referring to as the grandfather of the violin.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: He worked in Brescia and was thought to work for Gaspar de Salo.
Speaker: He made the first violin-sized instruments.
Speaker: Before that, he was making their violas.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: Violas are actually before violins.
Speaker: And when you say viola, are you talking about a viola da gamba or what kind of instrument are you describing?
Speaker: Yes, a lute is one, which our name comes from, luthiers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I never put that together.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So a lute is the predecessor to the viola, if you will.
Speaker: And from there came the violin by Andre Almaty.
Speaker: And then...
Speaker: came his two sons, Antonio and Hieronymus, who made these instruments.
Speaker: The one I hold in my hand is one that traveled to Russia and was played there for most of its life.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yup.
Speaker: It has a great deal of its originality.
Speaker: It's original in all its parts.
Speaker: Does that include the neck?
Speaker: The neck is replaced because it was a Baroque style neck.
Speaker: Right, which are short.
Speaker: So they're shorter and a steeper angle and as a result it had a different projection to its sound.
Speaker: Ah, right.
Speaker: And they call that a modern setup which is basically something that started in 1780.
Speaker: was the modern violin.
Speaker: Modern being a relative term.
Speaker: Yeah, so this was a Baroque setup though.
Speaker: It had traveled to Russia and was involved, very interestingly, in a stagecoach accident where it had run over the case and put a series of about... The stagecoach ran over the violin case.
Speaker: The violin case and broke the instrument into smithereens on the lower end.
Speaker: Oh no.
Speaker: And so it went through a huge restoration job.
Speaker: And what are we talking about here?
Speaker: I can show there's a whole series that ran across right here.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And so it has a series on the top that matched the back.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: and uh otherwise it survived quite well okay it has this like track of cracks from a stagecoach you know it's funny i mean we we sometimes have um
Speaker: In the silver trade, of course, you see damaged pieces all the time that have been repaired, and usually that detracts from the value.
Speaker: But sometimes if the damage has a story behind it, like the tankard that had a hole shot through it by a musket ball during the Revolutionary War, that actually can add value to the piece.
Speaker: I don't know in this case.
Speaker: It doesn't add value, but it has a neat story.
Speaker: I don't have any other instruments that were run over by a stagecoach.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: This is the only one?
Speaker: The only one I know of.
Speaker: So it's great.
Speaker: I love saying it.
Speaker: And the instrument's gone through a tremendous restoration.
Speaker: So the restoration was done skillfully, I assume.
Speaker: And it was done in Russia at the time.
Speaker: And how long ago was that done, do you think?
Speaker: That was done, I believe, in the late 1800s.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: I mean, it looks like an old piece of furniture, like a really excellent piece of 17th century furniture.
Speaker: The patina, the color, it's wonderful just as a visual object.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, it's got a tremendous amount of original varnish and the finish has really survived.
Speaker: No Antiques podcast would be complete without a conversation with Judy Livingston Loto, the executive director of the Antique Dealers Association of America.
Speaker: She is also a dealer in her own right in books about antiques.
Speaker: She is kind of a meta dealer, not to mention being the development director for the Portsmouth Historical Society.
Speaker: Judy is one of the most effective antiques evangelists that I know, and we talked about an object that has some personal significance for her.
Speaker: One of the advantages to spending a lot of time with a lot of antique dealers is you get to see a lot of wonderful things.
Speaker: And one day, it was a Hartford, Connecticut spring antique show.
Speaker: I was chatting with a friend of mine, Brian Cullody, who a well-known dealer and a former museum curator in his own right,
Speaker: about an object that he had in his booth.
Speaker: And it was a powder horn, a flattened powder horn.
Speaker: And I've always admired powder horns.
Speaker: I think that their decoration is wonderful, their purpose.
Speaker: So what were they used for and what does one look like?
Speaker: So they were used for storing black powder for, well, for weaponry.
Speaker: I mean, if you're looking, it was, this was
Speaker: prior to modern firearms.
Speaker: So you would have had to pack a charge, pack powder in, pack shot in before firing a weapon, firing a gun.
Speaker: So this was an effective way to keep your powder dry.
Speaker: And it used a sheep's horn or a ram's horn.
Speaker: These horns are hollow on the inside and waterproof.
Speaker: They're made of keratin, I believe.
Speaker: So it's not ivory.
Speaker: It's not bone.
Speaker: You can heat it.
Speaker: You can shape it.
Speaker: It's kind of like fingernails.
Speaker: And you can decorate it.
Speaker: And you can decorate it, exactly.
Speaker: So the one that he had that I admired so much, I loved it because I thought the decorations were very different than anything I had seen.
Speaker: It's got chamfered edges, and it's got a date, 1816.
Speaker: But there are wonderful designs on it.
Speaker: There's actually a paddle boat with an American flag,
Speaker: carved into the top.
Speaker: There is a wonderful gambrel roofed house with two chimneys.
Speaker: And it wasn't, I think what drew me to this was the engraving on this is not rote engraving.
Speaker: It's not something that's, everything looks the same.
Speaker: This house is a pretty specific house.
Speaker: The chimneys are two different sizes.
Speaker: They
Speaker: It shows where the chimneys go down in that sort of attic section and how one of them goes sort of around a window.
Speaker: There's two L's off the house.
Speaker: There are little Windsor chairs that are engraved into each of the L's and in the second floor as well.
Speaker: There's just the- So it's a very personal piece.
Speaker: It is, yep.
Speaker: And it's even signed.
Speaker: It says the property of Charles White.
Speaker: Charles White?
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And do you have any idea who Charles White was?
Speaker: Well, so yeah, I've done a little poking around and I haven't gotten anything definitive.
Speaker: But it's an ongoing, it's an ongoing search, which, of course, is one of the things that I love about the object, because it doesn't have all of the answers, it leaves some room for some room for question and research and trying to figure out the mystery.
Speaker: And so this was, as you said, this was one of the first antiques that you came into possession of by your own effort.
Speaker: Why was this the first?
Speaker: Well, so that's a great question.
Speaker: I loved the date.
Speaker: I loved the name on this.
Speaker: I loved the mystery to be solved.
Speaker: And at the end of the day, it was small enough to,
Speaker: to be part of my home and be enjoyed all of the time, but without being run over by all of the activity in my home.
Speaker: In a way, it's like my opportunity to hold in my own hands a teeny little piece of history that affected the lives of people before me and helps remind me that as I go forward, perhaps there's something in my life that will interest someone else 100 years from now.
Speaker: It sounds ridiculous to think that a powder horn or a silver spoon or a piece of furniture can help build that understanding.
Speaker: But it's like I really firmly believe that it can.
Speaker: Okay, the stereotype of an antique dealer.
Speaker: Small mom-and-pop shop, family business, let's face it, older, straight white man.
Speaker: Well, my next interview was going to be an exception to many of those rules.
Speaker: Levi Higgs, the archivist and social media manager at the great New York jewelry firm David Webb, Levi introduced us to, shall we say, a sexier side of the antiques world.
Speaker: To be fair, this piece isn't even actually an antique.
Speaker: Tell me about this piece and describe it for our listeners.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the David Webb zebra bracelet.
Speaker: It's our most iconic animal bracelet.
Speaker: So it came out of the workshop in 1963.
Speaker: That's when it was originally designed and that's when it
Speaker: came to fruition as well.
Speaker: So he had been working for 15 years or so at that point?
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And, you know, through the 50s, we see a lot of really sort of not surprising jewelry that fits in with a lot of other jewelry at that time, the sort of gold and diamond ladies who lunch jewelry.
Speaker: That's what I always call it.
Speaker: Maybe that's not the best way to call it, but that's what I call it.
Speaker: I mean, I'm thinking Mad Men, right?
Speaker: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker: So I'm interested in this, the role and the importance of animals in David Webb jewelry design.
Speaker: Because as far as David Webb jewelry is, to the extent that it's recognized in the world, I think animals are really the iconic form.
Speaker: And this also, in my mind, this comes back to this idea of what
Speaker: distinguished David Webb as a designer from a lot of his contemporaries.
Speaker: So we're talking about this zebra bracelet, but there are a lot of other animals that he used as inspiration too.
Speaker: So why animals?
Speaker: What drew David Webb to animals?
Speaker: It's a good question.
Speaker: In our archive, we have a whole shelf of reference books and sort of inspirational material that David Webb had.
Speaker: when he passed away it was part of the company's records.
Speaker: So whenever we're giving tours we always talk about this is David Webb's reference library and in the reference library is this great book called The Big Book of Wild Animals and it was published in 1954 and has these amazing illustrations.
Speaker: It's a super iconic book from the 50s.
Speaker: Obviously it wasn't a children's book that David Webb had when he was a child.
Speaker: It was an adult man when he had this book but he's looking at it and there's a
Speaker: tremendously great page of zebras and giraffes running together in the savannah.
Speaker: And, you know, a lot of his animals are sort of African mammals, like big jungle cats and the giraffes and the zebras and elephants.
Speaker: And it's interesting, I mean, the, you know, he was
Speaker: living and working very close, not just to the Natural History Museum in New York, but also to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: And we've heard it told that he went there once a week and was constantly looking at things and inspired.
Speaker: So this, in fact, has been worn by, or I should say zebra bracelets by David Webb have been worn by some pretty exciting people.
Speaker: So some of our favorites to talk about, of course, you know, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, Doris Duke.
Speaker: I mean,
Speaker: pretty much any prominent name in the 20th century.
Speaker: One that I always like to talk about and share is Diana Vreeland.
Speaker: She was gifted one in the 60s, right when she went to Vogue in 1963.
Speaker: And we have this amazing cover of Vogue that came out in 1964.
Speaker: It has an Irving Penn photograph as the cover.
Speaker: And there's a woman holding her hand sort of to her face.
Speaker: She's got a zebra ring on her.
Speaker: that goes perfectly in line with this bracelet.
Speaker: She's got black and white eyeshadow on and the typography on the word Vogue is black and white.
Speaker: So it's just Zoom, this moment of everything coming together, the typography and this cultural moment of the black and white graphic pattern, everything.
Speaker: It's probably our most popular animal design that we've produced over the years.
Speaker: The first person I ever worked for in the antiques world before I made my way into antique silver and jewelry was actually a map stealer, Kevin Brown of Geographic's Rare Antique Maps.
Speaker: Kevin has an impressively wide-ranging inventory, and he suggested that we talk about this fabulous early 19th century Chinese map, which is less of a map of geography and more of a map of politics and economics.
Speaker: It's about 55 by 98 inches.
Speaker: This is an expansive map.
Speaker: It was issued in 1811 in China.
Speaker: It's meant to cover an entire wall or as it may have appeared in China on a screen.
Speaker: It is often called printed in negative, although that is not precisely true.
Speaker: It's not a printing.
Speaker: It's a rubbing, which is a Chinese process, very traditional.
Speaker: Large pieces of cloth in strips will be laid down on a stone block and it'd be wetted.
Speaker: And then
Speaker: the inks would be applied with a pounding ink block and that yielded the the intense blue.
Speaker: And in fact, the white areas are not printed areas, rather they are lack of printing.
Speaker: And so that gives it the intense physical and visual appearance that it has.
Speaker: So the white areas would have been carved out of the base stone.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: So that the ink would not have shown up on those spots.
Speaker: That's exactly right.
Speaker: But the map is a striking, resonant, deep blue.
Speaker: And the seas around it are a lighter, almost iridescent blue.
Speaker: The color was very, very significant in Chinese art.
Speaker: not only social and political thinking, but also kind of mystical thinking.
Speaker: Was blue an important color for the Qing Dynasty more generally?
Speaker: So in traditional Chinese iconography, blue references immortality, underscoring the everlasting nature of the Qing Empire, which is in fact part of the title of the map in translation.
Speaker: Oh, I didn't realize it had a title.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: The translation of the title would be All Under Heaven, Complete Map of the Everlasting.
Speaker: Unified Qing Empire.
Speaker: Oh, is that all?
Speaker: That's quite an ambitious headline.
Speaker: Yes, well, it was made for the emperor.
Speaker: And of course, the mapmaker would have wanted the emperor to be impressed with the map.
Speaker: And all of the geographical features and annotations, they appear in white.
Speaker: So it is extremely vibrant and striking to observe.
Speaker: But the overwhelming feature over the surface of the map is actually Chinese characters.
Speaker: Well, yes, and symbols.
Speaker: This was an administrative map, if it could be called anything.
Speaker: And so as such, if it was made for the emperor, and if you were the emperor, you would look at this map and by looking at it, you would understand the tax and tribute system throughout your entire empire.
Speaker: So it's not printed or designed on a scale of distance.
Speaker: It's designed on a scale of significance to the Qing emperor.
Speaker: So tell me a bit about the representations of lands outside of China, because we have the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers running across really the majority of the map.
Speaker: And then all of what appears to be Africa and Europe condense into a very small, almost a margin on the left side.
Speaker: Is it clear or is it delineated exactly what regions of the rest of the world are represented?
Speaker: Somewhat.
Speaker: The map includes definitely England, includes Holland, includes Southeast Asia and Africa.
Speaker: There's a possibility that it also includes Portugal, but some of the terminology is obvious.
Speaker: So the map uses extremely Chinese, if you will, terminology to describe various places.
Speaker: Holland is the land of red beards and Portugal is the land of the Great Western Sea.
Speaker: Italy is possibly on it.
Speaker: The Atlantic itself is the Great Western Sea.
Speaker: Arabia appears on the map as the homeland of Islam.
Speaker: What use was that really?
Speaker: What good was it to have a map that showed the world not as it exists physically, but as it exists from a kind of egocentric perspective?
Speaker: Well, you have to start with the basic understanding that the Qing were a nomadic warrior people.
Speaker: They were the Manchus from North China.
Speaker: Correct, yes.
Speaker: So they did not see themselves bound or limited by...
Speaker: physical barriers or distances in the way that a European king may have considered their empire.
Speaker: So the Qing really didn't care how far it extended or how big it was.
Speaker: They cared that it was big, but it was more about the tributes that came in.
Speaker: So some symbols might represent a major city.
Speaker: Others might represent a regional sub-magistrate.
Speaker: So when the emperor looked at this, what he saw is he saw his tax
Speaker: He's like, oh, I'm receiving a certain level of tax from this regional magistrate in Guangzhou province.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: And so he was able to see the extent of his empire.
Speaker: He was able to see where the money was coming from, where it wasn't coming from.
Speaker: He perhaps might...
Speaker: say, well, I think we can get more money out of this area over here, send out the armies, or more likely, send out a million Han settlers to repopulate this region and develop it so that I will have more income from the region.
Speaker: And in fact, potentially one of the reasons that this map was made in 1811 was because of a massive
Speaker: resettlement of Han Chinese farther to the West that redistributed the wealth of the empire.
Speaker: And that brings us just about up to the present.
Speaker: This most recent episode was recorded up in Newport, Rhode Island, which as many of you know, was the summer home to New York's elite ranks of society during the Gilded Age.
Speaker: I went up there to speak with Trudy Cox, the CEO of the Preservation Society of Newport County, as well as with a couple of their curators.
Speaker: You'll hear Ashley Householder in this clip.
Speaker: Instead of talking about one particular object, for this episode, we were really talking about a whole city and a whole culture and society.
Speaker: Who were some of the most prominent families?
Speaker: Well, certainly the Vanderbilt family and several branches of the Vanderbilt family who built
Speaker: the Elms and Marble House and Rough Point.
Speaker: You had the Berwyn family Philadelphians who ended up building the Elms.
Speaker: There was the Wetmore family that had been around for a good period of time, settled here in the 1850s and 60s, and then held on to the house that they built, Chateau-sur-Mer, for another 100 plus years, imagine.
Speaker: So names like that.
Speaker: They were hiring the best architects in the world.
Speaker: and they were building the biggest summer cottages.
Speaker: Remember, they were only here for six to eight weeks every year, but they were building the biggest and the best, and they were trying to make the statement that this was the place to be.
Speaker: And frankly, it still is the place to be.
Speaker: And what happened during the Civil War?
Speaker: Well, what happened during the Civil War, it depends on where you were in this country.
Speaker: If you were a middle- to upper-class southerner,
Speaker: It was not unusual for you and your family to head to Europe, primarily Paris, and this is how Alva Vanderbilt got her start.
Speaker: Her family escaped to Europe, to Paris, and there as a young girl she learned everything French.
Speaker: She learned about French architecture, she learned the language, she learned the art, and when she and her family came back to the United States after the Civil War, in her mind was a French aesthetic.
Speaker: And so when she married William Vanderbilt, and he gave her that magnificent gift of building a house for her 39th birthday, she hired Richard Morris Hunt, and together they decided that they would model the house, marble house, after the Petit Triennant at Versailles.
Speaker: So many people from the South were heading to Europe and gaining their
Speaker: taste to bring it back to the United States.
Speaker: But can you tell me a little bit about, just sort of broadly speaking, what kind of objects did these families fill their homes with?
Speaker: So certainly the best of the best.
Speaker: The Wetmore's certainly were world-class travelers and took an extended trip to Europe for a number of years.
Speaker: And they were great collectors, so they were buying the best that Europe had to offer in terms of porcelains and glassware.
Speaker: There's a Leon Marcotte suite of furniture at Chateau that we're very proud of.
Speaker: So was there any thought to the fact that Newport was in fact this crucible of early American craftsmanship where some of the great early American decorative arts originated or did that enter into anyone's thinking?
Speaker: I think during the Gilded Age, it was a different aesthetic.
Speaker: They were building these enormous, gorgeous palaces, again, to emulate what was happening in Europe.
Speaker: So I do feel like at the time that the Vanderbilts and the Berwins were setting up shop, they were more interested in European decorative arts.
Speaker: Because that was an indication of class and style and sophistication.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I want to talk a little bit about the social...
Speaker: environment or the social and socioeconomic dynamic that was happening at this time.
Speaker: Because the Gilded Age was a period of civil unrest and strife, and there were riots in New York and elsewhere.
Speaker: There were, of course, labor disputes leading to violent confrontations around the country.
Speaker: Was Newport a refuge for the elite from that kind of difficulty, or did some of that seep in through the cracks here as well?
Speaker: It was absolutely a refuge, except for the fact that Mr. Berwind did face a strike by his staff at the Elms, where they all walked out on him because they were unhappy with the working conditions.
Speaker: Because imagine Newport during the height of summer, there was a lot of entertaining.
Speaker: It must have been an exhausting period of time for those who were partaking, but also for those who were the workers.
Speaker: But in general, this was a place where you could get away from the world weary world and enjoy yourself.
Speaker: And that's how they were living their lives.
Speaker: That strike at the Elms didn't last for very long.
Speaker: He just brought in a whole new team of people and kept going on.
Speaker: Yeah, that was easy, huh?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: you
Speaker: And that, in brief, is a year of curious objects.
Speaker: Thanks again for all your support and your attention.
Speaker: Once again, images of the objects are at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: And you can reach me at podcast at themagazineantiques.com or on Instagram at Objective Interest.
Speaker: We've got a great episode coming up next, so be sure to stay tuned.
Speaker: This episode was produced and edited by Sammy Delati with guest editing by Killian Finnerty.
Speaker: Miller.
