Transcript
Speaker: I think this is our fifth Curious Objects Winter Show annual collaboration, and they just keep getting better and better.
Speaker: So I'm very excited to be here.
Speaker: And we're here, of course, at America's Greatest Antique Fair to talk about why people collect.
Speaker: or the vexatious question for us dealers of why certain people sometimes don't collect.
Speaker: And I want to start by just asking you all to drift with me for a moment through memory.
Speaker: Your whole life, you have worked hard to figure out who you are and what your place is in the world.
Speaker: We've all done this.
Speaker: You haven't answered all of your questions.
Speaker: You haven't solved all of your problems.
Speaker: But you've made progress.
Speaker: You've taken one step after another.
Speaker: You've built on your own achievements.
Speaker: You've learned about yourself and about the people that you love.
Speaker: And somehow you've made meaning and sense out of the jumbled mess that we call experience.
Speaker: Your life is a parade of stories built out of memory.
Speaker: And it's built on the stories of people who came before you, who made your world what it is.
Speaker: And it's not just your ancestors, but it's all the people whose shoulders that we stand on.
Speaker: Their stories have a living memory, physical artifacts of who these people were, what they did, how they lived.
Speaker: And these objects carry the weight and the hopes of those people and in turn of all of us.
Speaker: So if you want to know who you are, small question, you need to do more than just know these stories, you need to feel them, you need to hold them, you need to care for them.
Speaker: And you need to find out what they mean specifically for you so that you can be a part of that story as you carry it on for the next generation.
Speaker: And that to me is what collecting means.
Speaker: You might call yourself a collector.
Speaker: You might call yourself an art lover.
Speaker: You might call yourself something entirely different or nothing at all.
Speaker: But in fact, you know, to put it rather grandiosely, but I think accurately, you are a seeker of truth and you're a custodian of memories.
Speaker: And so I am absolutely delighted to have this conversation with three truth-tellers who each in their own way deliberate over the meaning and power of objects.
Speaker: And all three of these people are inveterate collectors.
Speaker: Lloyd Zuckerberg is a member of the New York Landmarks Conservancy.
Speaker: He was a deputy project manager for the restoration of Grand Central Terminal.
Speaker: He has a collection which ranges across a wide variety of media.
Speaker: Marcy Masterson is an interior designer.
Speaker: with a really sharp connoisseurial eye, and her projects reflect a keen awareness of decorative arts history and quality.
Speaker: And Tom Lawler is a, well, difficult man to describe, but he is an artist and he's an art publisher who served for many years as the Director of Visual Arts at Lincoln Center.
Speaker: I want to start by doing something that I do on every episode of Curious Objects, which is to impose upon my guests a few rapid fire questions.
Speaker: So we're going to dive right in.
Speaker: You're going to get to know them just a little right off the bat.
Speaker: And we'll take them starting with you, Tom, and then Lloyd, and then Marcy.
Speaker: And my first question for you is, what is the first object or artwork that you remember falling in love with?
Speaker: Oh, I think a box, a wooden box, when I was young that I bought at an antique shop that had inlay marquetry.
Speaker: I wanted to know how it was made, so I took it apart and remade it.
Speaker: I was a junior in Paris studying abroad, and I think it was a Monet painting that I had to study and wrote about.
Speaker: I have to say it was a pair of Venetian side chairs.
Speaker: I was working for my first job working for a company called Rose Cumming and they were extremely sculptural.
Speaker: One wouldn't sit in them.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, Tom, we'll go back to you for the next rapid fire question, which is, I want to know about the most painful mistake that you've made as a collector.
Speaker: I'm sure I've made quite a few.
Speaker: I mean, look at my apartment.
Speaker: But no, I think the, probably one mistake that I was telling you about earlier today, Ben, is I remember buying a bronze sculpture that I knew wasn't the period that the seller was telling me, and for some reason I bought it anyway.
Speaker: And I couldn't live with it, so I gave it away the next day.
Speaker: But that was kind of a silly thing to do, right?
Speaker: I suppose it made you happy in the moment.
Speaker: How about you, Lloyd?
Speaker: I bought a...
Speaker: absurdly expensive Windsor chair without my decorator's advice.
Speaker: And I have come to believe that it has a replaced splat, which I didn't know about, which is fine so long as I'd paid a commensurate price, but I didn't.
Speaker: But the chair resides very happily in one of my children's rooms right now and they love it.
Speaker: So it's all good.
Speaker: I would have to say it was advising a client to buy a Claude Leland chair many years ago.
Speaker: We were speaking of it earlier, and I just wasn't forceful enough.
Speaker: But they ended up buying Leland furniture many years later for...
Speaker: 10 times the price of what I had earlier advised him to do before he had gained such recognition.
Speaker: That sounds like less your mistake and more someone else's.
Speaker: I should have been more forceful.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: Tom, would you describe your collection more as a friend or a child or a spouse or a lover?
Speaker: I think my collection is a collaborator.
Speaker: I think the objects that I collect inform my creative work.
Speaker: The ancient mirror I'm holding influences the sculpture that I create.
Speaker: So I think most of the objects in my study there are related to either lessons I'm giving at the University of Columbia or things that I will make.
Speaker: Definitely a friend because I see them sometimes every day, sometimes from time to time.
Speaker: And it's just such fun every time I'm around them, which may not always be true with friends, but actually I think with good friends it is.
Speaker: So there's nothing illicit about it.
Speaker: So that's why I would avoid the other ones.
Speaker: And child, the discipline involved.
Speaker: There's no discipline with my stuff.
Speaker: You just send it away.
Speaker: I mean, you can't, well, you can do that with your kids, but you really don't want to do it.
Speaker: So definitely friend.
Speaker: I would absolutely agree.
Speaker: A friend that you just enjoy, enjoy every day.
Speaker: Your last rapid fire question.
Speaker: Who's your collecting role model?
Speaker: Well, I think it started when I was young.
Speaker: I had a semester in London at the Central School of Design when I was young, and it was located right across Lincoln's infields from the John Soane House.
Speaker: So I would go over there during lunch break and study it, and I think the color in the room here is influenced by that.
Speaker: I spent many hours in that house.
Speaker: I grew up in a house with stuff.
Speaker: My parents collected, my father's a serious collector of certain things, but I think my collecting role model is my mother-in-law, who is 92, and she'll still buy.
Speaker: If she'd get out of the house more, she'd still buy.
Speaker: And the reason I think of her as my collecting role model is she loves everything that she owns.
Speaker: She can tell you the story of where she bought everything she owns, which is something that I could probably do too.
Speaker: And she loves the hunt,
Speaker: To find something and if you bring her stuff to show her she lives in England and I'll Bring stuff to show her.
Speaker: She's always enthusiastic about it and says oh, that's job.
Speaker: Gosh beautiful and how much is that?
Speaker: Oh, what a great price I mean all the all the buzzwords you're looking to hear from someone who appreciates your collecting
Speaker: I think that's a very, very tough question.
Speaker: I think I would have to say Yves Saint Laurent, who I felt had such an incredible mixture of styles and period, and he just made it all work together magically.
Speaker: So I want to try to understand a little bit about the psychology of collecting.
Speaker: And to do that, we're going to take a look at the origins of your own collecting journey.
Speaker: So I want to ask of each of you, if you can remember the moment or maybe the period in your life when you first felt inspired to love decorative arts.
Speaker: And again, I'll start with you, Tom.
Speaker: I think I grew up in Detroit, and I think going to the Art Institute and looking at period rooms was very interesting for me.
Speaker: What was displayed in the room, the objects, and that was the inspiration, I think.
Speaker: How about you, Lloyd?
Speaker: There's really, I don't think there's really a moment.
Speaker: I think it was a gradual thing.
Speaker: I was thinking when I was a child, I had a junk drawer.
Speaker: And that was the drawer I never cleaned up, but it was where I kept all the stuff I didn't quite know what to do with or what to place and nobody else would appreciate it but me.
Speaker: And I remember when we moved, it was quite dramatic.
Speaker: I didn't know what to do with my junk drawer.
Speaker: I think,
Speaker: it just sort of came to me.
Speaker: I think if there was a moment I married my wife, Charlotte, and we both happened to like some of the same things.
Speaker: So that was really quite useful.
Speaker: And I'll be talking about the glass later.
Speaker: You know, we would take pilgrimages to places to look at glass and where glass was made, American glass was made.
Speaker: So maybe that would be the moment, but I really think it's a gradual absorption.
Speaker: And Marcy, what about you?
Speaker: I think it started very, very early on in that I just liked pretty things.
Speaker: And my mother had a lot of china and porcelain, and I think loved to set a table.
Speaker: And I think it really started there very early.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So none of the three of you are the sort of collector to stash something away in the safe and leave it there to collect dust and appreciate over time.
Speaker: You're much more of the sort to take an object out and enjoy it and experience it.
Speaker: And I'd like to know a little more about the context in which you actually use and enjoy the objects that you've acquired.
Speaker: And maybe, Marcy, I could start with you on that one.
Speaker: I use everything, I mean, I think I use everything that I acquire every day.
Speaker: I was at dinner last night and we were discussing a sale at Sotheby's that's going on right now and where people collecting silver or china or glassware and how so many people don't use beautiful things every night.
Speaker: They use utilitarian and they keep these things for God knows what.
Speaker: What's the point of owning them if you're not enjoying them every day?
Speaker: Sounds like you agree with that one.
Speaker: I completely agree.
Speaker: We always, my wife and I always look at each other and think about how could we use this?
Speaker: And it's out.
Speaker: I've even started to think about taking my silver utensils out of those lovely bags that I get from people like SJ Shrubsel so that when I open the drawer looking for something, I see what I have and I can pick from it because I never know what's in the bags so well.
Speaker: But
Speaker: um you know we make a joke the jewelry dealers the line that the jewelry dealers always use is and you can wear it with jeans they love to tell you whatever fancy piece of jewelry you're looking at and it looks great with jeans because everyone today wears jeans all the time and charlotte and i always laugh about that but it's it's kind of a metaphor for being that kind of collector
Speaker: If you don't use and enjoy your things, then they're not living.
Speaker: And the goal is to keep making memory with these objects.
Speaker: And you do that by enjoying them.
Speaker: I often think about, particularly with old jewelry, imagine a piece of Georgian jewelry, where that jewelry has been.
Speaker: Think of the parties that jewelry has been to.
Speaker: You think you've got a life?
Speaker: That piece of jewelry has had a much better life than you've probably had.
Speaker: And Tom, you live intimately with a very large collection of objects that you've put together over the decades, and you have a very intimate personal relationship with many of those things.
Speaker: How do you enjoy or experience those?
Speaker: I think it relates to my interest in history.
Speaker: An advantage to living in Detroit was getting Canadian television, which was all BBC documentaries.
Speaker: So early on, as a child,
Speaker: I was always watching documentaries, much to the dismay of my siblings.
Speaker: But I think my collection is alive in the way that it informs me of the period.
Speaker: I mean, I'm holding a 2,500-year-old object.
Speaker: Where have you been for 2,500 years?
Speaker: And for me, the objects, the books, the prints, the drawings have a
Speaker: have deep significance in what they're telling me about the period.
Speaker: I mean, I got interested in Etruscan and Roman mirrors partially by spending time at the American Academy in Rome and going to look at these things, but also I was given a gift of a mirror.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: And have you found communities or built communities of appreciation that you can share this enthusiasm and excitement with?
Speaker: Yeah, there are people that are very interested in ancient objects and where they came from.
Speaker: And we can even tell where...
Speaker: what part of the ancient world certain similar objects come from.
Speaker: So it says something about that period, but also about the spreading of ideas across the vast area with the type of communication that existed 2,000 years ago.
Speaker: And Lloyd and Marcy, you both mentioned enjoying your collections in the company of others, family, friends.
Speaker: Are those your sort of primary communities in which you share the joy of collecting?
Speaker: Or do you also have, you know, specialized collector groups, organizations, individuals that you like to talk about, talk with about these sorts of objects?
Speaker: Where do you get the sort of communal experience and satisfaction of collecting?
Speaker: I would say at the antique show, you know, at trade events.
Speaker: I wouldn't necessarily say my friends, because they wouldn't have the same, some friends, they wouldn't have the same interest, but you can really delve into things with other dealers or experts at auction.
Speaker: Yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker: I was thinking about that as you were asking the question and Tom was speaking.
Speaker: My wife and I were members of the American Cut Glass Association for many years.
Speaker: And the highlight was when we got the newsletters.
Speaker: And these are people from all over the country and, you know, an eclectic bunch.
Speaker: And they spent a lot of time talking about
Speaker: uh, the, what they were serving for dinner at their gatherings in these restaurants and outside of, you know, Midwestern cities, it was always quite amusing.
Speaker: And we went to a couple of, uh, conventions, glass conventions in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Speaker: They had a really big one, but I agree with Marcy.
Speaker: I actually find solace in the dealers.
Speaker: Um, because I,
Speaker: I mean, the dealers are always there.
Speaker: They sort of suffer from the same bug to a certain extent, except, you know, they sell more things than than I do.
Speaker: But I think there's just not a lot of people who really care these days.
Speaker: or notice sometimes.
Speaker: So that can be a little dispiriting.
Speaker: So a show like this, oh, it's like a grand week.
Speaker: Yeah, present company accepted, of course.
Speaker: Many enthusiasts in the room with us right now and, of course, across the Park Avenue Armory over the course of the 10 days of this show.
Speaker: I'm very excited.
Speaker: One of the things I've been really looking forward to about this conversation is the opportunity to talk about a few specific pieces that have meant a lot to all four of us over the years.
Speaker: And so we have each brought a
Speaker: shall we call it a curious object, from our own collections to talk about and to talk about our personal relationship with that object over time.
Speaker: So maybe I'll just start by saying a few words about a teapot, which if you're a listener to the Curious Objects podcast, you've heard me mention this before.
Speaker: It's a piece that I found in a little auction some years ago that I took a risk on by buying without having seen it in person.
Speaker: I had only seen pictures.
Speaker: And it's a silver teapot from about 1900 made in Providence, Rhode Island.
Speaker: It's a very unusual piece.
Speaker: It's sort of a grab bag of aesthetic ideas with elements that are strongly Rococo and others that are neoclassical.
Speaker: And then the overall form looks almost like a sort of Art Deco piece or even a Christopher Dresser style of design.
Speaker: And it's the sort of thing that, you know, on another day might have come together and looked completely absurd and
Speaker: Actually, maybe some of you think it does look completely absurd, but to me, it really hangs together and it becomes this charming, unique object full of personal character.
Speaker: And I bought this to use it as a teapot, and I do.
Speaker: I drink my tea from it very frequently.
Speaker: I take pleasure in doing so, and each time I brew a pot of tea in this teapot,
Speaker: I deepen my relationship with it.
Speaker: It has become a, I think I have to describe it also as a friend because it has taken that role in my life.
Speaker: If I'm having a dour day and I get home in the evening and I'm feeling down and I'm not sure what to do, well,
Speaker: I can brew a pot of tea and in a funny way, because of this pot, that ritual has become deeply comforting to me and can really turn my whole attitude around in just a few minutes.
Speaker: So I've found objects like this can fill a really strong, important psychological role in my life.
Speaker: And the wonderful thing about them is the longer you have them, the deeper and richer that experience becomes.
Speaker: So
Speaker: I will move on from my little teapot and perhaps Lloyd, I'll ask you to tell us about the dish that you have in front of us right now.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So this is, I guess I'd call it a center bowl.
Speaker: It sits in the middle of my dining room table at home, our dining room table.
Speaker: And it was made probably the first quarter of the 20th century by Hawkes, which was one of the finest makers of American glass in the history of the country.
Speaker: Thomas Hawkes came here from Ireland during the Civil War.
Speaker: He was from a fairly well-off family.
Speaker: He went to work for Hoare and Daley, H-O-A-R-E.
Speaker: Hoare became one of the best glass makers in the United States as well.
Speaker: And then he left in 1880 and set up his own shop.
Speaker: By 1882, he'd already gotten a patent for what became known as the Russian pattern and cut glass.
Speaker: And in 1889, he won...
Speaker: the grand prize at the Paris exposition.
Speaker: Now this was a huge event because Americans considered crystal glass a European thing and the best glass was European.
Speaker: This was the first time an American had won the grand prize in Paris and it was a monumental event.
Speaker: Hawks sold two sets of crystal to the White House, the first set to President Grover Cleveland and the second set to Eleanor Roosevelt, which I found intriguing in 1936.
Speaker: A woman known for caring for a lot of poor people bought a set of Hawks crystal for the White House.
Speaker: Well, maybe they needed a set, who knows.
Speaker: And when I was young, we used to have celebratory family meals with Hawke's Crystal that my mom had, which I found out she had inherited from her mother.
Speaker: And what I also found out, which was kind of interesting, is that my grandmother had a set of 18.
Speaker: She had service for 18.
Speaker: She had water goblets, wine goblets, and cordials, and champagnes.
Speaker: and butter plates and when my mother got married my grandmother's friends gave her a set of salad plates to go along in the same pattern the primrose pattern so my mom had this huge set of hawks that she had really started with my grandmother
Speaker: And then my mom gave it all to us.
Speaker: Unfortunately, we had no place to put it.
Speaker: It's still in the boxes, but one day it's coming out.
Speaker: That made my wife and I very interested in hawks.
Speaker: And we went up early in our marriage to Kennebunk to visit friends in Kennebunkport.
Speaker: And there were a lot of antique shops up there that had hawks.
Speaker: And what I realized is, is that wherever there were really rich people,
Speaker: At the turn of the century, there was a lot of hawks because that's what you wanted to have.
Speaker: If you wanted to impress your friends, you wanted to have hawks.
Speaker: So we bought a lot of hawks.
Speaker: This bowl, which is in the iris pattern, which was one of hawks' most elaborate patterns with a silver mount, I bought from a very, very good dealer.
Speaker: called eBay.
Speaker: And it was really hard for me to find something on eBay.
Speaker: Actually, it wasn't.
Speaker: There was a lot of it.
Speaker: I bought these.
Speaker: These are oil and vinegar.
Speaker: things that they made, and in fact, they patented this, Hawkes patented this, and they have the line here for the vinegar and the line here for the oil.
Speaker: That's quite a ratio by today's standards.
Speaker: And you would shake it up.
Speaker: They made similar ones for ketchup and mayonnaise, I didn't bring those.
Speaker: They made over 330 patterns of glass.
Speaker: So the Hawks Crystal Company, the Hawks Glass Company survived primarily in Corning, New York.
Speaker: They co-founded Steuben to create blanks.
Speaker: They didn't actually make glass, they cut glass, engraved glass and cut crystal.
Speaker: I like the engraved, my wife and I. And they closed in 1962.
Speaker: So my mom was married in 1959.
Speaker: She probably got some of the last batch of the Hawks Crystal.
Speaker: It's just, to me, it's a lovely thing because A, it's usable.
Speaker: It's beautiful, to me at least.
Speaker: And it was affordable at a time in my life where I couldn't afford to buy really expensive things.
Speaker: How do you use it today?
Speaker: Well, you know, this sits in the center of the dining table.
Speaker: Our dining table is the middle of our house.
Speaker: We walk through that room all the time.
Speaker: We see it all the time.
Speaker: The only time it ever has anything in it is in the fall when I put gourds in it.
Speaker: And otherwise, unless the table is extended, it's a little hard because it's big.
Speaker: And I always hear...
Speaker: people bang into it like that and it scares the heck out of me.
Speaker: So I usually take it off the table during a meal when the table is in that state.
Speaker: But if you came to my house for dinner and we ate, it wasn't takeaway in the kitchen, you would eat from, you would drink with very nice glass.
Speaker: You might have dessert on Hawke's plates.
Speaker: there'd be glass all around.
Speaker: We might serve food on some of the hawks plates and things like that.
Speaker: So it's there.
Speaker: And we just love using it.
Speaker: I've never made oil and vinegar in these, by the way, because they're a pain to clean out afterwards.
Speaker: Can you just ring that bowl one more time?
Speaker: Very nice.
Speaker: It's a great sound, isn't it?
Speaker: I'm told it's the shape, the quality of the glass and the shape that does that.
Speaker: Marcy, I want to ask you about the curious object, which, unfortunately, you weren't able to bring because of its significant size.
Speaker: But it's a chair that has a special place in your life.
Speaker: Can you tell us about this?
Speaker: Actually, this is a set of chairs that I opted not to bring.
Speaker: I fell in love with this chair, set of chairs, when they were with an Italian dealer.
Speaker: They're Italian 19th century chairs.
Speaker: And from the Piedmont section of Italy.
Speaker: And I had seen them in a very prestigious antique dealer's shop, and I couldn't stop thinking of them because I thought that there was such an odd shape.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: They stayed in my mind, stayed in my mind.
Speaker: Then they showed up at Christie's.
Speaker: And I thought, oh my gosh, there are those chairs again.
Speaker: I can't believe it.
Speaker: I really, really, I just wanted to buy them so badly.
Speaker: And tried to, I wanted to, I thought, I can't let this go by again.
Speaker: But they did.
Speaker: They went.
Speaker: And then a dear friend of mine who's in the show right now called Cove Landing.
Speaker: Cove Landing had them.
Speaker: And I thought, third time, Lucky, you cannot let this slip through your fingers.
Speaker: So I bit the bullet, and I bought them.
Speaker: And I have to say, they're in my entrance hall.
Speaker: And I absolutely, I still love them.
Speaker: And I just think the form can be viewed as quite modern, but they're actually antique.
Speaker: And they have this lovely fruit wood, which I think is probably lemon wood, if I had to guess, but I don't know.
Speaker: And the seat is a very pronounced seat as well.
Speaker: It's concave, the front of it.
Speaker: So that is my curious object that I live with and enjoy every day.
Speaker: So the seat back is this very odd sort of T-shape.
Speaker: What does it feel like to sit in one of these?
Speaker: Are they comfortable?
Speaker: You perch.
Speaker: You really don't sit back.
Speaker: No, they're really sculptural.
Speaker: No, I don't.
Speaker: They get a lot of coats on them and purses and things like that.
Speaker: No, I don't sit in them much.
Speaker: So you actually treat them, it sounds like you treat them as much as sculptures as you do as chairs.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: I do sit in them, but I mean, they're more comfortable chairs to sit in.
Speaker: But the support, the back is just that T-shape, so I don't want to take any chances on them.
Speaker: Last but not least, we have our oldest curious object for today.
Speaker: And Tom, you're holding it in your hand right now.
Speaker: Could you tell us about this piece?
Speaker: Yes, it's an Etruscan hand mirror.
Speaker: I like ancient objects that were functional and used.
Speaker: And some of the objects had a very different meaning in their day.
Speaker: Hand mirrors were intended to be owned by women only.
Speaker: And they were...
Speaker: The reflection, it was a very mysterious reflection.
Speaker: If you imagine this object would have been as shiny as Ben's teapot.
Speaker: It would have been highly polished bronze.
Speaker: And the reflection on the reverse would have been a very mysterious reflection where the reflection would have an odd sort of foreshortened
Speaker: look, but I like objects that feel to me like they're imbued with generations of owners.
Speaker: Where someone was looking into this 2,000 years ago, and I fantasize that somehow their face is here somewhere.
Speaker: As a sculptor, I do interpretations of these objects.
Speaker: And so I've created, along with the sculptor who's here, Ricardo Arango, who is a welder, large versions of ancient mirrors.
Speaker: and they're at Maison-Gerard right now.
Speaker: And they have the same reflective quality as an ancient mirror.
Speaker: You look at the reverse of them, but there is something that this, some of the mirrors that I have are silvered bronze, and some of them are silver.
Speaker: Now silver in antiquity was pure silver, it wasn't an alloy, so I mean you could actually fold the mirror in half if you're not careful.
Speaker: But some of the mirrors still have reflection, and for me that is, I mean I look at this and see my own reflection and think how many other faces are captured in this mirror over 2,000 years.
Speaker: And like I said, a mirror like this that would have been, again, Etruscan, so it only would have been in the Italian peninsula, but some of the Roman mirrors, you would find a mirror made in the Middle East that would be the same as a mirror made in Britain.
Speaker: So this technology traveled vast areas and priests would dip a mirror into the water in the ancient world and look at your reflection and predict your health.
Speaker: Men were not supposed to look at their reflection.
Speaker: It was considered vain.
Speaker: And I think it was Pliny that said that women should use mirrors to determine their future in that if you're not attractive, you really have to build up your other attributes.
Speaker: So, I mean, but it really, I mean, so the mirrors were not, and if you think of it 2,000 years ago, very few people saw their reflection.
Speaker: only aristocratic women would have owned mirrors, and the scene on the non-reflective side would have been a mythological story or some kind of lesson informing story about virtue or something like that.
Speaker: And Tom, as you mentioned, well, you're an artist, you draw inspiration from antiquity, but also from a broad range of design sources, ranging from Etruscan hand mirrors up through 20th century design.
Speaker: And you collect all of these objects as well, and your collection is full of such an eclectic
Speaker: of objects that can seem almost bewildering.
Speaker: But I wonder if there's a common thread.
Speaker: There is, I think, a common thread.
Speaker: You could look at, I have objects designed in the 20th century that you could say are inspired by this.
Speaker: And I'm interested in the interpretation of classicism throughout the centuries.
Speaker: So there's a sculptor that has a sculpture at Lincoln Center, Dimitri Hatsi's Three Graces.
Speaker: And I have a maquette for that sculpture.
Speaker: And again, it's an interpretation of classicism by a modern sculptor.
Speaker: The objects also that I'm very interested in are objects that are designed with an aesthetic way beyond their day.
Speaker: objects designed maybe in the late 18th century that looked like they could be from the 1960s.
Speaker: You know, a tea urn that is a sphere, a severe sphere that is, that you know, that you really can't tell what the period would be.
Speaker: So I'm interested in advanced ideas from artists and designers that think outside the aesthetic of their time.
Speaker: And Marcy, as a designer, of course, you work with clients who are looking to you for guidance as to their taste, the looks of their dwelling places.
Speaker: But at the same time, you know, they have their own taste and you have to work within their preferences and their desires.
Speaker: I wonder how it is that you help these people to find their way to objects that they can love.
Speaker: Well, I try and find things that are going to work in with the scheme of the interior and the architecture of
Speaker: space, and we try and find a common ground, a theme, a period, and then we just review as much as I can possibly find.
Speaker: And the more they see, the more they refine their taste, and the more they realize what they like or they don't like.
Speaker: And you've said to me that it feels to you like sometimes your own taste becomes a guiding post for your clients.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Um, because, uh, I mean, on, on some level I'm, I'm collecting, I'm collecting it for them.
Speaker: So, um, some very strange level, I feel like I have collected it.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's my treasured little piece and I can go back and, and visit it.
Speaker: But, um,
Speaker: in general, they fall in love with it as well.
Speaker: Can I add to that?
Speaker: Please.
Speaker: Because Marcy has been our decorator for many years.
Speaker: And what Marcy did in the beginning was to recommend that Charlotte and I go out and see the best of the best to help train our eye so we'd know what great things were supposed to look like.
Speaker: And we kind of took to that and
Speaker: The first dealer my wife took me to after having gone with Marcy was a furniture dealer who no longer has a shop named Jeremy.
Speaker: And I went downstairs with Michael Hill, who was one of the two brothers who owned Jeremy, and within about five minutes, I was on the floor, and he was explaining to me why this little table that my wife liked was such a great table.
Speaker: To clarify, you were on the floor to look under the table.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, sorry.
Speaker: We were not wrestling over the table.
Speaker: That price is too high.
Speaker: And we ended up buying the table.
Speaker: I remember we called you from, we were walking on the street and Marcy was shocked because Jeremy, she didn't think we'd actually buy anything there.
Speaker: We just thought we wanted to look and see, but this was actually a really great table.
Speaker: We still have it today.
Speaker: And it just lifts, you know, everything else in the room.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: But by Marcy helping us, introducing us to people who help train our eye, and by, I mean, even today pointing things out, that's really fun.
Speaker: You know, that's community, too.
Speaker: And it's sort of transference from, you know, the dealer to the decorator and back again.
Speaker: But it all goes back and forth, I think, too, because you get to a certain point where
Speaker: where you can talk to the dealer about something, you might see something on a piece of furniture and a good dealer's gonna be excited that you found something, not upset, at least they don't show that they're upset.
Speaker: It happened in the building here about an hour ago with a friend of mine.
Speaker: And he said, you have a very good eye.
Speaker: That wasn't to me, it was to my friend.
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Speaker: Could you just say a few more words about your relationship with dealers?
Speaker: Because, Lloyd, you've developed a very keen eye of your own through dedicated study, through the accumulation of a library, through attending fairs like this one over the years and looking at numerous objects.
Speaker: But at the same time, you still personally rely very heavily on dealers, on
Speaker: their guidance on their connoisseurship.
Speaker: Why is that?
Speaker: How would you describe your relationship with the dealer community?
Speaker: Look, I think that it is because of the efforts of the dealers that one can come to a fair like this and just be in awe of everything you see around you.
Speaker: I think anyone who's serious about collecting, I mean, honestly, you don't have to be serious.
Speaker: You could buy one thing.
Speaker: If you don't value the dealers, you're making a huge mistake.
Speaker: Now, a fair like this where dealers are vetted, there's a community of dealers.
Speaker: They're all invited to participate typically by other dealers, so I understand it.
Speaker: You know, people are generally reputable.
Speaker: There was a panel in here yesterday and someone said, you need to find a trustworthy dealer.
Speaker: And I said, well, what are the markers of a trustworthy dealer?
Speaker: I kind of know the answer, but part of it is, fares like this, you know that people are carefully considered before they come in, and their things are vetted individually by a team of people, many of whom are not dealers.
Speaker: They're outside experts who don't actually buy or sell anything themselves.
Speaker: I have an expression.
Speaker: I always want to pay a good price for something, but I want the dealer to be happy to see me coming down the aisle.
Speaker: I don't want the dealer to say, oh.
Speaker: Which we are, Lloyd.
Speaker: Okay, good.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: You know, there are people who talk about and take pride in kind of, you know, really getting a fabulous deal on something.
Speaker: And that's great.
Speaker: Everyone loves to get a good deal on something.
Speaker: The better deal you get from a dealer, the more you have to spend next time around.
Speaker: But all that being said, dealers are living this every day.
Speaker: And they're making so many judgments in the course of their workday.
Speaker: Who might buy something or how does this fit into something else I may have in the shop or something that I haven't had in the shop or I really love this?
Speaker: but it's not my period, so how do I understand and explain to people why I have this?
Speaker: That just happened at a jewelry dealer about another, about an hour ago with something.
Speaker: I think you ignore and diminish the dealers at your own peril.
Speaker: I think that these people are killing themselves to curate these wonderful objects.
Speaker: And I really respect and admire how hard the dealers work to do that.
Speaker: You know, this morning I was researching, and yesterday I was doing some research on hawks to sort of freshen my memory.
Speaker: I was reading some of these books that I brought with me, and you're welcome to look at them afterwards.
Speaker: And I was thinking, gosh, that's what a dealer has to do with every single object they bring into this fair.
Speaker: Because the vetting committee wants to understand provenance, history, how do you know it is what they say it is, which is something I learned from Michael Hill.
Speaker: Michael Hill said, what you're really paying the dealer for is so that you can be sure it is what I'm saying it is.
Speaker: I also think it's interesting with the auction houses, if I may just for a moment, because the commission rates have gotten ginormous and I don't feel I have nearly as much recourse with an auction house as I do with a dealer.
Speaker: And I'm not trying to speak negatively about the auction houses, I just think it's a different kind of transaction.
Speaker: And people who sometimes buy at auction and think, oh, they got a deal on something.
Speaker: Well, there's no deals anymore, really.
Speaker: It's so transparent, the marketplace.
Speaker: Everyone knows everything.
Speaker: I go to dealers about things in the auctions and say, what do you think?
Speaker: And they'll help me.
Speaker: And they'll help me even if they don't have a nickel to get out of it.
Speaker: Now, I just think you really got to look hard and trust and find dealers you can trust and admire and be respectful of the effort they're putting in and not belittle their efforts because they make these fairs so exciting.
Speaker: I just want to stipulate that I didn't pay Lloyd anything for those remarks.
Speaker: But he couldn't have done better if I had.
Speaker: I want to open the conversation up to all of you and just pose the question, what do you think...
Speaker: people who aren't collecting things, who aren't purchasing things, who haven't yet found their way into a type of object or a theme or a material, or they haven't worked their way into their own identity as a collector, what are they missing out on?
Speaker: And I'll let whoever grabs the microphone first answer that.
Speaker: For me, it'd be hard to imagine because I have always collected things.
Speaker: I mean, I think I have a collection of about 500 medallions, but it started because I was gardening with my uncle in England in Cornwall when I was a teenager and found a little silver medallion that said 1760 on it.
Speaker: And I said, boy, there's nothing this old in Detroit.
Speaker: And so I...
Speaker: kept that, I still have it somewhere, and that started me, I wanna find more of these things.
Speaker: So I don't know, that's not addressing your question properly, but it's hard to imagine not wanting to have things.
Speaker: Although, I bring objects like this into my classroom at Columbia, and my students want to hear me talk about it,
Speaker: And they take a video of me talking about it.
Speaker: And then I say, wouldn't you like to own this?
Speaker: And they look confused.
Speaker: Like, why would I want to own it?
Speaker: I just took a video of you.
Speaker: I said, but if you owned it and you woke up at 2 o'clock in the morning, you could actually touch it.
Speaker: And you could touch it whenever you want.
Speaker: You could even carry it with you.
Speaker: So that's interesting to me.
Speaker: So it's...
Speaker: It's hard to imagine not, this object is part, I'm the caretaker in my lifetime, then it goes somewhere else, right?
Speaker: But it's hard to imagine not having things that have meaning to you, right?
Speaker: Anything to add, Marcy?
Speaker: Well, I think for me, and I think once my clients go
Speaker: catch the bug, it's the thrill of the hunt.
Speaker: I mean, when they find something, they, you know, really just get ecstatic.
Speaker: And, I mean, it's really interesting.
Speaker: It's fun, you know, to research where it's been and the history of it and then to live with it.
Speaker: And it isn't necessarily at the price level of an antique show.
Speaker: I mean, one can collect anything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, what an interesting source of entertainment that is exactly the opposite of virtual.
Speaker: It's the most concrete, sort of physically gratifying pursuit that I could imagine.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: My wife and I have a house in England and there's a car boot sale.
Speaker: Everyone know what a car boot sale is?
Speaker: It's basically like a junk sale where you open up the trunk of your car and show your wares.
Speaker: And it happens, it's called the Friday Street Market, but it happens on Sundays, which is very English and very confusing to me.
Speaker: But that's because the road it's on is called Friday Street.
Speaker: Anyway, it's isn't that that's typically English, right?
Speaker: It's designed to confuse because, you know, we won the war.
Speaker: So they're still annoyed.
Speaker: So anyway, I guess.
Speaker: So I I put it in my calendar when I'm there for every Sunday.
Speaker: It goes from six till whenever.
Speaker: And of course, the best stuff is from six to seven.
Speaker: And I always think I'm going to get there early and I kind of never do it.
Speaker: And you can get anything from like a secondhand stepladder to a treasure if you're lucky.
Speaker: That thrill of the hunt is something, I mean, there are people in my life who wouldn't in a million years bother going with me to the Friday street market, and I'm not presumptuous enough to say, yeah, my sister just raised her hand, she's one of them.
Speaker: We're of the same mother and father.
Speaker: And what is she missing out on?
Speaker: You know what, probably nothing, because she has her own passions.
Speaker: That's kind of why it's fun for me to hang out with my mother-in-law because she'll get excited about all this stuff that I pick up here and there.
Speaker: But I tell you who I do feel sorry for.
Speaker: I don't feel sorry for people who don't collect.
Speaker: I feel sorry for people whose houses are filled with, you know, stuff that their decorators picked out for them that they just said, just make it done, just do it.
Speaker: And they don't know anything about anything in there.
Speaker: And they probably spent a lot of money, which is fair enough.
Speaker: That's good for the economy and people are entitled to make a living.
Speaker: And it's not that they're bad people in any way, but, you know, you don't sound so sure about that.
Speaker: OK, fair enough.
Speaker: But you said you're a steward of that Etruscan mirror.
Speaker: That's how I feel about the things that I own.
Speaker: I'm taking care of these for someone else.
Speaker: And I always wanna bring criminal charges against dealers who strip and polish a great piece of patinated English furniture of 300 years of history.
Speaker: I just think that that's something immoral about doing that.
Speaker: Sounds like a strong campaign platform.
Speaker: I won't be running on that.
Speaker: We're coming toward the end here, and I have two final questions for each of you, which is, first of all, what would be your unlimited budget, absolute fantasy acquisition?
Speaker: I invite the audience to ponder this question for yourselves as well.
Speaker: That Monet I studied in Paris, La Seine Pré de Giverny, was part of a series.
Speaker: Or a Van Gogh Boats and the museum in Amsterdam, but probably that Monet.
Speaker: I'd trade all the modern art in the world for that Monet.
Speaker: That wouldn't be a very good financial trade.
Speaker: No, but that's another thing we didn't touch on.
Speaker: Never buy something for investment, in my opinion.
Speaker: Just buy it because you love it.
Speaker: I think, you're reminding me, I think if I could buy The Death of Marat by David, I often take baths and read in the bath, read art journals, things like this, and think that painting would be nice in my possession.
Speaker: So if I could get that, right?
Speaker: And Marcy?
Speaker: I have to say, I'm going to steal Lloyd's answer.
Speaker: I think the water lilies at the Met would be very nice in my possession.
Speaker: It would greatly enhance my living room.
Speaker: You have just the perfect wall for it, I'm sure.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Oh, perfect.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: And finally, I think you've all had a chance to walk around the fair, some of you quite a bit.
Speaker: And I wonder what object you think visitors should be sure not to miss on the show floor.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's a rather easy question for me.
Speaker: Something truly, truly unique and outstanding, and I have to say, it is a trepso.
Speaker: And I'm not saying this to be patronizing.
Speaker: The Eppern, the Chimoiserie Eppern that they have is truly, truly outstanding.
Speaker: And it's the kind of thing that I could stare at
Speaker: for hours on end and continued to find a detail that I had not seen previously.
Speaker: Well, it's at- A shrubs hole.
Speaker: Booth A4.
Speaker: There's silver dealers.
Speaker: It's, Marcy, you're welcome to spend as many hours on our booth looking at that as you like.
Speaker: There is, I have to say, there's some stellar furniture here, I must say, but that Epern
Speaker: really was, is absolutely extraordinary.
Speaker: And I understand it, it hasn't sold yet.
Speaker: Well, uh, not as of recording, but for those who are listening on the podcast, who knows anything is possible.
Speaker: It was, uh, featured in the New York times and it certainly gotten a lot of attention at the fair.
Speaker: This is really tough.
Speaker: I'm glad I didn't go first.
Speaker: I'll agree with what Marcy said, but I also think Simon Phillips has a pair of hall chairs, which are pretty exceptional, with like a shell base.
Speaker: There's a Galerie Layage, dealer I don't know, has a green Verre Eglomise mirror from Louis XIV period.
Speaker: Gorgeous thing.
Speaker: Robert Young, he's sold a lot of things, but there's a dining table in the middle of the booth, which I hadn't paid any attention to until this trip today.
Speaker: It's unbelievable.
Speaker: Wartsky's jewelry, I don't know.
Speaker: It's a really tough question to answer.
Speaker: My friend said, walk me around the highlights.
Speaker: We got halfway through.
Speaker: There's so many highlights.
Speaker: And the beauty of this fair is that if you come back again and again and just walk into a booth, Jill Newhouse has a couple pictures on the wall which are extraordinary, and you just say, tell me about this, the dealers, they're just delighted to talk to you about it and tell you about their things.
Speaker: All of them I found, and that's really a great gift.
Speaker: So there's a lot.
Speaker: And Tom, I'm gonna save you the trouble of pitching your own pieces, Maison Girard.
Speaker: In C7, right?
Speaker: I'm very attracted to maps, and there's a dealer in old maps, and maps like ancient objects
Speaker: really reveal the values of the time.
Speaker: I have a map in my bedroom that's a panorama of Rome from 1490, and the Pantheon is larger than the Colosseum.
Speaker: So it's, not the Pantheon, St.
Speaker: Peter's is larger than the Colosseum.
Speaker: So that's telling you what angle they want you to follow, right?
Speaker: The Christian world is the world there.
Speaker: But what I love about, of course, your booth, Ben, is the provenance of these objects.
Speaker: I mean, not only can you acquire an incredible silver object, but they have an incredible history, right?
Speaker: I mean, to me, because objects relate to their historic significance, that to me is fascinating.
Speaker: So I guess, I mean, there's so many exhibitors that have compelling things.
Speaker: Well, I just want to echo what you said, Lloyd, and...
Speaker: Just say that, you know, the great opportunity of walking around a fair like The Winter Show is it has everything you'd like to get out of the world's greatest museums in terms of the quality and range of the material.
Speaker: And then some of the world's greatest experts in this material are standing in every single booth just waiting for you to ask a question, just hoping to have the opportunity to share their enthusiasm about these pieces with you.
Speaker: And that's something, you know, the vast majority of us never have the opportunity to experience that at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Speaker: But for the price of admission, you can come in here to the Winter Show and have exactly that experience.
Speaker: It's incredible to me, even as a dealer.
Speaker: It's something that I do my best to take advantage of.
Speaker: And I hope you all will, too, if you haven't already.
Speaker: But I just want to say thank you so much for coming.
Speaker: And thank you, of course, to
Speaker: to the three of you, Lloyd Zuckerberg, Marcy Masterson, and Tom Lawler.
Speaker: This has been a great pleasure for me.
Speaker: Thank you to the Winter Show for having us and for having Curious Objects once more.
Speaker: If we have a few minutes, perhaps we could take some questions from the audience?
Speaker: A question about space.
Speaker: other than buying a larger house or apartment every year or two as we acquire more things, how do you approach space as your collection grows?
Speaker: Tom has a very interesting answer to that question.
Speaker: Well, my relationship with space, fortunately I'm short.
Speaker: And so my apartment has very high ceilings, so you just keep layering things.
Speaker: How many square feet is your apartment?
Speaker: 500 square feet.
Speaker: Yeah, well, with, I think there is 6,000 books in that apartment.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And of course, a lot of these mirrors.
Speaker: But space, well, fortunately, I don't have to live all the time there, so.
Speaker: Can I just say, find, I have someone in New York I sell through, and I have someone in England I sell through.
Speaker: So don't be afraid to let go.
Speaker: You know the Marie Kondo approach, hold it.
Speaker: If it gives you pleasure, keep it.
Speaker: If it doesn't, let it go.
Speaker: And if you need to give it to the thrift shop, give it to the thrift shop.
Speaker: Just move it along.
Speaker: Makes room for more stuff.
Speaker: I need your help.
Speaker: I need your help.
Speaker: I'll come over, free of charge.
Speaker: We're buddies now.
Speaker: I have a deep relationship with all these objects.
Speaker: You can't let them go.
Speaker: Yeah, I can't.
Speaker: Then, you know, you're stuck.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Or happy.
Speaker: Any more questions?
Speaker: My question has kind of two parts to it.
Speaker: Um, and the first part is if you have children, are they even remotely interested in what you do as collectors?
Speaker: And the second part is what's the destiny of your collections?
Speaker: Well, I have three children.
Speaker: Only one of them expressed interest regularly coming to the antique show.
Speaker: Um, the other two were not that interested.
Speaker: he actually came to the show last week and started talking to one of the great dealers, Blairman, about something on his stand.
Speaker: And Blairman had no idea who he was, but I found him 10 minutes later and there he was reading a book on Christopher Dresser.
Speaker: So, you know, you plant seeds, you never know what happens.
Speaker: Some of my kids have said I want that already.
Speaker: They've told me which is fine.
Speaker: I don't have a problem with that and I think you know as far as the value of things sometimes I Kind of figure if you know when I'm dead my kids sell that for half of what I paid for it.
Speaker: What do I care?
Speaker: It gave me pleasure I didn't buy it to make my kids rich necessarily.
Speaker: Maybe they would have wished I had and
Speaker: I think that's a very hard thing to predict, and I think you do your children a favor by either selling off a lot of things as you get older in years, my mother-in-law's done a lot of that, because you give them the money, they can do what they want, or you give them a template for what to do.
Speaker: with these things.
Speaker: These things should go to that dealer.
Speaker: And that's kind of how I've thought about it a little bit.
Speaker: I've tried to catalog everything in a software program called Collectify, which I don't know, it's supposed to be a great software program, but I can't get them to help me on their help desk anymore, so I'm looking for a new one.
Speaker: One out of three ain't bad, Lloyd.
Speaker: Well, the other's interesting.
Speaker: The second one just moved to a new apartment, and she was drawn to some of the stuff that she grew up with.
Speaker: You know, you never know when it's going to happen, and my mother wouldn't have predicted when I was a kid that I would cherish her Hawke's Crystal collection one day or stuff.
Speaker: It really wasn't a collection.
Speaker: It was stuff that she used.
Speaker: And even the one who...
Speaker: would get so angry when we took him to a museum.
Speaker: He would sit outside.
Speaker: I'm not going in.
Speaker: We took him to Graceland, and he was sitting down on the bench.
Speaker: He refused to go in, and I said, Toby, why won't you come in?
Speaker: He said, you lied to me.
Speaker: This is a museum.
Speaker: But even he now, he goes antiquing at these car boot sales when he takes his friends to England.
Speaker: He takes them to the same silly shops that I go to.
Speaker: So who knows?
Speaker: God bless them.
Speaker: I give things to charity auctions and things.
Speaker: I will know and through the business that I have of publishing small editions of sculptural works by well-known artists, I have developed relationships with
Speaker: university art galleries and museums.
Speaker: And so I give away a fair amount of art and some of the objects that I have.
Speaker: I have a very interesting object during COVID when everything was closed, I couldn't sit still.
Speaker: So I drove around, you could park anywhere in the city
Speaker: I would drive in front of shops and get the cell number of the person posting in the window and say, I really like that piece in your window.
Speaker: So we're closed, we can't do business.
Speaker: I said, can we do it in a medieval way?
Speaker: Bring the object, leave it on the curb, and I'll bring my car and put the top down, just put it in the back seat.
Speaker: And so we did, I found some interesting things that way too, so.
Speaker: You could park anywhere then.
Speaker: I think one thing that's interesting is kind of the ebbs and flows of the value of these objects over time.
Speaker: And so I would say today, are there anything, any eras or periods that you think have extreme value but are undervalued in the current market?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I think English furniture is very undervalued at the moment.
Speaker: And I think French furniture probably is as well.
Speaker: It's definitely a buyer's market.
Speaker: There's a, Clinton Howell has a magnificent serpentine chest, great patina, great color, just beautiful thing.
Speaker: We talked about it.
Speaker: The price, it may not be affordable to everyone in this room, but it is so much less expensive than it would have been, you know, 15, 20 years ago.
Speaker: I mean, it's tempting to get a warehouse and just put it all away, but again, that's not letting the furniture live.
Speaker: I think you will first walk onto a booth, see what catches your eye, then ask, how much is it?
Speaker: And then you'll know, like I do that all the time, and I say, there's no way I can afford that.
Speaker: Or, hmm, that's something I can think about.
Speaker: And so do the same thing, and that way you'll know.
Speaker: Go to the 77th Street flea market on the west side.
Speaker: I've bought some great things there.
Speaker: That's where I have someone who sells things for me, too, actually.
Speaker: You might buy something that I'm selling.
Speaker: There really are opportunities, I mean, in New York in particular, everywhere.
Speaker: I mean, so one can begin collecting on any level in any of these flea markets or out in the countryside.
Speaker: You know, you just have to refine your eye.
Speaker: And the best way to refine your eye is to just look at the very best first so you know what it's meant to look like.
Speaker: I think antiquities too.
Speaker: Ancient objects are quite undervalued.
Speaker: I mean, imagine this 2,500-year-old mirror.
Speaker: You could probably find one of these for $6,000.
Speaker: You could also buy a Jasper Johns print for $100,000, right?
Speaker: I mean, so I think the most expensive antiquity that ever sold at auction was maybe $30 million.
Speaker: I mean, compare that to the contemporary market, which is, you know, that's half of what a Gerhard Richter painting myself for.
Speaker: Although I'd love to have a Gerhard Richter painting.
Speaker: But the antiquities, I mean, they're quite, I think, undervalued.
Speaker: It's hard as a collector not to see anything that you're interested in as being anything but undervalued.
Speaker: And of course we're all boosters, but I do think it's true.
Speaker: If you look across the broad scope of antiques, you will not have to look far before you start to find objects that if you really think about it,
Speaker: you can't escape thinking that this thing is so wonderful and it's so enchanting and it has such a rich history behind it and it's in such fantastic condition and it connects me to so many past generations of people and the stories around it are so enriching and I can have this for some relatively modest sum of money.
Speaker: I think about the old 18th century aristocratic English families who invested so heavily in their decorative arts, their furniture, their silver, their ceramics, the paintings they hung on the wall.
Speaker: These objects represented in many cases huge fractions of their net worth, 50%, maybe more.
Speaker: And I don't know about you, 50% of my net worth is not in my decorative arts collection, but it should be.
Speaker: I mean, there's no reason for it not to be because that's a place where you can invest in things that just bring you pleasure on a daily basis, that are in an active way contributing to the pleasure of your life.
Speaker: And how many areas can you think of where you can invest your money and get that kind of dividend?
Speaker: And so in that regard, it's, I would say pretty much everything is undervalued.
Speaker: Ben, can I just add something?
Speaker: I have much more admiration for someone who bought something that isn't very valuable in terms of actual dollars, but they can explain why it means something to them, you know, where they found it.
Speaker: what the experience was like acquiring it, why it brings them pleasure, and someone who has a name brand work of art on their wall that they just needed to have that name brand work of art.
Speaker: Now, I also have a friend who loves Andy Warhol.
Speaker: He genuinely loves Andy Warhol.
Speaker: He reads books on Andy Warhol.
Speaker: He's got it.
Speaker: He's figured it out.
Speaker: That's great, too.
Speaker: And I just think it's important not to equate high value with greatness.
Speaker: Greatness is all around you.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be valuable.
Speaker: And if you think of the uniqueness of some things, I mean, these weren't just stamped out.
Speaker: These were, the template may have been cast and similar to others, right?
Speaker: But the image itself of the mythological story was all hand-carved.
Speaker: Each mirror was all hand, it's not an addition of something.
Speaker: So this is the only one that exists like this.
Speaker: So there's a uniqueness to some of these objects too that I think, I'm not concerned about the monetary value of it, but that it makes it pretty unusual, right?
Speaker: Any final questions?
Speaker: One of the things that struck me listening to you all was sort of your relationship with the concept of possession.
Speaker: Sort of, you know, Marcy was sort of talking about how you feel possession over these objects that go into the collections of other people.
Speaker: And also feeling like you're in a long line of people who possess these objects and caretaking.
Speaker: And I'm sort of curious as you've continued to collect and sort of reflect on
Speaker: Perhaps how your perception of possession is perhaps sort of different than what the average American or the average person might have, how that concept has evolved to you.
Speaker: I think one key difference in people who buy not just antiques, but who seek out high quality objects to have in their lives is that they're not thinking of these things as expendable, disposable, and depreciating.
Speaker: And I don't mean depreciating just in terms of financial value, but we think of these objects as things that grow in importance to us over time.
Speaker: And so possession is,
Speaker: It's not really a commercial sort of possession, although strictly speaking, it is, but that's not, at least to me, how it feels.
Speaker: The way that it feels is more of a custodian sort of relationship, as Tom described about his mirror.
Speaker: You know, someone else will own these things after I do, and that might be during my life or it might be after the end of my life.
Speaker: But either way, they move forward through time.
Speaker: Not that any object will last forever, but many of them will last for centuries or millennia, and we're just little bumps along the road.
Speaker: I just read a memoir of a friend of mine who grew up in very hard times and in his memoir he writes about a painting that his roommate in a group home gave him, because his roommate in a group home painted, gave him and he says, he still has it to this day.
Speaker: That's the same exact feeling as I have for my mother's hawks crystal.
Speaker: And I think that no matter where you are in the socioeconomic ladder, you have things that give you comfort on some level or another.
Speaker: That's where we're going to leave our live recording, but thanks for joining us for an hour at the winter show.
Speaker: Even if you're doing it from your commute or your car or your shower or wherever you're listening, no judgment.
Speaker: I hope you enjoyed the panel and that maybe it'll help you catch the bug if you don't already have it.
Speaker: If you enjoyed listening, I'd be really grateful if you would leave a review and one of those coveted five-star ratings on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Bellotti, with social media and web support by Sarah Bellotta.
Speaker: Our digital media and editorial associate is Sierra Holt.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: And I'm Ben Miller.
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