Transcript
Speaker: Hello everyone, welcome to Curious Objects, I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: And I'm Michael Diaz-Griffith.
Speaker: And some of you are, I'm sure, Curious Objects listeners, some of you are New Ed's Aquarians, some of you are general enthusiasts, but we're thrilled to see you all here and we're thrilled to share some fabulous stories today about some objects that we have laid out in front of you.
Speaker: I want to second what Helen said in thanking the magazine Antiques who produces this podcast.
Speaker: And thanks to the Winter Show for hosting us in this fabulous Gilded Age room in the Park Avenue Armory, protecting Park Avenue mansions against the proletariat since the Gilded Age.
Speaker: And we're getting dangerously political already.
Speaker: Sorry, we're off to a good start here.
Speaker: But I want to bring on our special guests here.
Speaker: Wait, but we don't have any guests.
Speaker: Because there aren't any young dealers in the antiques trade.
Speaker: I've been hearing it every day.
Speaker: Young people hate antiques.
Speaker: We tried to, when I wanted to put together this event, and we thought it would be fun to, because these are new antiquarians, to get some young dealers on the stage.
Speaker: But we were told again and again that young people don't care about antiques.
Speaker: They're not interested.
Speaker: In fact, I was at an Americana party the other day,
Speaker: And I was introduced to someone whom I greatly admire, whom I'd never met before.
Speaker: You know, I know their work.
Speaker: And as soon as I was introduced, she looked at me with a withering glance.
Speaker: And I'm used to that when I'm being introduced.
Speaker: But this was particularly withering.
Speaker: And she said, you must be one of those contemporary people.
Speaker: because I'm young, which in the antiques trade means I'm below 60, roughly.
Speaker: And I said, no, I've devoted my life to antiques.
Speaker: And actually, we did find three amazing young dealers who've devoted their lives to antiques to talk to us tonight.
Speaker: So we're going to start off with a young man who is the scion of a great old family firm here in New York, James Robinson, dealing in antique silver, close to my heart, and antique jewelry.
Speaker: Please welcome James Boning.
Speaker: Second, we have our dear friend, Ria Murray of Lillian Nassau.
Speaker: She's an exhibitor at the show, and we're so glad she can join us tonight.
Speaker: And last but not least, hailing from Kentucky, exhibiting at the winter show for the first time, Taylor Thistlefwaite.
Speaker: All right, so we're going to take our seats, but while we're going to begin with some storytelling and we're going to talk to you, we'll get to a more interactive conversation soon.
Speaker: So just know that you're going to have to listen to these people for a few minutes, but then we'll have a chat.
Speaker: They're only professional storytellers.
Speaker: What could go wrong?
Speaker: And I want to say a quick thank you to our sponsor for this episode, Freeman's Auction House.
Speaker: Since 1805, Freeman's has been a part of the Fabric of Philadelphia, helping generations of clients in the buying and selling of fine and decorative arts jewelry, modern design, and more.
Speaker: Freeman's is now welcoming consignments for their Spring 2020 American Furniture, Folk, and Decorative Arts Auction.
Speaker: Visit freemansauction.com to request a complimentary auction valuation and speak with their specialists.
Speaker: Now, we have five people on stage and we have five objects.
Speaker: And I think that a very good place to start is with the most menacing objects in the room.
Speaker: And I think I probably don't need to tell you who brought the most menacing objects.
Speaker: That's you, James.
Speaker: Hello, thank you.
Speaker: So I, as well as deal ing in antique silver and jewelry, I personally enjoy antique arms and armor.
Speaker: And I have been collecting since I was about six.
Speaker: And the first item that was purchased for me, obviously at six, I had no money.
Speaker: It was given to me by my grandfather, purchased here at the 1993 Winter Antique Show from Peter Feiner, one of the
Speaker: steadfast exhibitors here.
Speaker: So I have brought a pair of Scottish Highland pistols which are very unusual.
Speaker: They are unique to Scotland.
Speaker: They are normally completely made of metal, whether they're brass or steel, often highly engraved and usually just that is enough to make them of interest.
Speaker: Most weapons, pistols, flintlock, percussion would have wood.
Speaker: Pardon me, I'm going to read from my phone because I have a story about these.
Speaker: These pistols were owned by an English or Scottish man who was part of a platoon called the Black Watch.
Speaker: and his name was Major Archibald Menzis and he fought in the Battle of Cordergross, July, sorry, June 16th, 1815.
Speaker: Now this battle was one of the battles that led up to Waterloo.
Speaker: The pistols themselves were made in the southeastern part of the Highlands in Scotland by a man named Thomas Murdock.
Speaker: His family was very famous for making this style of pistol and basically a lot of these weapons were carried by Scottish military officers, sorry Scottish officers in the British military and it was something that kind of distinguished them from English and Irish and Welsh officers and it was something that was very unique to them.
Speaker: So the story that I'm going to tell is about actually the fight that Major Mentes found himself in.
Speaker: And this is actually from a book, I have the reference at the end, but I'm not going to take the time to find it.
Speaker: This is a first-hand account of him fighting in this battle.
Speaker: So it starts saying,
Speaker: It belongs to our captain here.
Speaker: Just imagine that with his Scottish accent.
Speaker: I had Mr. Patrick read it earlier from ALPR, and that was a lot of fun.
Speaker: He goes on to say, with a last expiring effort loaded his musket and shot the lancer dead.
Speaker: A French officer, seizing Menzis, seeing him stirring, rode up to attempt to dispatch him with a sword.
Speaker: As the Frenchman stopped from his saddle, Menzis seized his leg and managed to pull him off his horse and onto himself.
Speaker: Another lancer, observing the struggle, galloped up to attempt to spear Menzis and relieved his officer.
Speaker: But Menzis, by a sudden jerk and desperate exertion, placed the French officer uppermost, whereupon the Frenchman received the mortal thrust below his cuirass and remained as a shield for Menzis for the next 10 minutes.
Speaker: Applause in the fighting enabled Menzis to be carried off to a relative safety of the square formed by the 92nd foot, whereupon it was discovered that he had endured no less than 16 stab wounds from lances and swords, most of which inflicted while he lay there on the ground wounded.
Speaker: So these pistols were carried with him at this battle and he was not actually present at the Battle of Waterloo, you might imagine, due to his injuries, but he was awarded honors for bravery.
Speaker: And these were carried, or were in his family until I think remembering the 60s when they were sold at auction.
Speaker: His family had moved to New Zealand, if I'm remembering off the top of my head, and then they've kind of circulated around.
Speaker: I found these at, again, Peter Feiner here at the Winter Antique Show.
Speaker: They kind of speak to me for many reasons, but particularly the engraving on them, the silver that is, of course, inlaid on them, but I found the story fascinating, so much so that I forgot about it until yesterday.
Speaker: But when I purchased them, I was very enthralled by the story, and many of the pieces I have, I don't have much of a story but a date in the maker.
Speaker: And I found these very interesting due to the extensive amount of information that are contained within these two objects, again, menacing objects.
Speaker: That's what drew me to them.
Speaker: Thanks for that very gory story, James.
Speaker: I like to keep things lively.
Speaker: Should we move on to something a little more palatable?
Speaker: How about a pig?
Speaker: Yeah, a little less menacing, perhaps.
Speaker: Thank you, Rhea.
Speaker: Point to it.
Speaker: Yes, because it's a little diminutive.
Speaker: You may not notice him there, but on the table here, you'll see there's a little gold iridescent glass pig.
Speaker: So I work for Lillian Nassau LLC, which is one of the world's top dealers in the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios.
Speaker: which most people associate with the windows, leaded glass windows and lamps, which are extremely famous.
Speaker: I mean, he's one of the most well-known American decorative artists.
Speaker: But he also h ad a big complex out in Corona Queens where they did a lot of blown glass.
Speaker: So if you visit our booth here at the show, which is A2, you will see the firm signature leaded glass lamps, but you will also see a cabinet on the left side that is full of a variety of objects that they produced out in Corona Queens.
Speaker: So there's a lot of art glass vases, there's a lot of really ornate decorative finishes on them.
Speaker: There's picture frames, little bowls, and desk set pieces.
Speaker: At the time, we would have had a really elaborate desk covered with blotters and things like that.
Speaker: So they made art glass, which was really quite expensive for them to produce.
Speaker: They spent a lot of money out in this Corona Queens factory.
Speaker: Tiffany brought in artisans from Europe in the 1890s.
Speaker: people who were experts in the field in Europe and they did a lot of experimentation to produce this really elaborate art glass that would sell for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
Speaker: But the other thing that they produced was a lot of more commercial tableware and that's the gold iridescent glass that a lot of people are more familiar with today.
Speaker: It's really, really beautiful lustrous finish.
Speaker: Actually, the man who apparently invented this, a lot of people just assume that Tiffany, and he encouraged this assumption very much,
Speaker: They assumed that he was actually in Corona blowing the glass, that he was in the furnaces, that he was designing the lamps, and that was the impression that was given for a long time deliberately in their advertising.
Speaker: But in the last 30 years or so, thanks to a lot of scholarship from really incredible curators and private researchers, we found out that these objects were created by average people.
Speaker: The lamps, which he's the most famous for, were designed by a group of women.
Speaker: And then the glass pieces were produced by, I think it was about 150 men at the peak of employment in Corona, Queens.
Speaker: And so this little object here on the table, it's very unusual.
Speaker: It's not what you would expect to see in a piece of Tiffany Gold iridescent glass.
Speaker: And that's because it's not really an officially sanctioned piece of Tiffany glass.
Speaker: Arlie Sulca, the owner of the gallery, was contacted by the descendants of somebody who actually worked at Tiffany Studios.
Speaker: The family was still in the New York City area.
Speaker: And they had a whole bunch of pieces that this descendant had taken home with him when the company closed in the early 1930s.
Speaker: And this little piggy was one of the many pieces that they brought to us.
Speaker: And they were strange things that would not have been sold.
Speaker: They were actually bottles that were marked and engraved, sample A.H.
Speaker: Nash.
Speaker: He was the man that invented the Gold Eredezen glass finish.
Speaker: And so it's an unusual piece.
Speaker: It's something that if I think Louis Tiffany knew that I was here today talking about in the armory, he might be a little upset.
Speaker: because he definitely wanted to be seen as the auteur behind everything.
Speaker: Fortunately, he's buried all the way over in Brooklyn.
Speaker: Yes, he's all the way out in Greenwood Cemetery.
Speaker: He has no idea that we're here today.
Speaker: So this is a really, it's an unusual piece, and it's an exciting insight into the people behind the scenes who are really making all these spectacular objects that we're all lusting over today.
Speaker: And you've called this piece a whimsy.
Speaker: Yes, it's a whimsy.
Speaker: There are other whimsy's, right?
Speaker: What form do they take?
Speaker: So whimsy is sort of a glassblowing term.
Speaker: It's something that we use to refer to things that were made kind of
Speaker: in your own free time after hours.
Speaker: Off the cuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And actually, while I was doing a little research to get ready for this, I ended up looking at the Corning Museum of Glass, I think about 30 years or so.
Speaker: They were able to acquire from auction the actual notebooks
Speaker: of the man, Arthur Nash, who invented all of this glass.
Speaker: He was like incredibly secretive.
Speaker: The notebooks literally have a lock on them and he carried them around with him every day.
Speaker: He wouldn't let anybody into his laboratory, like nothing like that.
Speaker: So he would literally mix all of the elements to create a batch of glass in his locked laboratory and then bring them out to the glassblowers because they actually had recorded incidents of people trying to steal
Speaker: their formulas because the gold iridescent class when Tiffany invented this was like a huge popular thing.
Speaker: People were going crazy over it and a lot of the other companies were trying to steal that formula.
Speaker: So while I was doing this research I sort of dredged up some scans that I had for this talk of the actual Nash notebooks and you have to sort of take them with a grain of salt because they're written by both Arthur and his son who was later employed by Tiffany.
Speaker: They were a little bit bitter about their relationship with Tiffany.
Speaker: There are some choice comments about Louie, you know, peppered throughout the pages.
Speaker: But there are also a lot of really fascinating stories about just day-to-day working at Tiffany Studios.
Speaker: And so Nash makes reference to something that he calls the glass parade.
Speaker: Leslie, the son, makes reference to this.
Speaker: And so apparently there was one day where, for whatever reason, one of the old gaffers told him some story about all the glass lovers spent an hour a day making a curious
Speaker: well, a curious object, really, to sort of show off their skills, yeah.
Speaker: And so Nash then decided, well, let's do that again, like something to keep up the morale.
Speaker: So he gave them each an hour a day for a few weeks to work on their own object, and he sketched the ones that he remembered, and he called it the glass parade, and there were all these, there was a whole set of instruments, they had a whole glass band, they had a flag, you know, rippling in the wind,
Speaker: There are all these sort of funky little things that were just objects that they made to kind of play around and show off how much technique they had.
Speaker: So this is an example of that, a whimsy, something that they were just kind of playing around with.
Speaker: Brilliant.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, Taylor, what you're going to talk to us about is not exactly a whimsy, but there may be some whimsical carving on it.
Speaker: Tell us about it.
Speaker: There certainly is some whimsical carving on it.
Speaker: And the funny thing about it is we talk about Scottish pistols and epic battles, and we talk about the great New York institution of Tiffany.
Speaker: And my piece might have a little bit of both mixed in.
Speaker: So I brought today a great New York card table.
Speaker: And let me start off with saying I am a first-time exhibitor here, and I found out I got in the show about six months ago.
Speaker: So when you find out you're in the winter show, you go, this is great, this is so excited.
Speaker: Oh, my God, what am I going to bring?
Speaker: And I was doing some research, and I was doing some research, and I was doing some research,
Speaker: found out about a great New York card table.
Speaker: And it's one of these things when you walk into a room as an antique guy and you sit and you go, oh my God, this is great.
Speaker: And I was especially excited by this one because
Speaker: Out of all the New York furniture that was ever made, I think the card table is the most attractive form.
Speaker: It has curves everywhere, big grooning, very bold ball and claw feet.
Speaker: And this one is very special because it's in the original surface with great, you know, just... It's what us antique dealers, or us brown wood people, just melt for.
Speaker: Um, and I, uh, when you get the, and I was lucky enough to get the piece, but then we started looking into it and the table is signed on the underside of the top, as well as the top of the frame lot.
Speaker: And the lot family in the 18th century was
Speaker: one of the largest landowners in Brooklyn.
Speaker: And, of course, the dealer here, Frank Levy, has done more research on these tables than any human on Earth, so I have to give him so much credit for helping me dig into this table.
Speaker: Friend of the podcast.
Speaker: He's already a superstar, of course.
Speaker: And when we got to looking into Lott's,
Speaker: These tables have always been attributed to a partnership that was started in 1765 and lasted to 1775.
Speaker: And it was by Willett and Piercy.
Speaker: And Willett marries Piercy's daughter, so we've got some good connections there.
Speaker: And this is where we get into the war part.
Speaker: So when Willett, you know, we have this 10-year period where these tables are being produced.
Speaker: Again, they're over the top.
Speaker: We have attributed them to some of the best families in New York.
Speaker: And Lott and Willett actually have some interconnections.
Speaker: So it makes perfect sense that this table belonged to the Lott family.
Speaker: Well, Willett, interesting enough, the war comes along and he's like, well, time to stop being a cabinetmaker and goes on to be a huge Revolutionary War figure and is involved in several battles and
Speaker: eventually comes back and becomes the mayor of New York and also the vice governor of New York.
Speaker: So I think you go from cabinet making to politics.
Speaker: It might be a simple jump here.
Speaker: Is that in your future?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Probably 2040, somewhere in there.
Speaker: Paul Revere, I mean, you silver guys.
Speaker: Yeah, plenty of precedent for that.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So this is just a...
Speaker: This is a great example of not only great New York craftsmanship, but just a great thing that just came together for me at the right time.
Speaker: And as all antique dealers know, that's like the most exciting thing ever is when something, a great story, a great piece just kind of falls into your lap.
Speaker: And then you're like, you trace out all these little threads and go, oh my God, this thing's so cool.
Speaker: And we don't have a picture of it, actually, because you had another object in mind that then a big collector came by and decided he was interested in.
Speaker: Yeah, so I had a great weathervang that was going to make an appearance.
Speaker: He was a pretty dog to go away with a pig.
Speaker: And then a friend who's helping me at the booth called and was like, we have somebody here who's here to look at the dog.
Speaker: The dog and I went spielined back to the booth.
Speaker: The dog was here, guys, just a few minutes ago.
Speaker: I really think this has to be understood to know what the winter show is all about.
Speaker: The material may be of museum quality, but it's a buying fair, and I love that about it.
Speaker: This guy might be on his way out of the door right now.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Let's hope he finds a good home, because he's a good boy.
Speaker: Michael, speaking of buying, you brought an object that you bought yourself just very recently.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: I just got this fellow on my lapel and I don't know a whole lot about him yet because he's recently adopted.
Speaker: He may appear on that screen.
Speaker: But I want to lodge a disclaimer with you.
Speaker: He's not from the Winter Show.
Speaker: Apologies to Helen and to my fellow Winter Show committee members.
Speaker: I'm 33 and he's from eBay but I spoke to Ali Shushan, the foremost authority on portrait miniatures in America, who is a loyal Winter Show exhibitor and she has said that I did good.
Speaker: and considering how much I paid for him, I pretty much had to do good because I didn't pay a lot.
Speaker: So that's the money side of things, and I think it's important to remember that historic objects, examples of material culture from the past can be bought at every price point imaginable.
Speaker: And so, you know, this is an example of that.
Speaker: I was attracted to this gentleman who feels to me like a bit of a dandy and also to the kind of neoclassical simplicity of his, you know, the background and the frame.
Speaker: And what's not evident from the image that you see on the screen is that this is a portrait miniature configured as a mourning brooch.
Speaker: So there's also a set of initials here rendered in human hair, which some might find a little bit creepy.
Speaker: I think of it as a locus for stories, and that's what we care about here.
Speaker: There's no glass on the back yet.
Speaker: I still have to have it restored, so I'm going to very carefully turn it around.
Speaker: And, you know, I love the way it looks.
Speaker: I love the fact that this person mattered to someone.
Speaker: I don't know who he is yet.
Speaker: I don't know who wore the morning brooch, but I know that there was an intense, passionate attachment at the root of this object.
Speaker: And it's yet to be discovered, but based on what I've heard up here today, there's hope that I'll be able to uncover that story.
Speaker: and maybe be inspired by it instead of seeing it as creepy that I'm wearing human hair on my lapel.
Speaker: And that's pretty much it for this guy.
Speaker: I neglected to say that we think he is...
Speaker: broadly of the German school and from 1785-1790, which is about what I figured based on his costume.
Speaker: But further evidence may prove me wrong, and I'll give you an update if I find out that I am wrong.
Speaker: You'll hear about an uncurious object.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I am going to have to get up to talk about this object, which I'm afraid I've deceived you all.
Speaker: Podcast listeners won't be aware of this, but what I have in front of me is an oversized chocolate pot.
Speaker: However, that is not the object that I wanted to talk to you about today.
Speaker: The object is actually inside the chocolate pot.
Speaker: Give me a second here.
Speaker: Here we go.
Speaker: So this is a piece which I should start by telling you was mis-catalogued in an auction sale by a professional in the antiques auction business as a mace.
Speaker: You can perhaps imagine why.
Speaker: And the reason that someone who actually was quite experienced and knowledgeable miscatalogued it is that this is a vanishingly rare object.
Speaker: It's a piece that was made in sterling silver in the early 18th century in England.
Speaker: And the thing about silver is it is money, right?
Speaker: And it can be turned from useful objects into coins, and it can be sold as a raw material.
Speaker: So it's a liquid asset.
Speaker: And when a piece of silver becomes obsolete, out of fashion, unusable, when you lose your interest in it,
Speaker: you always have the option of sending it to the melting pot and melting it down.
Speaker: Well, this object is what's called a mullinette, and its original function was to stir a pot of chocolate.
Speaker: And it's a function that was very important in the 18th century when chocolate was a vogue beverage in England and it started coming up from Spain, where it had come from, Mesoamerica.
Speaker: And the problem was that it was a very fatty beverage.
Speaker: So if you were to pour it straight out of the pot, you would end up with this nasty, oily film on the top that wasn't very pleasant to drink.
Speaker: So right before serving it, the chocolate needed to be whipped up.
Speaker: So this is, we call it a mullinette, but you could also call it a swizzle stick.
Speaker: Most of these were made in wood, some of them were made in brass and other materials because they were hidden inside the pot.
Speaker: Most people wouldn't see them, so most people didn't bother spending a lot of money to make them out of fancy materials like silver.
Speaker: But in a few rare cases, some very fancy people decided that nothing but silver would do.
Speaker: So there were a certain number of silver molinets made.
Speaker: Now, in the 19th century, when chocolate production changed and they came up with better emulsifiers and didn't need to whip the chocolate right before serving anymore, the mullinets became obsolete objects.
Speaker: So the vast majority of the ones that had been made in silver, which was already a small number, were melted down and turned into coins or turned into...
Speaker: coffee pots or other things.
Speaker: And so they were largely forgotten.
Speaker: And today, it's once in a very long while that one of these turns up on the market.
Speaker: There are a tiny handful in museums in various places.
Speaker: There are a tiny handful in private collections.
Speaker: And there's this one, which happens to be in the inventory of S.J.
Speaker: Shrubsell, my employer.
Speaker: So I was very happy to be able to bring it today and show that even a useless object that hasn't had a proper function in 200-plus years now, nevertheless has been treasured enough through the generations not to be turned into liquid cash or a retirement fund, and therefore to have survived to be seen by all of us here today.
Speaker: Brilliant.
Speaker: It almost looks like a scepter.
Speaker: You can just stand there and pose.
Speaker: It's us.
Speaker: It's us.
Speaker: And a torture device.
Speaker: Speaking of gory stories.
Speaker: We probably don't need to follow that line too far.
Speaker: Let's just leave that where it is.
Speaker: I just want to look at, to consider one thing quickly before we move into a broader conversation.
Speaker: We were joking about how
Speaker: People say there aren't many young people who like antiques and this audience and these panelists are proof against that.
Speaker: But as I was sitting here, I was realizing that James emerges from a family firm.
Speaker: And that's a very traditional way to get into the antiques trade.
Speaker: So he represents one route into the trade.
Speaker: Ria, you've been mentored by Arlie Sulca, who was mentored by Lillian Nassau.
Speaker: So you're a part of almost a matriarchal lineage.
Speaker: Yes, we definitely have.
Speaker: Of experts.
Speaker: And Tiffany, I mean, Lillian Nassau practically invented the field.
Speaker: She is widely considered the doyen, or was widely considered to be the doyen of Tiffany, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and so there's a kind of, it's not a family firm, but there's a tradition there of mentorship that takes Lillian Nassau's knowledge and expertise, delivers it to Arlie Sulca, who delivers it to Rhea in this really glorious and direct line.
Speaker: And here we have Taylor.
Speaker: the youngest or second youngest maybe exhibitor to enter the Winter Show ever and I'm very proud to be, I think so.
Speaker: I'm not talking about a deputy or an assistant in a gallery but an exhibiting participant.
Speaker: close to the youngest and certainly in the last few decades and you're starting your business yourself.
Speaker: I mean you did start your business yourself, it wasn't inherited and that represents another route into the trade.
Speaker: So we have three young people but they're distinguished by these very distinct means of entry into the antiques trade and I think Ben has another way of entering the trade that you've heard about.
Speaker: At a bar, which is a whole other story.
Speaker: Well, yeah, through sheer coincidence.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And fortune or misfortune, depending on how you see it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I just wanted to point that out.
Speaker: There's a sort of diversity here that's really interesting to me.
Speaker: And this is only among dealers, of course.
Speaker: There's a whole other world of scholars and curators.
Speaker: Precisely.
Speaker: Working outside of the trade.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I want to share another quick word from our generous sponsor, Freeman's Auction House, who are excited to announce Worden Eshrich, made for the stage.
Speaker: This is a historic collection of woodwork by one of America's most important woodworkers from the Hedro Theater Collection in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, coming to auction on March 31st.
Speaker: Mark your calendars.
Speaker: The sale includes the legendary Thunder Table from 1929,
Speaker: and the earliest chairs made from repurposed axe and hammer handles by the artist.
Speaker: Established in 1923 in the Rose Valley Arts and Crafts community, Hedro Theatre is America's longest-serving repertory theatre.
Speaker: The works from the collection represent the indelible influence of the performing arts on Escherich, widely regarded as one of the most significant studio woodworkers of the 20th century.
Speaker: Thank you to Freemans.
Speaker: We love you.
Speaker: Now, I want to continue the conversation.
Speaker: We've heard these stories, but let's dig a little deeper into these objects, into our experiences about them.
Speaker: And the first thing that I want to ask you, James, you brought a pair of pistols into this room.
Speaker: probably not the first, frankly.
Speaker: Firearms are regulated in this state.
Speaker: How does that work?
Speaker: So you need a license for firearms that date post
Speaker: 1890?
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: So basically when bullets and cartridges and firing pins became the method of fire, there's actually no law against walking down the street with a pair of flintlocks
Speaker: maybe loaded, I don't know.
Speaker: But yes, anything that is a firearm made before 1890 can be bought with no license, doesn't matter if they operate or not.
Speaker: If you, for items made after it, they need to be decommissioned, right?
Speaker: They'd have to be like bolted or... Or it would have to be, you know, go through an FFA dealer.
Speaker: So I actually own, this is the thing that's interesting is that I
Speaker: I've had this discussion many times with friends or other dealers.
Speaker: Most of the objects, most of the, I'll just say, arms and armor that I collect actually are more decorative.
Speaker: I do have about 25 objects.
Speaker: Most of them, as I said, these pistols being very unusual, being made of metal.
Speaker: Most of them have wood grips, wood hand stocks.
Speaker: Silver inlay, gold inlay, usually highly engraved.
Speaker: One of my favorite is a single plinlock pistol from
Speaker: Naples, Italy, it's a very beautiful brindled wood with gold and silver inlay, a lion's head on the butt.
Speaker: Everything about it was made for someone to show off.
Speaker: And that's actually one thing when you talk to Peter Feiners, Red and Peter and Rowley, when you get to a certain point of time, they're useful, medieval and whatnot.
Speaker: But most of their later objects were made to be show pieces.
Speaker: I'm not really interested generally in having actually just a plain rifle with nothing on it or a sword that was literally just made for killing, if I'm being completely honest.
Speaker: the sword that I have, the two swords I have, were both court swords, they were worn for dress, they were often worn with frilly wigs, and like Michael's miniature, that gentleman would have likely at court had a sword on his waist.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, in that sense, it's not so different from the jewelry that you grew up around in the family business, right?
Speaker: Absolutely, so as Michael had mentioned, I'm fifth generation in my family, we opened in 1912,
Speaker: and recently in the last 30, 40 years we've become a big part in jewelry.
Speaker: Before actually we were more like a shrub, a straight shrub silver, we were primarily silver dealers, but yeah, these things were ornamental and even though men might have worn more jewelry at the time when you would go to court, when you would go out, you would wear decoration in the form of, often you'll probably see in movies or in paintings,
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: or an elaborate belt that holds the scabbard.
Speaker: The scabbard often having chagrin, leather, exotic leather, not just regular leather, often with silver or jewels.
Speaker: Actually, in France, only the royal family was allowed to have jewels, and often other people would use things like margacite and enamel, which was allowed, and they would have these highly elaborate gold and enamel swords because they were literally like wearing a necklace for a woman or a brooch or whatever they wore at the time.
Speaker: Yeah, and the techniques used to produce that decoration were similar or the same.
Speaker: Actually, one of the most beautiful objects in the arms and armor wing, which I think most people don't really go to because they think of weapons, there's an outstandingly gorgeous hilt, which is the handle and guard of a sword, and it was made by Alexis Feliz and another man.
Speaker: and I forget his name.
Speaker: Great French Jewelry.
Speaker: Great French Jewelry, sorry.
Speaker: And the handle, the grip, is a woman reaching up, and the top of the butt, the pommel, is her face,
Speaker: guard is all what I remember off the top of my head, almost like angels, and it's a very spiritual, religious piece.
Speaker: There's no blade on it, but the key is the person that would have carried this.
Speaker: This would have been a highly expensive, highly decorative piece of jewelry, but it just would have been worn on a man's belt as if
Speaker: Yeah, so it speaks to gender in a complexifying way.
Speaker: We're not just looking at objects that valorize warfare or a certain kind of masculinity.
Speaker: They can actually cause us to think about it critically, which I think is not necessarily what people expect when they look at two pistols.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think that's the key, is that these, yes, these ones were made to be used.
Speaker: They probably were, but at the same time, they were also a very large sense of national pride for
Speaker: Whether you're English or Scottish, they feel a great sense of national pride, of being completely different and independent in their history and their heritage.
Speaker: And this was something that set them apart from their contemporaries within the service.
Speaker: Ria, there's only so much that we can know about a piece that's not documented, where we don't have a ledger entry, where we don't have proven odds.
Speaker: But I want to ask you to speculate a little, because you do know a little bit about the workshops and the circumstances.
Speaker: So what do you think was going through the mind of the person involved in producing this?
Speaker: Well, I've started to wonder because when this first came into the store, this is actually the second time that we've owned this pig.
Speaker: It first came to us in the collection of, I know it's weird to say, owned this pig.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: But the first time it came to us was in the collection of this family, and we actually sold it.
Speaker: And then the person who we sold it to unfortunately passed away, and so it has now come back to us.
Speaker: And the first time we had it, I heard tell from Lindsay Parrott, who you guys may know, she's the executive director and the curator of the Newstat collection of Tiffany Glass, which is a really incredible resource.
Speaker: It's out in Long Island City in Queens.
Speaker: And so it's a study collection.
Speaker: There was this orthodontist from Queens who was very passionate about Tiffany.
Speaker: And there's going to be a future New Antiquarians tour of their facilities.
Speaker: I was hoping that there would be, because we had a great time there celebrating Louis' birthday a few years ago.
Speaker: And if you have never been, they do offer tours.
Speaker: I guess we'll have an event for New Antiquarians, which will be really fun.
Speaker: But anyway, I digress.
Speaker: Lindsay is an incredible scholar and a really wonderful person, and she had mentioned to me a few years ago that there was another pig out there.
Speaker: And so I was like, okay.
Speaker: And she came by the booth the other day and I asked her about it and she had actually borrowed from the descendants of a different family of a Tiffany worker a collection of these Whimsies and there was another pig.
Speaker: This pig that we have, I think he's like three inches, maybe by two inches, he's quite small.
Speaker: The other pig is about the size, I mean he's about 12 inches, maybe four inches high, he's quite big, and he's blown in a completely different method.
Speaker: This one is blown from the snout, and then they sort of pulled it up through the tail.
Speaker: The other one was blown from the tail and they pinched his nose out.
Speaker: So it's just sort of like, why are there two pigs?
Speaker: Why are they so different?
Speaker: Why are the methods of construction so different?
Speaker: When I found out about this glass parade where they made all these musical instruments, I couldn't help but wonder maybe they had a day where they decided to make pigs for fun and see who could make the best pig, you know?
Speaker: They're the only two pigs that we know of.
Speaker: There really aren't very many Tiffany glass whimsies that exist out there in the world.
Speaker: I think part of it's probably because the Nash's were so protective about their formula, so there wasn't really a lot of extra material around for people to sort of play with in their free time.
Speaker: I mean, we know from the diary that they only got to make the glass parade stuff because he sort of relented and allowed them to have a little fun.
Speaker: So I wish I knew exactly how or why this was made.
Speaker: I mean, we do know that it went into the family, and we can tell from the condition of it that it's had an interesting life.
Speaker: The four little legs that are on the bottom, the way that they were put on was they were applied while they were hot.
Speaker: So the glass would actually pool and fuse with the body of the pig.
Speaker: I don't know if you can see it in the picture very well.
Speaker: And the same thing with the little ears.
Speaker: They were sort of plopped on while it was hot and then pinched so that they would get that shape.
Speaker: So we have found out after the fact that three of the four legs have been reattached with, and I will say one of them is not done very well.
Speaker: There's a lot of visible glue, but again, this was not like a Tiffany vase.
Speaker: It's not a morning glory vase.
Speaker: It sells for, you know, a lot, tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker: So they weren't trying to repair this in a way to, you know, maintain the value.
Speaker: It could have just been, you know, this guy's kids were playing with it for fun and they broke the feet off and somebody just glued them back on.
Speaker: And broadly speaking, it could constitute a kind of accessible object that you might begin a collection with because of that, right?
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: I mean, Tiffany, you know, as young dealers, and also I think we're all young collectors as well,
Speaker: Tiffany can seem very out of reach to us, I think.
Speaker: We know that lamps can sell for millions of dollars.
Speaker: The vases can sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker: But these pieces of more sort of unusual sort of the cultural objects, the material objects that the firm was making, those definitely are much more attainable to people of
Speaker: our buying power, I guess I'll say.
Speaker: So speaking of people of our buying power, there's a lot of discussion, as we've already discussed, about the ways that young people are involved in the antiques trade and antiques collecting, and I think that
Speaker: Synthesizing all of those discussions, one of the things we know is that the new generation of enthusiasts and dealers and curators will provide a new spin on things.
Speaker: So, for example, thinking about the chocolate pot, there's a lot of research being done now on foodways and on the material culture of food, so we're not just looking at this as a masterpiece of
Speaker: silver, we're looking at it through the context of the foodways that it was produced to serve, right?
Speaker: And I think that whether we look at the decorative qualities of the pistols or at a whimsy instead of at a lamp or a vase, we're kind of looking at these objects in a slightly oblique way that constitute your contribution to discourse on
Speaker: curious objects.
Speaker: So Taylor, I want to look at this table through that lens and while doing that I'd also like to think about your booth at the Winter Show which represents a cross collecting perspective.
Speaker: Well at the Winter Show I was finally able to do a booth that I've always wanted to do and I wanted to do
Speaker: 200 years of American design.
Speaker: Of course, for you Victorians and Tiffany people, I kind of glanced past that area a little bit.
Speaker: You were well represented.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: But, you know, when I started out in this business, my mentor was a gentleman named, a former winter show dealer named Sumter Pretty.
Speaker: And actually a person who worked with me there is in the audience today and she's now with the Met.
Speaker: So, hey, we can all go different places starting in this world.
Speaker: But, you know, when I came upon these objects, you know, if we look at, let's say, the work of Willett and Piercy here, we get these dramatic Rococo influenced lines and
Speaker: I use the term sexy legs because in my mind, yes, those are very sexy balls and claws.
Speaker: It just had so much going on.
Speaker: But then... Shouldn't it be covered?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: This is the 18th century here.
Speaker: But we then go on in the future...
Speaker: Let's fast forward 200 years.
Speaker: What do we see?
Speaker: We see people like Paul Evans who comes up with the most fascinating, brutalist furniture.
Speaker: And why not set that right next to my sexy table?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: If you look at the lens of American design, we've been producing great things for 200 years.
Speaker: There's no time limit on any of this stuff.
Speaker: And just because I personally prefer 18th century furniture, that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate a Paul Evans disc bar, which is this big disc and you open it up and hey, it's a bar.
Speaker: But I think it's important
Speaker: as young collectors, I find that people aren't tracing things as much as they used to in, well, I have to own every one of these groups, or I bought a period home, we have to fill it full of period furniture.
Speaker: Why do we have fun with it?
Speaker: I mean, why should we limit ourselves?
Speaker: And I think young collectors, more so than our generations past, we care about great design.
Speaker: It's not that
Speaker: people in our generation, and I hope you all expand on this, don't care about this stuff.
Speaker: It's just, I don't think we like to be limited, you know?
Speaker: We didn't grow up having the, what, 24 photographs that we can take in a camera or whatever?
Speaker: We can take millions of photographs, though.
Speaker: Why limit ourselves?
Speaker: Why close things down?
Speaker: I think it's important.
Speaker: One interesting thing about the way that all of us here are talking about our objects is that we are, I think all five of us, are in one degree or another connoisseurs.
Speaker: But that doesn't mean that we are focusing on the minute details of the design.
Speaker: Maybe we're interested in those minute details, but that's not the starting place.
Speaker: The starting place, when you look at a pair of pistols like that, is...
Speaker: What's the story?
Speaker: Who's the person behind it?
Speaker: What battle was he in and what happened to him there?
Speaker: I mean, that's incredible and it brings life to the objects.
Speaker: For me, thinking about the Molinet, it's an interesting work of silversmithing and it's a rarity.
Speaker: But more interesting to me than all of that is the story that it has to tell about
Speaker: dining customs, but also about globalization and transatlantic trade and about the economy and saving and investing and the ways that people have thought about their assets over time.
Speaker: You know, you can link these objects to so many different elements of history, of society, of culture, of anthropology, of psychology.
Speaker: And that is all relevant today as much as it ever has been throughout the lives of these objects.
Speaker: So I think, you know, for many modern collectors, those are the elements that really get us excited about these things.
Speaker: So what can they tell us about the people before us and what can they tell us about ourselves?
Speaker: And if I've just bought a 17th century house and I happen to want a Paul Evans disc bar to go in it, by God, I'll just do it.
Speaker: And I'll also buy some 17th century furniture.
Speaker: You know, tomorrow night I was actually planning on playing cards on my card table.
Speaker: So if you all come by for Young Collectors Night, maybe we will have a jolly good time.
Speaker: We can have a live vignette.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I think one thing that you did that's
Speaker: Brilliant, though, is that so many people of our generation, as you mentioned, the generation before would fill their 17th century house or 18th century house with the like furniture.
Speaker: But I think people don't realize that the mid-century or the early American can all kind of work together.
Speaker: And maybe not every piece with every piece, but the styles are completely able to go across.
Speaker: And that's something that I do in my own home, but obviously.
Speaker: I think as antique dealers and antiquarians and everything, across the board, I think we recognize quality when we see it.
Speaker: I think most of us have owned IKEA furniture in our lifetime.
Speaker: Still do.
Speaker: And it's great, but you know what?
Speaker: If we can see great pieces or great things, why not own them?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I want to open up the floor to some audience questions, if there are any.
Speaker: So raise your hand.
Speaker: Kat will find you.
Speaker: Hi, Eve.
Speaker: Hi, everyone.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: That was rivetingly fascinating.
Speaker: I have one Antiques Roadshow question.
Speaker: None of you have talked about the value of the piece.
Speaker: Retail, insurance, you tell me.
Speaker: Well, some people would say that's gauche.
Speaker: No, that's an important starting place for almost any collector is to think about what is a reasonable sum for you to pay for something, what's a feasible sum for you to pay for something.
Speaker: I think, Michael, your story about your object is a great starting place.
Speaker: I'm at the low end over here.
Speaker: I apologize.
Speaker: Yeah, this cost $200.
Speaker: and I could sell it for more.
Speaker: So, you know, in that sense, from an investment standpoint, it was a successful investment of $200 that might have otherwise gone to decadent cocktails in the Lower East Side.
Speaker: I mean, when my curator and critic friends are sort of judging me for being involved in the decorative arts,
Speaker: You know, I remind them, you were in the Maldives last week in a luxury modernist villa that definitely cost at least a few thousand dollars a night.
Speaker: My late Baroque chair that I got on the side of the road is not as implicated in problematic labor practices as your villa in the Maldives, okay?
Speaker: I don't care if you're a curator at MoMA.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think that it's a great example of a starting point.
Speaker: And the winter show has one of the world's most stringent vetting processes.
Speaker: So, you know, something to note is that anything that's been on the show floor was vetted by experts for authenticity, date, and condition.
Speaker: But that doesn't make everything on the show floor heinously expensive.
Speaker: So, you know, this is a show that has...
Speaker: that's full of masterpieces and museum quality works, but there are things like the whimsy, for example, that are more accessible.
Speaker: And there is transparent pricing in our ethos, so you can know how much these things cost.
Speaker: Yes, so I mean the pig for example we sort of briefly touched on it but the cabinet in our booth full of Tiffany glass there is quite a range of pricing in terms of what is available.
Speaker: We do have some really spectacular rare examples of the art glass.
Speaker: These are paperweight vases, this is a technique that Tiffany pioneered.
Speaker: Those, some of them are $45,000.
Speaker: We've had vases that are over $100,000.
Speaker: Obviously that is of a different realm.
Speaker: But we always make sure when we come to a show like the Winter Show that we bring a range of objects because we know that this show attracts a whole, you know, complete range of buyers, people who are just starting out who know that this is a great place to train your eye.
Speaker: collecting for years who know that there is a vetting process here that will enable you to feel comfortable about purchasing something that you may not necessarily have the experience in collecting outside of a category you are not comfortable with.
Speaker: So we try and incorporate that sort of into our booth.
Speaker: So we have the $45,000 vase but we also have the
Speaker: a cabinet vase that is under a thousand dollars there's there's quite a range of options well and james got his pistols uh at age six so they they couldn't have been that expensive when i started collecting yeah i think the first um it's called a muff pistol uh which has a highly detailed silver inlay on the handle i think it cost about 200 they have now gone up in price since then um
Speaker: But that was then.
Speaker: I also will say that unfairly since I've known them since I was five, they do give me a very good number.
Speaker: So I would probably say that the insurance, if you'd like to know, is probably close to $16,000, but I didn't pay anything near that.
Speaker: I think most dealers at the show will also honor a Curious Objects listener discount.
Speaker: Yes, of course, they all do.
Speaker: Just mention that.
Speaker: And Taylor, your Curious Object is possibly not quite as accessible, but... I can give you great references, though.
Speaker: Yes, and but...
Speaker: Wood furniture, I'm not going to say brown furniture because I almost lost my life a few years ago when I said that live on a tour of the winter show and people were very mad at me even though I didn't mean it in a pejorative way.
Speaker: Wood furniture is incredibly accessible right now.
Speaker: I mean, everybody should go out and buy wood furniture and stockpile it and fill your homes with it because it's never been as accessible.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And for the beginning collector, you can buy a great American chest of drawers for a very reasonable price.
Speaker: This isn't that reasonable.
Speaker: This table is kind of a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Speaker: But I will say at Sotheby's and Christie's, it has tripled and quadrupled in price in examples very similar to this.
Speaker: I'm asking $285,000 for the table.
Speaker: But, you know... And you just carried it over here willy-nilly from the back.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I have to say, when you live with this stuff, you have a lot more fun.
Speaker: I ate dinner at it one night, too.
Speaker: Most people would cringe at that, but I'm like, it's in my living room, why not?
Speaker: This is actually one thing not to put down museums, but that's actually one thing that I find very interesting, is that we live with these items.
Speaker: We use them.
Speaker: I mean, I drink out of silver sometimes for fun.
Speaker: I was at the other day and you were drinking water out of an antique silver mug because we can.
Speaker: But the key is... It's very environmentally friendly.
Speaker: Antiques are green.
Speaker: But the whole key is that I was talking with another dealer and even though of course museums spend a lot of money to
Speaker: restore and protect and they're very important to our society.
Speaker: The thing that's always very interesting is sometimes when you have these objects and they pass over to a museum, they become white glove objects, but yet we deal with them every day and we take care of them just as well and we care for them just as much.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, as a collector, Michael, you talked about weakening in the Maldives.
Speaker: I think we can all relate.
Speaker: When does Curious Objects take us?
Speaker: Not me.
Speaker: That's the next.
Speaker: But there's this idea, and I'm a broken record player.
Speaker: You've heard me talk about this on the podcast before.
Speaker: But there's this idea that younger generations in this country are interested really in experiences rather than objects.
Speaker: And I just want to turn that concept on its head because I think it's true.
Speaker: But I also think that if you're investing in the right objects, that those objects are experiences that you can have every day of your life.
Speaker: And it's an experience that only grows in power and importance and emotional impact with every time that you use it.
Speaker: So if your trade-off is a fun night of cocktails versus buying a nice pewter tankard that you can take home and fill with cocktails or something else and drink out of that for the next 10 years, 30 years, 50 years, that seems in some cases to me like a very reasonable trade-off.
Speaker: Yeah, and we don't have to use the objects for the function they were designed to serve.
Speaker: Maybe with a hot chocolate pot we should.
Speaker: I mean, I'm thinking about, you know, it's January, like, let's do this.
Speaker: Just as long as we don't have to use an 18th century chocolate recipe for the hot chocolate pot.
Speaker: I think there's some Swissmas in the dealer's lounge.
Speaker: We might have this covered.
Speaker: Well, Swissmas, and we also have a Mexican in the audience who I think has some ideas about how chocolate should have been prepared in the 18th century that maybe weren't so current in the colonies in America.
Speaker: But I'm thinking about a party I went to about a year ago on the Lower East Side.
Speaker: where a young antiquarian who is involved in Young Collectors Night and will be here tomorrow had set out a silver monteith or a terrine sort of object.
Speaker: I can't remember quite which.
Speaker: For shame.
Speaker: For shame.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I mean, the night was a blur because some cocktails were consumed.
Speaker: But it was full of ice and it was full of beers and wine and the room was candle lit and there were Imari plates glistening on the walls and this was the apartment of a very young couple.
Speaker: And I think it was just so charming that they had put beers in, let's call it a Monteith.
Speaker: That's the most fun configuration of this juxtaposition.
Speaker: And we're treating the material with respect.
Speaker: It was in a place of pride in their home, center stage at this party.
Speaker: But they were using it to serve a function that made sense in their lives in the 21st century.
Speaker: And I think that's great.
Speaker: And I think we have to be able to think creatively about how we use these things so they can be a part of our lives and not just...
Speaker: you know, museum pieces.
Speaker: Do we have more questions now that we've only taken about 20 minutes to answer the first one?
Speaker: Thank you, Eve.
Speaker: No more burning curiosity.
Speaker: Well, we're going to have a wine reception now.
Speaker: And so if you develop any questions over wine, feel free to ask us or our brilliant panelists who will have much more to say if you just poke them.
Speaker: And you know where to find many of these objects around the show floor if you have the chance to visit.
Speaker: A huge thank you to the Winter Show for hosting us, to the magazine Antiques, to James Boning, Ria Murray, and Taylor Tisselthwaite, Michael Lees Griffith, thank you.
Speaker: Ben Miller, thank you.
Speaker: And please stay with us.
