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One Year in the Books
17 Plays7 years ago
Happy birthday, Curious Objects! In this special anniversary episode, we take a look back at the work we’ve done these last twelve months.
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Transcript
Podcast Anniversary and Growth
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome back to a special episode of Curious Objects.
00:00:14
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.
00:00:20
Speaker
And we are celebrating right now because we have arrived at the first anniversary of the podcast.
00:00:25
Speaker
We've decided to treat this as an occasion for a little retrospection.
00:00:29
Speaker
This is, after all, a podcast about antiques.
00:00:32
Speaker
And to give you a compilation of some of the more interesting moments from the last year of Curious Objects.
00:00:37
Speaker
It's been fun for me to listen back through and hear the progression, starting with the technology.
00:00:42
Speaker
The audio quality was pretty rough at the beginning.
00:00:45
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.
Audience Engagement and Support
00:00:57
Speaker
Here's a free tip about learning about antiques.
00:01:00
Speaker
Revisit what you already know.
00:01:03
Speaker
The 10th or 100th time you look at an object may be the time that you make a new discovery about it.
00:01:08
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.
00:01:23
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.
00:01:34
Speaker
Listeners, make their support worthwhile.
00:01:37
Speaker
There's a reason I'm not advertising mattresses and razors.
00:01:40
Speaker
I really believe in what our advertisers are doing.
00:01:43
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.
00:01:53
Speaker
I love hearing from you.
00:01:54
Speaker
And pictures of the objects that we're talking about are always available at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:02:02
Speaker
One year down and we are just getting started.
00:02:05
Speaker
I will repeat my plea like a broken record.
00:02:07
Speaker
Rate us on Apple Podcasts or whatever app you're using to listen and leave a review.
00:02:12
Speaker
It's the simplest, most effective way to help us get the word out.
Antiques Show and Auction Insights
00:02:23
Speaker
Ever wondered about the history of the Madonna and Child in fine art?
00:02:27
Speaker
Or about the macabre illustrator that inspired Tim Burton and Lemony Snicket?
00:02:31
Speaker
Freeman's, America's oldest auction house, tells the stories of these and other curious objects.
00:02:36
Speaker
Discover Pennsylvania's craft legacy, go behind the scenes at auctions and exhibitions, and uncover your passion for collecting.
00:02:42
Speaker
Head to freemansauction.com to sign up for their newsletter and get these stories and more delivered straight to your inbox.
00:02:49
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.
00:03:06
Speaker
Delaware Antiques Show details and tickets are available at wintertour.org.
Windsor Chairs Journey
00:03:13
Speaker
Now we're going to run through these in chronological order, starting with Michael Pashby.
00:03:17
Speaker
This was the first interview I ever did for Curious Objects.
00:03:20
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.
00:03:30
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.
00:03:36
Speaker
Now, when we sat down to try to decide what object to talk about in this pilot episode,
00:03:42
Speaker
I thought, what better place to start than with arguably the most fundamental object in the decorative arts world, the chair.
00:03:50
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?
00:03:58
Speaker
Well, it's what one would normally understand as a Windsor chair.
00:04:01
Speaker
It's got four legs, obviously, but these are particularly well-splayed legs, so it gives it stability.
00:04:08
Speaker
It has spindles to the back, a hooped back, a curved arm,
00:04:14
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.
00:04:27
Speaker
And all of the legs have got very, very fine turning to them.
00:04:32
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.
00:04:42
Speaker
And the seat is, interestingly, is of sycamore, which would indicate that the chair actually had been painted at some stage.
00:04:50
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.
00:04:59
Speaker
So it's a standard Windsor chair.
00:05:01
Speaker
Windsor chair is a very interesting thing because most of them are not from Windsor.
00:05:05
Speaker
This type of chair was made in the area of the Thames Valley.
00:05:09
Speaker
The market town of the Thames Valley was Windsor.
00:05:12
Speaker
And chairs were moved to other parts of the country through the market town.
00:05:18
Speaker
And because it was on the Thames, they could be shipped to any part of London or elsewhere in the country.
00:05:24
Speaker
So the name Windsor actually relates to their commercial distribution rather than the actual point of origin.
00:05:29
Speaker
And I think people at the time said, oh, the chair's from Windsor.
00:05:32
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.
00:05:42
Speaker
They all became known as Windsor chairs.
00:05:44
Speaker
Now, what's interesting about this chair is
00:05:46
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is it's made by Gillows.
00:05:48
Speaker
They're a fascinating company.
00:05:49
Speaker
When I started to look into them, they were a company that started around 1730.
00:05:54
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.
00:06:08
Speaker
You're sending things to me.
00:06:09
Speaker
in that ship, unloading and then bringing the wood back.
00:06:12
Speaker
What Gillows did was they shipped furniture.
00:06:14
Speaker
They were a major supplier to South America and North America through the Caribbean.
00:06:20
Speaker
Gillows used their bases in the Caribbean, mainly in, I believe, in Jamaica.
00:06:25
Speaker
And there are invoices in their records showing that they sent a lot of Windsor chairs to the Caribbean.
00:06:33
Speaker
Now, when they sent those rather sensibly, they didn't send them as chairs.
00:06:38
Speaker
They sent them in component pieces.
00:06:40
Speaker
They had the pieces turned.
00:06:41
Speaker
They didn't paint them because if you painted it, it would get chipped.
00:06:45
Speaker
They sent them down and the furniture was like the old IKEA then, I suppose.
00:06:49
Speaker
They were sent down and they were assembled in the Caribbean.
00:06:52
Speaker
And then they used agents in South America and the southern states to sell the furniture on.
00:06:58
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.
00:07:09
Speaker
And one must assume that plenty of these can be found somewhere in America.
00:07:14
Speaker
They haven't been, because I don't think people know that these chairs are here, and they must be assumed.
00:07:20
Speaker
Because of their rather odd shape as well, they may well be assumed to be American
00:07:25
Speaker
American made American made interesting particularly if they are painted because You know people wouldn't necessarily look at the woods.
00:07:33
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
00:07:41
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.
00:07:49
Speaker
It was an ordinary country piece of furniture.
00:07:51
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.
Boston Furniture and Craftsmanship
00:08:02
Speaker
The second episode of Curious Objects, we entitled Expert in Everything.
00:08:07
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.
00:08:19
Speaker
We spoke about an early 19th century Boston linen press,
00:08:23
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.
00:08:34
Speaker
So this is just one little peek into Stuart Feld's world.
00:08:38
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about this object.
00:08:40
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.
00:08:48
Speaker
Can you give a physical description for our listeners?
00:08:50
Speaker
It is a linen press.
00:08:52
Speaker
It was used to store perhaps household linens, perhaps actually clothes.
00:09:00
Speaker
Clothes were oftentimes folded and put into a linen press rather than hung up in a closet.
00:09:08
Speaker
do today.
00:09:10
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.
00:09:27
Speaker
All of these elements appear and reappear on Boston neoclassical furniture.
00:09:34
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.
00:09:57
Speaker
Motive.
00:09:58
Speaker
Motif.
00:09:59
Speaker
Here you can see in the doors matched pairs of mahogany veneers and the same thing up above and down below.
00:10:09
Speaker
And it represents, this piece represents one of the couple of most beautiful, most important, best Boston neoclassical pieces of case furniture.
00:10:21
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.
00:10:34
Speaker
And the corners here are defined by columns.
00:10:37
Speaker
And there are columns both above and below, really colonnettes.
00:10:42
Speaker
And the piece retains its original turned mahogany knobs,
00:10:49
Speaker
And I mention those because that is very, very typical of a Boston aesthetic of this period.
00:10:56
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.
00:11:12
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.
00:11:27
Speaker
Happily, that wasn't necessary in this piece.
00:11:31
Speaker
How many comparable pieces would you say there are in the world?
00:11:34
Speaker
Linen presses from Boston in the 1820s.
00:11:36
Speaker
Is this a singularity?
00:11:38
Speaker
Are there a handful of...
00:11:40
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.
00:11:52
Speaker
The other one is in a New York private collection.
00:11:57
Speaker
It was made for David Sears, who lived in a very grand house designed by Alexander Paris on Beacon Street, on Beacon Hill.
00:12:07
Speaker
And that is in the other Boston taste.
00:12:09
Speaker
and is very richly ornamented with many pieces of many Ormolu mounts.
00:12:17
Speaker
So what separates this piece from other pieces made in Boston at the time?
00:12:21
Speaker
What are the unique characteristics?
Interview Challenges and Art Nouveau Jewelry
00:12:23
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.
00:12:43
Speaker
Masterpiece
00:12:47
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.
00:12:51
Speaker
My guest I was very excited about was Catherine Purcell of the London firm Wortski.
00:12:56
Speaker
And you can imagine my crushing disappointment when after our interview, I discovered that there were crippling sound quality problems with the recording.
00:13:05
Speaker
Not to be deterred, when Catherine was next in New York, we sat down in person where nothing could possibly go wrong.
00:13:11
Speaker
I had gotten a new set of microphones.
00:13:13
Speaker
I hope you'll appreciate the improvement in sound quality.
00:13:16
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.
00:13:23
Speaker
But as it happens, she is also one of the world's top experts in French Art Nouveau jewelry.
00:13:27
Speaker
So here is Catherine Purcell speaking about one of the most wonderful pieces of Renée Lalique jewelry that I've ever seen.
00:13:34
Speaker
It takes the form of a pendant on a long chain.
00:13:40
Speaker
The pendant itself is centred with a female bust portrait of a young woman.
00:13:47
Speaker
Most striking is the fact that she is enveloped in branches, supporting pine cones and needles.
00:13:54
Speaker
The pendant is suspended with three pearls, and the chain work echoes the motifs, also bearing pine cones and needles interspersed with pearls.
00:14:07
Speaker
The piece doesn't have a single gemstone in it.
00:14:11
Speaker
It is entirely decorated with enamel in terms of the female portrait.
00:14:16
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
00:14:31
Speaker
The tones themselves are of enamel, which has been etched to give them volume.
00:14:39
Speaker
The branches so envelop her as to almost reveal her face amidst the branches.
00:14:47
Speaker
She's actually clasping one of the branches in her hand.
00:14:51
Speaker
So that is the first appearance of the piece, if you like.
00:14:54
Speaker
Who is the woman?
00:14:56
Speaker
Well, that is the key question, because I've
00:14:59
Speaker
discovered that the woman in question was actually his muse.
00:15:03
Speaker
Her name was Augustine Alice Ledru.
00:15:05
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.
00:15:17
Speaker
And I'd actually never seen this feature in a duel by René Lalique before.
00:15:22
Speaker
It led me to think that there must be some kind of romantic association.
00:15:26
Speaker
between him and the sitter, if you like.
00:15:30
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.
00:15:45
Speaker
They met in her father's studio because
00:15:49
Speaker
Her father was actually the bronze foundry maker to René Lalique's bronze works.
00:15:55
Speaker
And at the time that this particular pendant was carried out, they had not yet married.
00:16:01
Speaker
They actually met in 1890, but married in 1902.
00:16:09
Speaker
So this is an incredibly personal jewel, and it's by no means incidental.
00:16:16
Speaker
that the motifs in the jewel are actually fir cones and pearls, because pine cones in the language of botany stands for eternity.
00:16:27
Speaker
And the pearl, because Venus was born from a pearl, symbolizes love.
00:16:32
Speaker
So you already have eternal love in this jewel, the heart notwithstanding.
00:16:39
Speaker
Rather charmingly, as you turn the jewel over, you actually find a mirror image of
00:16:46
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
00:17:12
Speaker
that it carries this great sophistication of plicage enamel, which is immediately lost when you wear it right against the skin.
Historic House Restoration
00:17:20
Speaker
So in the same way, only the wearer would have known that the jewel was so elaborately finished on the reverse.
00:17:30
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.
00:17:36
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.
00:17:44
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.
00:17:58
Speaker
For this episode, the quote-unquote curious object was Wade's entire house.
00:18:04
Speaker
It's basically three rooms across the front.
00:18:07
Speaker
The house is 52 feet wide approximately.
00:18:11
Speaker
Three equal-sized rooms, and then behind those three rooms are three additional rooms.
00:18:19
Speaker
And then you have basically a porch that spans the distance in front of the house.
00:18:27
Speaker
But then there's also a porch in the back of the house.
00:18:30
Speaker
And these porches all fall under the same hip roof.
00:18:35
Speaker
And there are no extensions.
00:18:38
Speaker
But on the rear porch, you have a room on each end of the porch or gallery.
00:18:44
Speaker
And those are called cabinets.
00:18:47
Speaker
And they're just small rooms.
00:18:50
Speaker
Today, we use these cabinet rooms as bathrooms.
00:18:54
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.
00:19:08
Speaker
So these cabinet rooms, I believe, were just, you know, originally maybe storage rooms,
00:19:13
Speaker
This is a house that is actually not in its original location anymore, is that correct?
00:19:19
Speaker
Not at all, no.
00:19:21
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.
00:19:36
Speaker
You know, it was originally raised...
00:19:39
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
00:19:59
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.
00:20:10
Speaker
Do you know the family who built it?
00:20:12
Speaker
I have a photograph dated 1891
00:20:17
Speaker
I believe.
00:20:19
Speaker
And it is a photograph of the family members.
00:20:20
Speaker
And oddly enough, they're standing at the Mississippi and the Mississippi has floating ice in it.
00:20:27
Speaker
Evidently, there was a strong freeze that year.
00:20:29
Speaker
And these family members looks like some brothers and sisters or maybe a man and his wife.
00:20:39
Speaker
They almost look stranded.
00:20:41
Speaker
But as I'm understanding, they're standing, you know, on there at the Mississippi on their property.
00:20:46
Speaker
The house is pretty cool in the fact that the original plaster was still on the walls in the house.
00:20:52
Speaker
Now, this plaster was covered over with board and it was, I guess, sheetrock applied to these boards.
00:21:00
Speaker
And it was in terrible condition.
00:21:01
Speaker
I mean, you can imagine these boards being nailed to plaster and being moved.
00:21:05
Speaker
When the Corps moved it, it was moved, could have been moved by animals, mules, or horses.
00:21:13
Speaker
It's not always, they weren't always moved by machinery.
00:21:18
Speaker
And how do you restore that?
00:21:20
Speaker
You have a decision to make.
00:21:22
Speaker
You can live with it as it is.
00:21:24
Speaker
You can attempt to skim coat over it, which would essentially remove all the color.
00:21:30
Speaker
Or you could take it down and start from scratch.
00:21:32
Speaker
And I chose to take it down and start from scratch.
00:21:35
Speaker
I see.
00:21:35
Speaker
Anyways, I was lucky to have enough people to help.
00:21:39
Speaker
And we took this broken plaster down and I kept many samples, obviously.
00:21:44
Speaker
And my hope, I actually did one room in the yellow.
00:21:47
Speaker
And that room was published in the magazine.
00:21:51
Speaker
And it came out great.
00:21:52
Speaker
And you've actually learned quite a bit about 19th century construction methods, right?
00:21:57
Speaker
Oh, you know, suddenly, you know, I was in that reality is what it was.
00:22:02
Speaker
It wasn't anything else.
00:22:04
Speaker
I didn't think about what I was going to do necessarily.
00:22:08
Speaker
I just saw an opportunity to buy the house.
00:22:12
Speaker
And then when I was able to make the deal to move it, I already had the land.
00:22:17
Speaker
I thought, you know, here's my chance if I want it.
00:22:21
Speaker
I thought, well, you know, this is pretty cool.
00:22:33
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?
00:22:41
Speaker
Freeman's, America's oldest auction house, tells the stories of these and other curious objects.
00:22:46
Speaker
Discover how Thomas Aiken's painting, The Gross Clinic, stayed in Philadelphia.
00:22:51
Speaker
The science behind colored diamonds.
00:22:53
Speaker
and much more on their website, freemansauction.com.
00:22:56
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.
00:23:04
Speaker
Subscribe to their bi-weekly magazine and get it sent straight to your inbox.
00:23:08
Speaker
Visit Freemans at freemansauction.com to learn more.
00:23:12
Speaker
What are you doing the weekend of November 9th through 11th?
00:23:16
Speaker
Here's an idea.
00:23:17
Speaker
Come see me at the Delaware Antiques Show presented by Winterthur.
00:23:21
Speaker
This will be their 55th annual show and this year it will include 62 dealers in American Antiques and Decorative Arts.
00:23:28
Speaker
The firm where I work, ShrubSoul, is exhibiting there as we have for many years.
00:23:32
Speaker
It's one of the highlights of the year in the antiques world and I am excited to be going back.
00:23:37
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.
00:23:44
Speaker
Delaware Antique Show details and tickets are available at winterthur.org or even by calling them.
00:23:49
Speaker
So quick, grab your pen.
00:23:51
Speaker
The number is 800-448-3883.
00:23:51
Speaker
Thank you.
17th-Century Violin's History
00:24:01
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.
00:24:06
Speaker
And so I decided to branch out even farther.
00:24:09
Speaker
And for this episode, I actually went to Chicago to talk with a man who handles a different kind of antiques.
00:24:16
Speaker
These are collectibles, but they're also functional.
00:24:18
Speaker
In fact, they're serious workhorses.
00:24:21
Speaker
I'm talking about violins.
00:24:22
Speaker
This is Paul Becker of Carl Becker and Son.
00:24:26
Speaker
This is Amadi.
00:24:27
Speaker
That's right.
00:24:27
Speaker
It's a violin that's made in 1620.
00:24:31
Speaker
1620.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:34
Speaker
He was the son of Andre Amadi, who was the grandfather of violins.
00:24:43
Speaker
Right.
00:24:43
Speaker
Because the modern violin really was just coming into being around this time, right?
00:24:48
Speaker
That's right.
00:24:48
Speaker
So these are the earliest examples of the modern violin.
00:24:54
Speaker
This instrument's made by Antonio and Hieronymus, which are the sons of Andre.
00:24:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:25:00
Speaker
And Andre is the one you're referring to as the grandfather of the violin.
00:25:05
Speaker
Exactly.
00:25:06
Speaker
He worked in Brescia and was thought to work for Gaspar de Salo.
00:25:10
Speaker
He made the first violin-sized instruments.
00:25:13
Speaker
Before that, he was making their violas.
00:25:15
Speaker
Oh, right.
00:25:16
Speaker
Violas are actually before violins.
00:25:19
Speaker
And when you say viola, are you talking about a viola da gamba or what kind of instrument are you describing?
00:25:27
Speaker
Yes, a lute is one, which our name comes from, luthiers.
00:25:33
Speaker
Right.
00:25:34
Speaker
I never put that together.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:36
Speaker
So a lute is the predecessor to the viola, if you will.
00:25:42
Speaker
And from there came the violin by Andre Almaty.
00:25:47
Speaker
And then...
00:25:49
Speaker
came his two sons, Antonio and Hieronymus, who made these instruments.
00:25:54
Speaker
The one I hold in my hand is one that traveled to Russia and was played there for most of its life.
00:26:03
Speaker
Really?
00:26:04
Speaker
Yup.
00:26:05
Speaker
It has a great deal of its originality.
00:26:08
Speaker
It's original in all its parts.
00:26:11
Speaker
Does that include the neck?
00:26:13
Speaker
The neck is replaced because it was a Baroque style neck.
00:26:17
Speaker
Right, which are short.
00:26:19
Speaker
So they're shorter and a steeper angle and as a result it had a different projection to its sound.
00:26:28
Speaker
Ah, right.
00:26:29
Speaker
And they call that a modern setup which is basically something that started in 1780.
00:26:36
Speaker
was the modern violin.
00:26:38
Speaker
Modern being a relative term.
00:26:40
Speaker
Yeah, so this was a Baroque setup though.
00:26:45
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.
00:26:58
Speaker
The violin case and broke the instrument into smithereens on the lower end.
00:27:04
Speaker
Oh no.
00:27:05
Speaker
And so it went through a huge restoration job.
00:27:09
Speaker
And what are we talking about here?
00:27:12
Speaker
I can show there's a whole series that ran across right here.
00:27:16
Speaker
Wow.
00:27:17
Speaker
And so it has a series on the top that matched the back.
00:27:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:20
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
00:27:36
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.
00:27:42
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.
00:27:55
Speaker
I don't know in this case.
00:27:55
Speaker
It doesn't add value, but it has a neat story.
00:28:01
Speaker
I don't have any other instruments that were run over by a stagecoach.
00:28:04
Speaker
Really?
00:28:04
Speaker
This is the only one?
00:28:05
Speaker
The only one I know of.
00:28:07
Speaker
So it's great.
00:28:08
Speaker
I love saying it.
00:28:10
Speaker
And the instrument's gone through a tremendous restoration.
00:28:14
Speaker
So the restoration was done skillfully, I assume.
00:28:17
Speaker
And it was done in Russia at the time.
00:28:20
Speaker
And how long ago was that done, do you think?
00:28:23
Speaker
That was done, I believe, in the late 1800s.
00:28:28
Speaker
Oh, right.
00:28:29
Speaker
I mean, it looks like an old piece of furniture, like a really excellent piece of 17th century furniture.
00:28:36
Speaker
The patina, the color, it's wonderful just as a visual object.
Antique Dealer Insights and Powder Horn
00:28:42
Speaker
Right.
00:28:42
Speaker
I mean, it's got a tremendous amount of original varnish and the finish has really survived.
00:28:52
Speaker
No Antiques podcast would be complete without a conversation with Judy Livingston Loto, the executive director of the Antique Dealers Association of America.
00:29:01
Speaker
She is also a dealer in her own right in books about antiques.
00:29:06
Speaker
She is kind of a meta dealer, not to mention being the development director for the Portsmouth Historical Society.
00:29:13
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.
00:29:21
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.
00:29:31
Speaker
And one day, it was a Hartford, Connecticut spring antique show.
00:29:39
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,
00:29:48
Speaker
about an object that he had in his booth.
00:29:51
Speaker
And it was a powder horn, a flattened powder horn.
00:29:55
Speaker
And I've always admired powder horns.
00:29:57
Speaker
I think that their decoration is wonderful, their purpose.
00:30:01
Speaker
So what were they used for and what does one look like?
00:30:06
Speaker
So they were used for storing black powder for, well, for weaponry.
00:30:14
Speaker
I mean, if you're looking, it was, this was
00:30:17
Speaker
prior to modern firearms.
00:30:19
Speaker
So you would have had to pack a charge, pack powder in, pack shot in before firing a weapon, firing a gun.
00:30:29
Speaker
So this was an effective way to keep your powder dry.
00:30:35
Speaker
And it used a sheep's horn or a ram's horn.
00:30:40
Speaker
These horns are hollow on the inside and waterproof.
00:30:44
Speaker
They're made of keratin, I believe.
00:30:46
Speaker
So it's not ivory.
00:30:47
Speaker
It's not bone.
00:30:49
Speaker
You can heat it.
00:30:50
Speaker
You can shape it.
00:30:52
Speaker
It's kind of like fingernails.
00:30:52
Speaker
And you can decorate it.
00:30:54
Speaker
And you can decorate it, exactly.
00:30:55
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.
00:31:03
Speaker
It's got chamfered edges, and it's got a date, 1816.
00:31:08
Speaker
But there are wonderful designs on it.
00:31:10
Speaker
There's actually a paddle boat with an American flag,
00:31:14
Speaker
carved into the top.
00:31:16
Speaker
There is a wonderful gambrel roofed house with two chimneys.
00:31:21
Speaker
And it wasn't, I think what drew me to this was the engraving on this is not rote engraving.
00:31:28
Speaker
It's not something that's, everything looks the same.
00:31:32
Speaker
This house is a pretty specific house.
00:31:34
Speaker
The chimneys are two different sizes.
00:31:36
Speaker
They
00:31:38
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.
00:31:45
Speaker
There's two L's off the house.
00:31:47
Speaker
There are little Windsor chairs that are engraved into each of the L's and in the second floor as well.
00:31:56
Speaker
There's just the- So it's a very personal piece.
00:32:00
Speaker
It is, yep.
00:32:01
Speaker
And it's even signed.
00:32:02
Speaker
It says the property of Charles White.
00:32:04
Speaker
Charles White?
00:32:05
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:32:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:06
Speaker
And do you have any idea who Charles White was?
00:32:10
Speaker
Well, so yeah, I've done a little poking around and I haven't gotten anything definitive.
00:32:15
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.
00:32:30
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.
00:32:40
Speaker
Why was this the first?
00:32:41
Speaker
Well, so that's a great question.
00:32:43
Speaker
I loved the date.
00:32:44
Speaker
I loved the name on this.
00:32:45
Speaker
I loved the mystery to be solved.
00:32:48
Speaker
And at the end of the day, it was small enough to,
00:32:51
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.
00:33:00
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.
00:33:18
Speaker
It sounds ridiculous to think that a powder horn or a silver spoon or a piece of furniture can help build that understanding.
00:33:25
Speaker
But it's like I really firmly believe that it can.
David Webb's Animal-Inspired Jewelry
00:33:32
Speaker
Okay, the stereotype of an antique dealer.
00:33:34
Speaker
Small mom-and-pop shop, family business, let's face it, older, straight white man.
00:33:40
Speaker
Well, my next interview was going to be an exception to many of those rules.
00:33:45
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.
00:33:57
Speaker
To be fair, this piece isn't even actually an antique.
00:34:01
Speaker
Tell me about this piece and describe it for our listeners.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's the David Webb zebra bracelet.
00:34:07
Speaker
It's our most iconic animal bracelet.
00:34:11
Speaker
So it came out of the workshop in 1963.
00:34:15
Speaker
That's when it was originally designed and that's when it
00:34:18
Speaker
came to fruition as well.
00:34:20
Speaker
So he had been working for 15 years or so at that point?
00:34:23
Speaker
Right, right.
00:34:24
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.
00:34:36
Speaker
That's what I always call it.
00:34:37
Speaker
Maybe that's not the best way to call it, but that's what I call it.
00:34:39
Speaker
I mean, I'm thinking Mad Men, right?
00:34:42
Speaker
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
00:34:42
Speaker
So I'm interested in this, the role and the importance of animals in David Webb jewelry design.
00:34:52
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.
00:35:03
Speaker
And this also, in my mind, this comes back to this idea of what
00:35:07
Speaker
distinguished David Webb as a designer from a lot of his contemporaries.
00:35:12
Speaker
So we're talking about this zebra bracelet, but there are a lot of other animals that he used as inspiration too.
00:35:21
Speaker
So why animals?
00:35:24
Speaker
What drew David Webb to animals?
00:35:27
Speaker
It's a good question.
00:35:29
Speaker
In our archive, we have a whole shelf of reference books and sort of inspirational material that David Webb had.
00:35:38
Speaker
when he passed away it was part of the company's records.
00:35:42
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.
00:35:56
Speaker
It's a super iconic book from the 50s.
00:35:58
Speaker
Obviously it wasn't a children's book that David Webb had when he was a child.
00:36:02
Speaker
It was an adult man when he had this book but he's looking at it and there's a
00:36:06
Speaker
tremendously great page of zebras and giraffes running together in the savannah.
00:36:11
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.
00:36:20
Speaker
And it's interesting, I mean, the, you know, he was
00:36:23
Speaker
living and working very close, not just to the Natural History Museum in New York, but also to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
00:36:28
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:36:29
Speaker
And we've heard it told that he went there once a week and was constantly looking at things and inspired.
00:36:37
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.
00:36:48
Speaker
So some of our favorites to talk about, of course, you know, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, Doris Duke.
00:36:53
Speaker
I mean,
00:36:54
Speaker
pretty much any prominent name in the 20th century.
00:36:57
Speaker
One that I always like to talk about and share is Diana Vreeland.
00:37:00
Speaker
She was gifted one in the 60s, right when she went to Vogue in 1963.
00:37:06
Speaker
And we have this amazing cover of Vogue that came out in 1964.
00:37:10
Speaker
It has an Irving Penn photograph as the cover.
00:37:16
Speaker
And there's a woman holding her hand sort of to her face.
00:37:18
Speaker
She's got a zebra ring on her.
00:37:21
Speaker
that goes perfectly in line with this bracelet.
00:37:24
Speaker
She's got black and white eyeshadow on and the typography on the word Vogue is black and white.
00:37:30
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,
19th-Century Chinese Tribute Map
00:37:40
Speaker
everything.
00:37:40
Speaker
It's probably our most popular animal design that we've produced over the years.
00:37:47
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.
00:37:58
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.
00:38:12
Speaker
It's about 55 by 98 inches.
00:38:13
Speaker
This is an expansive map.
00:38:15
Speaker
It was issued in 1811 in China.
00:38:20
Speaker
It's meant to cover an entire wall or as it may have appeared in China on a screen.
00:38:25
Speaker
It is often called printed in negative, although that is not precisely true.
00:38:29
Speaker
It's not a printing.
00:38:30
Speaker
It's a rubbing, which is a Chinese process, very traditional.
00:38:34
Speaker
Large pieces of cloth in strips will be laid down on a stone block and it'd be wetted.
00:38:42
Speaker
And then
00:38:43
Speaker
the inks would be applied with a pounding ink block and that yielded the the intense blue.
00:38:51
Speaker
And in fact, the white areas are not printed areas, rather they are lack of printing.
00:38:56
Speaker
And so that gives it the intense physical and visual appearance that it has.
00:39:02
Speaker
So the white areas would have been carved out of the base stone.
00:39:05
Speaker
That's right.
00:39:06
Speaker
So that the ink would not have shown up on those spots.
00:39:09
Speaker
That's exactly right.
00:39:10
Speaker
But the map is a striking, resonant, deep blue.
00:39:14
Speaker
And the seas around it are a lighter, almost iridescent blue.
00:39:20
Speaker
The color was very, very significant in Chinese art.
00:39:25
Speaker
not only social and political thinking, but also kind of mystical thinking.
00:39:29
Speaker
Was blue an important color for the Qing Dynasty more generally?
00:39:33
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.
00:39:44
Speaker
Oh, I didn't realize it had a title.
00:39:46
Speaker
It does.
00:39:48
Speaker
The translation of the title would be All Under Heaven, Complete Map of the Everlasting.
00:39:52
Speaker
Unified Qing Empire.
00:39:54
Speaker
Oh, is that all?
00:39:55
Speaker
That's quite an ambitious headline.
00:39:57
Speaker
Yes, well, it was made for the emperor.
00:40:00
Speaker
And of course, the mapmaker would have wanted the emperor to be impressed with the map.
00:40:07
Speaker
And all of the geographical features and annotations, they appear in white.
00:40:12
Speaker
So it is extremely vibrant and striking to observe.
00:40:19
Speaker
But the overwhelming feature over the surface of the map is actually Chinese characters.
00:40:26
Speaker
Well, yes, and symbols.
00:40:28
Speaker
This was an administrative map, if it could be called anything.
00:40:33
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.
00:40:44
Speaker
So it's not printed or designed on a scale of distance.
00:40:48
Speaker
It's designed on a scale of significance to the Qing emperor.
00:40:53
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.
00:41:05
Speaker
And then all of what appears to be Africa and Europe condense into a very small, almost a margin on the left side.
00:41:14
Speaker
Is it clear or is it delineated exactly what regions of the rest of the world are represented?
00:41:22
Speaker
Somewhat.
00:41:23
Speaker
The map includes definitely England, includes Holland, includes Southeast Asia and Africa.
00:41:32
Speaker
There's a possibility that it also includes Portugal, but some of the terminology is obvious.
00:41:41
Speaker
So the map uses extremely Chinese, if you will, terminology to describe various places.
00:41:49
Speaker
Holland is the land of red beards and Portugal is the land of the Great Western Sea.
00:41:57
Speaker
Italy is possibly on it.
00:41:59
Speaker
The Atlantic itself is the Great Western Sea.
00:42:03
Speaker
Arabia appears on the map as the homeland of Islam.
00:42:06
Speaker
What use was that really?
00:42:08
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?
00:42:18
Speaker
Well, you have to start with the basic understanding that the Qing were a nomadic warrior people.
00:42:25
Speaker
They were the Manchus from North China.
00:42:28
Speaker
Correct, yes.
00:42:29
Speaker
So they did not see themselves bound or limited by...
00:42:34
Speaker
physical barriers or distances in the way that a European king may have considered their empire.
00:42:41
Speaker
So the Qing really didn't care how far it extended or how big it was.
00:42:46
Speaker
They cared that it was big, but it was more about the tributes that came in.
00:42:51
Speaker
So some symbols might represent a major city.
00:42:55
Speaker
Others might represent a regional sub-magistrate.
00:42:58
Speaker
So when the emperor looked at this, what he saw is he saw his tax
00:43:03
Speaker
He's like, oh, I'm receiving a certain level of tax from this regional magistrate in Guangzhou province.
00:43:12
Speaker
Good.
00:43:14
Speaker
And so he was able to see the extent of his empire.
00:43:16
Speaker
He was able to see where the money was coming from, where it wasn't coming from.
00:43:20
Speaker
He perhaps might...
00:43:21
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
Gilded Age Newport and Social Dynamics
00:43:38
Speaker
from the region.
00:43:38
Speaker
And in fact, potentially one of the reasons that this map was made in 1811 was because of a massive
00:43:45
Speaker
resettlement of Han Chinese farther to the West that redistributed the wealth of the empire.
00:43:55
Speaker
And that brings us just about up to the present.
00:43:57
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.
00:44:07
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.
00:44:14
Speaker
You'll hear Ashley Householder in this clip.
00:44:17
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.
00:44:26
Speaker
Who were some of the most prominent families?
00:44:27
Speaker
Well, certainly the Vanderbilt family and several branches of the Vanderbilt family who built
00:44:34
Speaker
the Elms and Marble House and Rough Point.
00:44:37
Speaker
You had the Berwyn family Philadelphians who ended up building the Elms.
00:44:43
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.
00:44:57
Speaker
So names like that.
00:45:00
Speaker
They were hiring the best architects in the world.
00:45:03
Speaker
and they were building the biggest summer cottages.
00:45:06
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.
00:45:18
Speaker
And frankly, it still is the place to be.
00:45:20
Speaker
And what happened during the Civil War?
00:45:22
Speaker
Well, what happened during the Civil War, it depends on where you were in this country.
00:45:27
Speaker
If you were a middle- to upper-class southerner,
00:45:31
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.
00:45:40
Speaker
Her family escaped to Europe, to Paris, and there as a young girl she learned everything French.
00:45:48
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.
00:46:00
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.
00:46:20
Speaker
So many people from the South were heading to Europe and gaining their
00:46:26
Speaker
taste to bring it back to the United States.
00:46:29
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?
00:46:39
Speaker
So certainly the best of the best.
00:46:41
Speaker
The Wetmore's certainly were world-class travelers and took an extended trip to Europe for a number of years.
00:46:49
Speaker
And they were great collectors, so they were buying the best that Europe had to offer in terms of porcelains and glassware.
00:47:01
Speaker
There's a Leon Marcotte suite of furniture at Chateau that we're very proud of.
00:47:05
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?
00:47:19
Speaker
I think during the Gilded Age, it was a different aesthetic.
00:47:21
Speaker
They were building these enormous, gorgeous palaces, again, to emulate what was happening in Europe.
00:47:29
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.
00:47:36
Speaker
Because that was an indication of class and style and sophistication.
00:47:41
Speaker
That's right.
00:47:41
Speaker
I want to talk a little bit about the social...
00:47:46
Speaker
environment or the social and socioeconomic dynamic that was happening at this time.
00:47:52
Speaker
Because the Gilded Age was a period of civil unrest and strife, and there were riots in New York and elsewhere.
00:47:59
Speaker
There were, of course, labor disputes leading to violent confrontations around the country.
00:48:06
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?
00:48:15
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.
00:48:31
Speaker
Because imagine Newport during the height of summer, there was a lot of entertaining.
00:48:37
Speaker
It must have been an exhausting period of time for those who were partaking, but also for those who were the workers.
00:48:45
Speaker
But in general, this was a place where you could get away from the world weary world and enjoy yourself.
00:48:56
Speaker
And that's how they were living their lives.
00:49:00
Speaker
That strike at the Elms didn't last for very long.
00:49:02
Speaker
He just brought in a whole new team of people and kept going on.
Future Episodes and Gratitude
00:49:07
Speaker
Yeah, that was easy, huh?
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:49:16
Speaker
you
00:49:19
Speaker
And that, in brief, is a year of curious objects.
00:49:22
Speaker
Thanks again for all your support and your attention.
00:49:25
Speaker
Once again, images of the objects are at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:49:30
Speaker
And you can reach me at podcast at themagazineantiques.com or on Instagram at Objective Interest.
00:49:36
Speaker
We've got a great episode coming up next, so be sure to stay tuned.
00:49:41
Speaker
This episode was produced and edited by Sammy Delati with guest editing by Killian Finnerty.
00:49:49
Speaker
Miller.