Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
“Enriching Your Life Through Collecting” at the Winter Show
33 Plays1 year ago
In what has become an annual tradition, Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller capped off January with a panel discussion at the Winter Show. This year’s edition was named “Catching the Bug: Enriching Your Life Through Collecting,” and featured three distinguished collectors and the objects they live by and through. The Hawkes bowl belonging to conservator Lloyd Zuckerberg, interior designer Marcy Masterson’s Italian side chair, and the Etruscan hand mirror of artist and educator Thomas Lollar provide evidence not only of the discernment of their owners, but of some twenty-five hundred years of design history.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Collaboration
00:00:10
Speaker
I think this is our fifth Curious Objects Winter Show annual collaboration, and they just keep getting better and better.
00:00:17
Speaker
So I'm very excited to be here.
The Essence of Collecting
00:00:20
Speaker
And we're here, of course, at America's Greatest Antique Fair to talk about why people collect.
00:00:29
Speaker
or the vexatious question for us dealers of why certain people sometimes don't collect.
00:00:37
Speaker
And I want to start by just asking you all to drift with me for a moment through memory.
Collecting and Self-Discovery
00:00:45
Speaker
Your whole life, you have worked hard to figure out who you are and what your place is in the world.
00:00:52
Speaker
We've all done this.
00:00:54
Speaker
You haven't answered all of your questions.
00:00:56
Speaker
You haven't solved all of your problems.
00:00:59
Speaker
But you've made progress.
00:01:01
Speaker
You've taken one step after another.
00:01:03
Speaker
You've built on your own achievements.
00:01:06
Speaker
You've learned about yourself and about the people that you love.
00:01:11
Speaker
And somehow you've made meaning and sense out of the jumbled mess that we call experience.
00:01:17
Speaker
Your life is a parade of stories built out of memory.
00:01:23
Speaker
And it's built on the stories of people who came before you, who made your world what it is.
00:01:31
Speaker
And it's not just your ancestors, but it's all the people whose shoulders that we stand on.
00:01:36
Speaker
Their stories have a living memory, physical artifacts of who these people were, what they did, how they lived.
00:01:46
Speaker
And these objects carry the weight and the hopes of those people and in turn of all of us.
00:01:52
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.
00:02:04
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.
00:02:14
Speaker
And that to me is what collecting means.
00:02:17
Speaker
You might call yourself a collector.
00:02:18
Speaker
You might call yourself an art lover.
00:02:20
Speaker
You might call yourself something entirely different or nothing at all.
00:02:23
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.
00:02:33
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.
00:02:45
Speaker
And all three of these people are inveterate collectors.
Meet the Panelists
00:02:49
Speaker
Lloyd Zuckerberg is a member of the New York Landmarks Conservancy.
00:02:55
Speaker
He was a deputy project manager for the restoration of Grand Central Terminal.
00:03:00
Speaker
He has a collection which ranges across a wide variety of media.
00:03:05
Speaker
Marcy Masterson is an interior designer.
00:03:08
Speaker
with a really sharp connoisseurial eye, and her projects reflect a keen awareness of decorative arts history and quality.
00:03:17
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.
00:03:33
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.
Memorable Collecting Moments
00:03:44
Speaker
So we're going to dive right in.
00:03:46
Speaker
You're going to get to know them just a little right off the bat.
00:03:49
Speaker
And we'll take them starting with you, Tom, and then Lloyd, and then Marcy.
00:03:54
Speaker
And my first question for you is, what is the first object or artwork that you remember falling in love with?
00:04:02
Speaker
Oh, I think a box, a wooden box, when I was young that I bought at an antique shop that had inlay marquetry.
00:04:10
Speaker
I wanted to know how it was made, so I took it apart and remade it.
00:04:15
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.
00:04:27
Speaker
I have to say it was a pair of Venetian side chairs.
00:04:32
Speaker
I was working for my first job working for a company called Rose Cumming and they were extremely sculptural.
00:04:40
Speaker
One wouldn't sit in them.
00:04:43
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:43
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.
00:04:54
Speaker
I'm sure I've made quite a few.
00:04:55
Speaker
I mean, look at my apartment.
00:04:59
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.
00:05:16
Speaker
And I couldn't live with it, so I gave it away the next day.
00:05:20
Speaker
But that was kind of a silly thing to do, right?
00:05:23
Speaker
I suppose it made you happy in the moment.
00:05:26
Speaker
How about you, Lloyd?
00:05:27
Speaker
I bought a...
00:05:29
Speaker
absurdly expensive Windsor chair without my decorator's advice.
00:05:36
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.
00:05:49
Speaker
But the chair resides very happily in one of my children's rooms right now and they love it.
00:05:54
Speaker
So it's all good.
00:05:57
Speaker
I would have to say it was advising a client to buy a Claude Leland chair many years ago.
00:06:05
Speaker
We were speaking of it earlier, and I just wasn't forceful enough.
00:06:11
Speaker
But they ended up buying Leland furniture many years later for...
00:06:17
Speaker
10 times the price of what I had earlier advised him to do before he had gained such recognition.
00:06:24
Speaker
That sounds like less your mistake and more someone else's.
00:06:28
Speaker
I should have been more forceful.
00:06:30
Speaker
Fair enough.
00:06:30
Speaker
Fair enough.
00:06:31
Speaker
Tom, would you describe your collection more as a friend or a child or a spouse or a lover?
Relationships with Collections
00:06:41
Speaker
I think my collection is a collaborator.
00:06:44
Speaker
I think the objects that I collect inform my creative work.
00:06:50
Speaker
The ancient mirror I'm holding influences the sculpture that I create.
00:06:55
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.
00:07:10
Speaker
Definitely a friend because I see them sometimes every day, sometimes from time to time.
00:07:18
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.
00:07:29
Speaker
So there's nothing illicit about it.
00:07:32
Speaker
So that's why I would avoid the other ones.
00:07:35
Speaker
And child, the discipline involved.
00:07:37
Speaker
There's no discipline with my stuff.
00:07:38
Speaker
You just send it away.
00:07:40
Speaker
I mean, you can't, well, you can do that with your kids, but you really don't want to do it.
00:07:44
Speaker
So definitely friend.
00:07:47
Speaker
I would absolutely agree.
00:07:48
Speaker
A friend that you just enjoy, enjoy every day.
00:07:56
Speaker
Your last rapid fire question.
00:07:57
Speaker
Who's your collecting role model?
00:08:00
Speaker
Well, I think it started when I was young.
00:08:02
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.
00:08:13
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.
00:08:24
Speaker
I spent many hours in that house.
00:08:28
Speaker
I grew up in a house with stuff.
00:08:31
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.
00:08:43
Speaker
If she'd get out of the house more, she'd still buy.
00:08:46
Speaker
And the reason I think of her as my collecting role model is she loves everything that she owns.
00:08:51
Speaker
She can tell you the story of where she bought everything she owns, which is something that I could probably do too.
00:08:57
Speaker
And she loves the hunt,
00:09:02
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.
00:09:08
Speaker
She's always enthusiastic about it and says oh, that's job.
00:09:13
Speaker
Gosh beautiful and how much is that?
00:09:15
Speaker
Oh, what a great price I mean all the all the buzzwords you're looking to hear from someone who appreciates your collecting
00:09:24
Speaker
I think that's a very, very tough question.
00:09:28
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.
00:09:44
Speaker
So I want to try to understand a little bit about the psychology of collecting.
Origins of Collecting Passion
00:09:48
Speaker
And to do that, we're going to take a look at the origins of your own collecting journey.
00:09:53
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.
00:10:07
Speaker
And again, I'll start with you, Tom.
00:10:10
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.
00:10:18
Speaker
What was displayed in the room, the objects, and that was the inspiration, I think.
00:10:28
Speaker
How about you, Lloyd?
00:10:30
Speaker
There's really, I don't think there's really a moment.
00:10:34
Speaker
I think it was a gradual thing.
00:10:35
Speaker
I was thinking when I was a child, I had a junk drawer.
00:10:39
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.
00:10:47
Speaker
And I remember when we moved, it was quite dramatic.
00:10:49
Speaker
I didn't know what to do with my junk drawer.
00:10:53
Speaker
I think,
00:10:56
Speaker
it just sort of came to me.
00:10:58
Speaker
I think if there was a moment I married my wife, Charlotte, and we both happened to like some of the same things.
00:11:07
Speaker
So that was really quite useful.
00:11:12
Speaker
And I'll be talking about the glass later.
00:11:15
Speaker
You know, we would take pilgrimages to places to look at glass and where glass was made, American glass was made.
00:11:21
Speaker
So maybe that would be the moment, but I really think it's a gradual absorption.
00:11:27
Speaker
And Marcy, what about you?
00:11:29
Speaker
I think it started very, very early on in that I just liked pretty things.
00:11:34
Speaker
And my mother had a lot of china and porcelain, and I think loved to set a table.
00:11:41
Speaker
And I think it really started there very early.
00:11:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:11:46
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.
Using and Enjoying Collections
00:11:57
Speaker
You're much more of the sort to take an object out and enjoy it and experience it.
00:12:01
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.
00:12:08
Speaker
And maybe, Marcy, I could start with you on that one.
00:12:12
Speaker
I use everything, I mean, I think I use everything that I acquire every day.
00:12:19
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.
00:12:33
Speaker
They use utilitarian and they keep these things for God knows what.
00:12:40
Speaker
What's the point of owning them if you're not enjoying them every day?
00:12:44
Speaker
Sounds like you agree with that one.
00:12:45
Speaker
I completely agree.
00:12:47
Speaker
We always, my wife and I always look at each other and think about how could we use this?
00:12:52
Speaker
And it's out.
00:12:54
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.
00:13:11
Speaker
But
00:13:13
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
00:13:39
Speaker
If you don't use and enjoy your things, then they're not living.
00:13:44
Speaker
And the goal is to keep making memory with these objects.
00:13:48
Speaker
And you do that by enjoying them.
00:13:51
Speaker
I often think about, particularly with old jewelry, imagine a piece of Georgian jewelry, where that jewelry has been.
00:13:58
Speaker
Think of the parties that jewelry has been to.
00:14:01
Speaker
You think you've got a life?
00:14:02
Speaker
That piece of jewelry has had a much better life than you've probably had.
00:14:07
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.
00:14:20
Speaker
How do you enjoy or experience those?
00:14:23
Speaker
I think it relates to my interest in history.
00:14:27
Speaker
An advantage to living in Detroit was getting Canadian television, which was all BBC documentaries.
00:14:34
Speaker
So early on, as a child,
00:14:37
Speaker
I was always watching documentaries, much to the dismay of my siblings.
00:14:42
Speaker
But I think my collection is alive in the way that it informs me of the period.
00:14:50
Speaker
I mean, I'm holding a 2,500-year-old object.
00:14:52
Speaker
Where have you been for 2,500 years?
00:14:53
Speaker
And for me, the objects, the books, the prints, the drawings have a
00:15:04
Speaker
have deep significance in what they're telling me about the period.
00:15:09
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.
00:15:23
Speaker
So.
00:15:24
Speaker
And have you found communities or built communities of appreciation that you can share this enthusiasm and excitement with?
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah, there are people that are very interested in ancient objects and where they came from.
00:15:38
Speaker
And we can even tell where...
00:15:43
Speaker
what part of the ancient world certain similar objects come from.
00:15:48
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.
00:16:03
Speaker
And Lloyd and Marcy, you both mentioned enjoying your collections in the company of others, family, friends.
00:16:10
Speaker
Are those your sort of primary communities in which you share the joy of collecting?
00:16:14
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?
00:16:27
Speaker
Where do you get the sort of communal experience and satisfaction of collecting?
Communal Aspects of Collecting
00:16:33
Speaker
I would say at the antique show, you know, at trade events.
00:16:40
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.
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree.
00:16:58
Speaker
I was thinking about that as you were asking the question and Tom was speaking.
00:17:01
Speaker
My wife and I were members of the American Cut Glass Association for many years.
00:17:06
Speaker
And the highlight was when we got the newsletters.
00:17:09
Speaker
And these are people from all over the country and, you know, an eclectic bunch.
00:17:14
Speaker
And they spent a lot of time talking about
00:17:17
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.
00:17:28
Speaker
And we went to a couple of, uh, conventions, glass conventions in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
00:17:33
Speaker
They had a really big one, but I agree with Marcy.
00:17:36
Speaker
I actually find solace in the dealers.
00:17:39
Speaker
Um, because I,
00:17:42
Speaker
I mean, the dealers are always there.
00:17:44
Speaker
They sort of suffer from the same bug to a certain extent, except, you know, they sell more things than than I do.
00:17:51
Speaker
But I think there's just not a lot of people who really care these days.
00:17:58
Speaker
or notice sometimes.
00:18:00
Speaker
So that can be a little dispiriting.
00:18:02
Speaker
So a show like this, oh, it's like a grand week.
00:18:06
Speaker
Yeah, present company accepted, of course.
00:18:10
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.
00:18:19
Speaker
I'm very excited.
Significant Objects and Their Stories
00:18:21
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.
00:18:31
Speaker
And so we have each brought a
00:18:35
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.
00:18:44
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.
00:18:55
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.
00:19:06
Speaker
I had only seen pictures.
00:19:08
Speaker
And it's a silver teapot from about 1900 made in Providence, Rhode Island.
00:19:14
Speaker
It's a very unusual piece.
00:19:15
Speaker
It's sort of a grab bag of aesthetic ideas with elements that are strongly Rococo and others that are neoclassical.
00:19:23
Speaker
And then the overall form looks almost like a sort of Art Deco piece or even a Christopher Dresser style of design.
00:19:31
Speaker
And it's the sort of thing that, you know, on another day might have come together and looked completely absurd and
00:19:37
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.
00:19:48
Speaker
And I bought this to use it as a teapot, and I do.
00:19:51
Speaker
I drink my tea from it very frequently.
00:19:56
Speaker
I take pleasure in doing so, and each time I brew a pot of tea in this teapot,
00:20:02
Speaker
I deepen my relationship with it.
00:20:04
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.
00:20:12
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,
00:20:22
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.
00:20:33
Speaker
So I've found objects like this can fill a really strong, important psychological role in my life.
00:20:42
Speaker
And the wonderful thing about them is the longer you have them, the deeper and richer that experience becomes.
00:20:47
Speaker
So
00:20:51
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.
00:21:03
Speaker
Sure.
00:21:04
Speaker
So this is, I guess I'd call it a center bowl.
00:21:07
Speaker
It sits in the middle of my dining room table at home, our dining room table.
00:21:12
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.
00:21:26
Speaker
Thomas Hawkes came here from Ireland during the Civil War.
00:21:31
Speaker
He was from a fairly well-off family.
00:21:33
Speaker
He went to work for Hoare and Daley, H-O-A-R-E.
00:21:38
Speaker
Hoare became one of the best glass makers in the United States as well.
00:21:42
Speaker
And then he left in 1880 and set up his own shop.
00:21:45
Speaker
By 1882, he'd already gotten a patent for what became known as the Russian pattern and cut glass.
00:21:50
Speaker
And in 1889, he won...
00:21:55
Speaker
the grand prize at the Paris exposition.
00:21:58
Speaker
Now this was a huge event because Americans considered crystal glass a European thing and the best glass was European.
00:22:10
Speaker
This was the first time an American had won the grand prize in Paris and it was a monumental event.
00:22:16
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.
00:22:29
Speaker
A woman known for caring for a lot of poor people bought a set of Hawks crystal for the White House.
00:22:35
Speaker
Well, maybe they needed a set, who knows.
00:22:40
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.
00:22:53
Speaker
And what I also found out, which was kind of interesting, is that my grandmother had a set of 18.
00:22:58
Speaker
She had service for 18.
00:22:59
Speaker
She had water goblets, wine goblets, and cordials, and champagnes.
00:23:05
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
00:23:21
Speaker
And then my mom gave it all to us.
00:23:23
Speaker
Unfortunately, we had no place to put it.
00:23:25
Speaker
It's still in the boxes, but one day it's coming out.
00:23:28
Speaker
That made my wife and I very interested in hawks.
00:23:32
Speaker
And we went up early in our marriage to Kennebunk to visit friends in Kennebunkport.
00:23:39
Speaker
And there were a lot of antique shops up there that had hawks.
00:23:43
Speaker
And what I realized is, is that wherever there were really rich people,
00:23:48
Speaker
At the turn of the century, there was a lot of hawks because that's what you wanted to have.
00:23:53
Speaker
If you wanted to impress your friends, you wanted to have hawks.
00:23:58
Speaker
So we bought a lot of hawks.
00:24:01
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.
00:24:14
Speaker
called eBay.
00:24:15
Speaker
And it was really hard for me to find something on eBay.
00:24:21
Speaker
Actually, it wasn't.
00:24:21
Speaker
There was a lot of it.
00:24:22
Speaker
I bought these.
00:24:24
Speaker
These are oil and vinegar.
00:24:28
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.
00:24:36
Speaker
That's quite a ratio by today's standards.
00:24:39
Speaker
And you would shake it up.
00:24:40
Speaker
They made similar ones for ketchup and mayonnaise, I didn't bring those.
00:24:44
Speaker
They made over 330 patterns of glass.
00:24:48
Speaker
So the Hawks Crystal Company, the Hawks Glass Company survived primarily in Corning, New York.
00:24:54
Speaker
They co-founded Steuben to create blanks.
00:24:56
Speaker
They didn't actually make glass, they cut glass, engraved glass and cut crystal.
00:25:02
Speaker
I like the engraved, my wife and I. And they closed in 1962.
00:25:07
Speaker
So my mom was married in 1959.
00:25:09
Speaker
She probably got some of the last batch of the Hawks Crystal.
00:25:15
Speaker
It's just, to me, it's a lovely thing because A, it's usable.
00:25:20
Speaker
It's beautiful, to me at least.
00:25:23
Speaker
And it was affordable at a time in my life where I couldn't afford to buy really expensive things.
00:25:30
Speaker
How do you use it today?
00:25:32
Speaker
Well, you know, this sits in the center of the dining table.
00:25:35
Speaker
Our dining table is the middle of our house.
00:25:37
Speaker
We walk through that room all the time.
00:25:38
Speaker
We see it all the time.
00:25:39
Speaker
The only time it ever has anything in it is in the fall when I put gourds in it.
00:25:45
Speaker
And otherwise, unless the table is extended, it's a little hard because it's big.
00:25:52
Speaker
And I always hear...
00:25:54
Speaker
people bang into it like that and it scares the heck out of me.
00:25:58
Speaker
So I usually take it off the table during a meal when the table is in that state.
00:26:04
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.
00:26:14
Speaker
You might have dessert on Hawke's plates.
00:26:19
Speaker
there'd be glass all around.
00:26:21
Speaker
We might serve food on some of the hawks plates and things like that.
00:26:25
Speaker
So it's there.
00:26:27
Speaker
And we just love using it.
00:26:28
Speaker
I've never made oil and vinegar in these, by the way, because they're a pain to clean out afterwards.
00:26:32
Speaker
Can you just ring that bowl one more time?
00:26:38
Speaker
Very nice.
00:26:39
Speaker
It's a great sound, isn't it?
00:26:40
Speaker
I'm told it's the shape, the quality of the glass and the shape that does that.
00:26:47
Speaker
Marcy, I want to ask you about the curious object, which, unfortunately, you weren't able to bring because of its significant size.
00:26:55
Speaker
But it's a chair that has a special place in your life.
00:26:59
Speaker
Can you tell us about this?
00:27:02
Speaker
Actually, this is a set of chairs that I opted not to bring.
00:27:08
Speaker
I fell in love with this chair, set of chairs, when they were with an Italian dealer.
00:27:13
Speaker
They're Italian 19th century chairs.
00:27:16
Speaker
And from the Piedmont section of Italy.
00:27:23
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.
00:27:34
Speaker
And...
00:27:37
Speaker
They stayed in my mind, stayed in my mind.
00:27:40
Speaker
Then they showed up at Christie's.
00:27:43
Speaker
And I thought, oh my gosh, there are those chairs again.
00:27:46
Speaker
I can't believe it.
00:27:47
Speaker
I really, really, I just wanted to buy them so badly.
00:27:52
Speaker
And tried to, I wanted to, I thought, I can't let this go by again.
00:27:58
Speaker
But they did.
00:28:00
Speaker
They went.
00:28:02
Speaker
And then a dear friend of mine who's in the show right now called Cove Landing.
00:28:10
Speaker
Cove Landing had them.
00:28:13
Speaker
And I thought, third time, Lucky, you cannot let this slip through your fingers.
00:28:20
Speaker
So I bit the bullet, and I bought them.
00:28:23
Speaker
And I have to say, they're in my entrance hall.
00:28:28
Speaker
And I absolutely, I still love them.
00:28:31
Speaker
And I just think the form can be viewed as quite modern, but they're actually antique.
00:28:38
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.
00:28:48
Speaker
And the seat is a very pronounced seat as well.
00:28:54
Speaker
It's concave, the front of it.
00:28:57
Speaker
So that is my curious object that I live with and enjoy every day.
00:29:02
Speaker
So the seat back is this very odd sort of T-shape.
00:29:06
Speaker
What does it feel like to sit in one of these?
00:29:08
Speaker
Are they comfortable?
00:29:10
Speaker
You perch.
00:29:14
Speaker
You really don't sit back.
00:29:16
Speaker
No, they're really sculptural.
00:29:18
Speaker
No, I don't.
00:29:19
Speaker
They get a lot of coats on them and purses and things like that.
00:29:23
Speaker
No, I don't sit in them much.
00:29:25
Speaker
So you actually treat them, it sounds like you treat them as much as sculptures as you do as chairs.
00:29:30
Speaker
I do.
00:29:31
Speaker
I do sit in them, but I mean, they're more comfortable chairs to sit in.
00:29:36
Speaker
But the support, the back is just that T-shape, so I don't want to take any chances on them.
00:29:45
Speaker
Last but not least, we have our oldest curious object for today.
00:29:51
Speaker
And Tom, you're holding it in your hand right now.
00:29:54
Speaker
Could you tell us about this piece?
00:29:56
Speaker
Yes, it's an Etruscan hand mirror.
00:30:02
Speaker
I like ancient objects that were functional and used.
00:30:07
Speaker
And some of the objects had a very different meaning in their day.
00:30:11
Speaker
Hand mirrors were intended to be owned by women only.
00:30:16
Speaker
And they were...
00:30:20
Speaker
The reflection, it was a very mysterious reflection.
00:30:24
Speaker
If you imagine this object would have been as shiny as Ben's teapot.
00:30:29
Speaker
It would have been highly polished bronze.
00:30:31
Speaker
And the reflection on the reverse would have been a very mysterious reflection where the reflection would have an odd sort of foreshortened
00:30:42
Speaker
look, but I like objects that feel to me like they're imbued with generations of owners.
00:30:51
Speaker
Where someone was looking into this 2,000 years ago, and I fantasize that somehow their face is here somewhere.
00:31:02
Speaker
As a sculptor, I do interpretations of these objects.
00:31:09
Speaker
And so I've created, along with the sculptor who's here, Ricardo Arango, who is a welder, large versions of ancient mirrors.
00:31:19
Speaker
and they're at Maison-Gerard right now.
00:31:23
Speaker
And they have the same reflective quality as an ancient mirror.
00:31:27
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.
00:31:36
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.
00:31:46
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.
00:32:00
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.
00:32:18
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.
00:32:34
Speaker
Men were not supposed to look at their reflection.
00:32:37
Speaker
It was considered vain.
00:32:39
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.
00:32:52
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.
00:33:01
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.
00:33:20
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.
00:33:34
Speaker
And you collect all of these objects as well, and your collection is full of such an eclectic
00:33:43
Speaker
of objects that can seem almost bewildering.
00:33:46
Speaker
But I wonder if there's a common thread.
00:33:48
Speaker
There is, I think, a common thread.
00:33:50
Speaker
You could look at, I have objects designed in the 20th century that you could say are inspired by this.
00:33:58
Speaker
And I'm interested in the interpretation of classicism throughout the centuries.
00:34:04
Speaker
So there's a sculptor that has a sculpture at Lincoln Center, Dimitri Hatsi's Three Graces.
00:34:11
Speaker
And I have a maquette for that sculpture.
00:34:14
Speaker
And again, it's an interpretation of classicism by a modern sculptor.
00:34:18
Speaker
The objects also that I'm very interested in are objects that are designed with an aesthetic way beyond their day.
00:34:28
Speaker
objects designed maybe in the late 18th century that looked like they could be from the 1960s.
00:34:36
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.
00:34:46
Speaker
So I'm interested in advanced ideas from artists and designers that think outside the aesthetic of their time.
Client Relationships in Collecting
00:34:57
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.
00:35:09
Speaker
But at the same time, you know, they have their own taste and you have to work within their preferences and their desires.
00:35:19
Speaker
I wonder how it is that you help these people to find their way to objects that they can love.
00:35:26
Speaker
Well, I try and find things that are going to work in with the scheme of the interior and the architecture of
00:35:35
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.
00:35:49
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.
00:35:59
Speaker
And you've said to me that it feels to you like sometimes your own taste becomes a guiding post for your clients.
00:36:07
Speaker
Yes.
00:36:08
Speaker
Um, because, uh, I mean, on, on some level I'm, I'm collecting, I'm collecting it for them.
00:36:15
Speaker
So, um, some very strange level, I feel like I have collected it.
00:36:20
Speaker
It's, it's, it's my treasured little piece and I can go back and, and visit it.
00:36:25
Speaker
But, um,
00:36:28
Speaker
in general, they fall in love with it as well.
00:36:34
Speaker
Can I add to that?
00:36:35
Speaker
Please.
00:36:36
Speaker
Because Marcy has been our decorator for many years.
00:36:39
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.
00:36:58
Speaker
And we kind of took to that and
00:37:01
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.
00:37:14
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.
00:37:30
Speaker
To clarify, you were on the floor to look under the table.
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, sorry.
00:37:36
Speaker
We were not wrestling over the table.
00:37:38
Speaker
That price is too high.
00:37:41
Speaker
And we ended up buying the table.
00:37:44
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.
00:37:51
Speaker
We just thought we wanted to look and see, but this was actually a really great table.
00:37:55
Speaker
We still have it today.
00:37:56
Speaker
And it just lifts, you know, everything else in the room.
00:38:00
Speaker
And,
00:38:02
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.
00:38:12
Speaker
You know, that's community, too.
00:38:14
Speaker
And it's sort of transference from, you know, the dealer to the decorator and back again.
00:38:21
Speaker
But it all goes back and forth, I think, too, because you get to a certain point where
00:38:27
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.
00:38:38
Speaker
It happened in the building here about an hour ago with a friend of mine.
00:38:44
Speaker
And he said, you have a very good eye.
00:38:45
Speaker
That wasn't to me, it was to my friend.
00:38:51
Speaker
When did making plans get this complicated?
00:38:55
Speaker
It's time to streamline with WhatsApp.
00:38:58
Speaker
The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together.
00:39:00
Speaker
Use polls to settle dinner plans.
00:39:03
Speaker
Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th.
00:39:07
Speaker
And never miss a meme or milestone.
00:39:09
Speaker
All protected with end-to-end encryption.
00:39:12
Speaker
It's time for WhatsApp.
00:39:13
Speaker
Message privately with everyone.
00:39:15
Speaker
Learn more at whatsapp.com.
00:39:18
Speaker
Could you just say a few more words about your relationship with dealers?
00:39:21
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.
00:39:38
Speaker
But at the same time, you still personally rely very heavily on dealers, on
00:39:43
Speaker
their guidance on their connoisseurship.
00:39:47
Speaker
Why is that?
00:39:48
Speaker
How would you describe your relationship with the dealer community?
Collectors and Dealers
00:39:52
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.
00:40:07
Speaker
I think anyone who's serious about collecting, I mean, honestly, you don't have to be serious.
00:40:11
Speaker
You could buy one thing.
00:40:12
Speaker
If you don't value the dealers, you're making a huge mistake.
00:40:16
Speaker
Now, a fair like this where dealers are vetted, there's a community of dealers.
00:40:21
Speaker
They're all invited to participate typically by other dealers, so I understand it.
00:40:27
Speaker
You know, people are generally reputable.
00:40:29
Speaker
There was a panel in here yesterday and someone said, you need to find a trustworthy dealer.
00:40:32
Speaker
And I said, well, what are the markers of a trustworthy dealer?
00:40:36
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.
00:40:52
Speaker
They're outside experts who don't actually buy or sell anything themselves.
00:40:58
Speaker
I have an expression.
00:40:59
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.
00:41:06
Speaker
I don't want the dealer to say, oh.
00:41:07
Speaker
Which we are, Lloyd.
00:41:08
Speaker
Okay, good.
00:41:09
Speaker
Thank you.
00:41:11
Speaker
You know, there are people who talk about and take pride in kind of, you know, really getting a fabulous deal on something.
00:41:20
Speaker
And that's great.
00:41:21
Speaker
Everyone loves to get a good deal on something.
00:41:23
Speaker
The better deal you get from a dealer, the more you have to spend next time around.
00:41:29
Speaker
But all that being said, dealers are living this every day.
00:41:34
Speaker
And they're making so many judgments in the course of their workday.
00:41:41
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?
00:41:51
Speaker
but it's not my period, so how do I understand and explain to people why I have this?
00:41:57
Speaker
That just happened at a jewelry dealer about another, about an hour ago with something.
00:42:04
Speaker
I think you ignore and diminish the dealers at your own peril.
00:42:08
Speaker
I think that these people are killing themselves to curate these wonderful objects.
00:42:17
Speaker
And I really respect and admire how hard the dealers work to do that.
00:42:23
Speaker
You know, this morning I was researching, and yesterday I was doing some research on hawks to sort of freshen my memory.
00:42:30
Speaker
I was reading some of these books that I brought with me, and you're welcome to look at them afterwards.
00:42:35
Speaker
And I was thinking, gosh, that's what a dealer has to do with every single object they bring into this fair.
00:42:42
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.
00:42:50
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.
00:42:57
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.
00:43:10
Speaker
And I'm not trying to speak negatively about the auction houses, I just think it's a different kind of transaction.
00:43:18
Speaker
And people who sometimes buy at auction and think, oh, they got a deal on something.
00:43:23
Speaker
Well, there's no deals anymore, really.
00:43:25
Speaker
It's so transparent, the marketplace.
00:43:27
Speaker
Everyone knows everything.
00:43:29
Speaker
I go to dealers about things in the auctions and say, what do you think?
00:43:33
Speaker
And they'll help me.
00:43:35
Speaker
And they'll help me even if they don't have a nickel to get out of it.
00:43:39
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.
00:43:58
Speaker
I just want to stipulate that I didn't pay Lloyd anything for those remarks.
00:44:05
Speaker
But he couldn't have done better if I had.
00:44:09
Speaker
I want to open the conversation up to all of you and just pose the question, what do you think...
Joy and Thrill of Collecting
00:44:16
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?
00:44:38
Speaker
And I'll let whoever grabs the microphone first answer that.
00:44:44
Speaker
For me, it'd be hard to imagine because I have always collected things.
00:44:50
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.
00:45:04
Speaker
And I said, boy, there's nothing this old in Detroit.
00:45:08
Speaker
And so I...
00:45:12
Speaker
kept that, I still have it somewhere, and that started me, I wanna find more of these things.
00:45:18
Speaker
So I don't know, that's not addressing your question properly, but it's hard to imagine not wanting to have things.
00:45:28
Speaker
Although, I bring objects like this into my classroom at Columbia, and my students want to hear me talk about it,
00:45:36
Speaker
And they take a video of me talking about it.
00:45:39
Speaker
And then I say, wouldn't you like to own this?
00:45:41
Speaker
And they look confused.
00:45:43
Speaker
Like, why would I want to own it?
00:45:45
Speaker
I just took a video of you.
00:45:47
Speaker
I said, but if you owned it and you woke up at 2 o'clock in the morning, you could actually touch it.
00:45:51
Speaker
And you could touch it whenever you want.
00:45:53
Speaker
You could even carry it with you.
00:45:56
Speaker
So that's interesting to me.
00:45:58
Speaker
So it's...
00:45:59
Speaker
It's hard to imagine not, this object is part, I'm the caretaker in my lifetime, then it goes somewhere else, right?
00:46:08
Speaker
But it's hard to imagine not having things that have meaning to you, right?
00:46:18
Speaker
Anything to add, Marcy?
00:46:20
Speaker
Well, I think for me, and I think once my clients go
00:46:29
Speaker
catch the bug, it's the thrill of the hunt.
00:46:32
Speaker
I mean, when they find something, they, you know, really just get ecstatic.
00:46:37
Speaker
And, I mean, it's really interesting.
00:46:41
Speaker
It's fun, you know, to research where it's been and the history of it and then to live with it.
00:46:49
Speaker
And it isn't necessarily at the price level of an
Value of Collecting for Pleasure
00:46:56
Speaker
antique show.
00:46:56
Speaker
I mean, one can collect anything.
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:02
Speaker
I mean, what an interesting source of entertainment that is exactly the opposite of virtual.
00:47:10
Speaker
It's the most concrete, sort of physically gratifying pursuit that I could imagine.
00:47:19
Speaker
I agree.
00:47:21
Speaker
My wife and I have a house in England and there's a car boot sale.
00:47:26
Speaker
Everyone know what a car boot sale is?
00:47:28
Speaker
It's basically like a junk sale where you open up the trunk of your car and show your wares.
00:47:35
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.
00:47:42
Speaker
But that's because the road it's on is called Friday Street.
00:47:45
Speaker
Anyway, it's isn't that that's typically English, right?
00:47:50
Speaker
It's designed to confuse because, you know, we won the war.
00:47:53
Speaker
So they're still annoyed.
00:47:54
Speaker
So anyway, I guess.
00:47:57
Speaker
So I I put it in my calendar when I'm there for every Sunday.
00:48:02
Speaker
It goes from six till whenever.
00:48:05
Speaker
And of course, the best stuff is from six to seven.
00:48:08
Speaker
And I always think I'm going to get there early and I kind of never do it.
00:48:12
Speaker
And you can get anything from like a secondhand stepladder to a treasure if you're lucky.
00:48:19
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.
00:48:32
Speaker
We're of the same mother and father.
00:48:36
Speaker
And what is she missing out on?
00:48:39
Speaker
You know what, probably nothing, because she has her own passions.
00:48:45
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.
00:48:53
Speaker
But I tell you who I do feel sorry for.
00:48:55
Speaker
I don't feel sorry for people who don't collect.
00:48:57
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.
00:49:09
Speaker
And they don't know anything about anything in there.
00:49:12
Speaker
And they probably spent a lot of money, which is fair enough.
00:49:15
Speaker
That's good for the economy and people are entitled to make a living.
00:49:18
Speaker
And it's not that they're bad people in any way, but, you know, you don't sound so sure about that.
00:49:27
Speaker
OK, fair enough.
00:49:29
Speaker
But you said you're a steward of that Etruscan mirror.
00:49:33
Speaker
That's how I feel about the things that I own.
00:49:35
Speaker
I'm taking care of these for someone else.
00:49:39
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.
00:49:54
Speaker
I just think that that's something immoral about doing that.
00:50:00
Speaker
Sounds like a strong campaign platform.
Dream Acquisitions
00:50:03
Speaker
I won't be running on that.
00:50:06
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?
00:50:22
Speaker
I invite the audience to ponder this question for yourselves as well.
00:50:28
Speaker
That Monet I studied in Paris, La Seine Pré de Giverny, was part of a series.
00:50:34
Speaker
Or a Van Gogh Boats and the museum in Amsterdam, but probably that Monet.
00:50:39
Speaker
I'd trade all the modern art in the world for that Monet.
00:50:44
Speaker
That wouldn't be a very good financial trade.
00:50:46
Speaker
No, but that's another thing we didn't touch on.
00:50:49
Speaker
Never buy something for investment, in my opinion.
00:50:51
Speaker
Just buy it because you love it.
00:50:52
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.
00:51:10
Speaker
So if I could get that, right?
00:51:14
Speaker
And Marcy?
00:51:15
Speaker
I have to say, I'm going to steal Lloyd's answer.
00:51:20
Speaker
I think the water lilies at the Met would be very nice in my possession.
00:51:25
Speaker
It would greatly enhance my living room.
00:51:28
Speaker
You have just the perfect wall for it, I'm sure.
00:51:31
Speaker
Perfect.
00:51:32
Speaker
Oh, perfect.
00:51:33
Speaker
Perfect.
00:51:34
Speaker
And finally, I think you've all had a chance to walk around the fair, some of you quite a bit.
00:51:40
Speaker
And I wonder what object you think visitors should be sure not to miss on the show floor.
Winter Show Highlights
00:51:47
Speaker
That's it.
00:51:48
Speaker
That's a rather easy question for me.
00:51:51
Speaker
Something truly, truly unique and outstanding, and I have to say, it is a trepso.
00:51:58
Speaker
And I'm not saying this to be patronizing.
00:52:03
Speaker
The Eppern, the Chimoiserie Eppern that they have is truly, truly outstanding.
00:52:10
Speaker
And it's the kind of thing that I could stare at
00:52:16
Speaker
for hours on end and continued to find a detail that I had not seen previously.
00:52:26
Speaker
Well, it's at- A shrubs hole.
00:52:30
Speaker
Booth A4.
00:52:32
Speaker
There's silver dealers.
00:52:35
Speaker
It's, Marcy, you're welcome to spend as many hours on our booth looking at that as you like.
00:52:40
Speaker
There is, I have to say, there's some stellar furniture here, I must say, but that Epern
00:52:48
Speaker
really was, is absolutely extraordinary.
00:52:53
Speaker
And I understand it, it hasn't sold yet.
00:52:57
Speaker
Well, uh, not as of recording, but for those who are listening on the podcast, who knows anything is possible.
00:53:06
Speaker
It was, uh, featured in the New York times and it certainly gotten a lot of attention at the fair.
00:53:13
Speaker
This is really tough.
00:53:17
Speaker
I'm glad I didn't go first.
00:53:19
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.
00:53:32
Speaker
There's a Galerie Layage, dealer I don't know, has a green Verre Eglomise mirror from Louis XIV period.
00:53:39
Speaker
Gorgeous thing.
00:53:42
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.
00:53:52
Speaker
It's unbelievable.
00:53:55
Speaker
Wartsky's jewelry, I don't know.
00:53:59
Speaker
It's a really tough question to answer.
00:54:01
Speaker
My friend said, walk me around the highlights.
00:54:03
Speaker
We got halfway through.
00:54:04
Speaker
There's so many highlights.
00:54:05
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.
00:54:24
Speaker
All of them I found, and that's really a great gift.
00:54:29
Speaker
So there's a lot.
00:54:32
Speaker
And Tom, I'm gonna save you the trouble of pitching your own pieces, Maison Girard.
00:54:38
Speaker
In C7, right?
00:54:42
Speaker
I'm very attracted to maps, and there's a dealer in old maps, and maps like ancient objects
00:54:52
Speaker
really reveal the values of the time.
00:54:56
Speaker
I have a map in my bedroom that's a panorama of Rome from 1490, and the Pantheon is larger than the Colosseum.
00:55:06
Speaker
So it's, not the Pantheon, St.
00:55:09
Speaker
Peter's is larger than the Colosseum.
00:55:11
Speaker
So that's telling you what angle they want you to follow, right?
00:55:15
Speaker
The Christian world is the world there.
00:55:17
Speaker
But what I love about, of course, your booth, Ben, is the provenance of these objects.
00:55:23
Speaker
I mean, not only can you acquire an incredible silver object, but they have an incredible history, right?
00:55:30
Speaker
I mean, to me, because objects relate to their historic significance, that to me is fascinating.
00:55:37
Speaker
So I guess, I mean, there's so many exhibitors that have compelling things.
00:55:45
Speaker
Well, I just want to echo what you said, Lloyd, and...
00:55:48
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.
00:56:03
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.
00:56:17
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.
00:56:26
Speaker
But for the price of admission, you can come in here to the Winter Show and have exactly that experience.
00:56:32
Speaker
It's incredible to me, even as a dealer.
00:56:33
Speaker
It's something that I do my best to take advantage of.
00:56:38
Speaker
And I hope you all will, too, if you haven't already.
00:56:41
Speaker
But I just want to say thank you so much for coming.
00:56:44
Speaker
And thank you, of course, to
00:56:46
Speaker
to the three of you, Lloyd Zuckerberg, Marcy Masterson, and Tom Lawler.
00:56:51
Speaker
This has been a great pleasure for me.
00:56:53
Speaker
Thank you to the Winter Show for having us and for having Curious Objects once more.
00:56:59
Speaker
If we have a few minutes, perhaps we could take some questions from the audience?
00:57:05
Speaker
A question about space.
00:57:08
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?
00:57:19
Speaker
Tom has a very interesting answer to that question.
00:57:24
Speaker
Well, my relationship with space, fortunately I'm short.
00:57:28
Speaker
And so my apartment has very high ceilings, so you just keep layering things.
00:57:38
Speaker
How many square feet is your apartment?
00:57:39
Speaker
500 square feet.
00:57:41
Speaker
Yeah, well, with, I think there is 6,000 books in that apartment.
00:57:47
Speaker
I don't know.
00:57:49
Speaker
And of course, a lot of these mirrors.
00:57:53
Speaker
But space, well, fortunately, I don't have to live all the time there, so.
Legacy of Collections
00:57:59
Speaker
Can I just say, find, I have someone in New York I sell through, and I have someone in England I sell through.
00:58:06
Speaker
So don't be afraid to let go.
00:58:07
Speaker
You know the Marie Kondo approach, hold it.
00:58:10
Speaker
If it gives you pleasure, keep it.
00:58:11
Speaker
If it doesn't, let it go.
00:58:13
Speaker
And if you need to give it to the thrift shop, give it to the thrift shop.
00:58:15
Speaker
Just move it along.
00:58:17
Speaker
Makes room for more stuff.
00:58:18
Speaker
I need your help.
00:58:20
Speaker
I need your help.
00:58:21
Speaker
I'll come over, free of charge.
00:58:23
Speaker
We're buddies now.
00:58:25
Speaker
I have a deep relationship with all these objects.
00:58:28
Speaker
You can't let them go.
00:58:28
Speaker
Yeah, I can't.
00:58:29
Speaker
Then, you know, you're stuck.
00:58:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:32
Speaker
Or happy.
00:58:36
Speaker
Any more questions?
00:58:37
Speaker
My question has kind of two parts to it.
00:58:42
Speaker
Um, and the first part is if you have children, are they even remotely interested in what you do as collectors?
00:58:51
Speaker
And the second part is what's the destiny of your collections?
00:58:57
Speaker
Well, I have three children.
00:59:00
Speaker
Only one of them expressed interest regularly coming to the antique show.
00:59:05
Speaker
Um, the other two were not that interested.
00:59:11
Speaker
he actually came to the show last week and started talking to one of the great dealers, Blairman, about something on his stand.
00:59:20
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.
00:59:27
Speaker
So, you know, you plant seeds, you never know what happens.
00:59:33
Speaker
Some of my kids have said I want that already.
00:59:37
Speaker
They've told me which is fine.
00:59:39
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.
00:59:50
Speaker
What do I care?
00:59:52
Speaker
It gave me pleasure I didn't buy it to make my kids rich necessarily.
00:59:56
Speaker
Maybe they would have wished I had and
00:59:58
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.
01:00:16
Speaker
with these things.
01:00:17
Speaker
These things should go to that dealer.
01:00:19
Speaker
And that's kind of how I've thought about it a little bit.
01:00:21
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.
01:00:36
Speaker
One out of three ain't bad, Lloyd.
01:00:38
Speaker
Well, the other's interesting.
01:00:40
Speaker
The second one just moved to a new apartment, and she was drawn to some of the stuff that she grew up with.
01:00:49
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.
01:00:59
Speaker
It really wasn't a collection.
01:01:00
Speaker
It was stuff that she used.
01:01:03
Speaker
And even the one who...
01:01:06
Speaker
would get so angry when we took him to a museum.
01:01:08
Speaker
He would sit outside.
01:01:10
Speaker
I'm not going in.
01:01:11
Speaker
We took him to Graceland, and he was sitting down on the bench.
01:01:15
Speaker
He refused to go in, and I said, Toby, why won't you come in?
01:01:17
Speaker
He said, you lied to me.
01:01:19
Speaker
This is a museum.
01:01:23
Speaker
But even he now, he goes antiquing at these car boot sales when he takes his friends to England.
01:01:30
Speaker
He takes them to the same silly shops that I go to.
01:01:33
Speaker
So who knows?
01:01:35
Speaker
God bless them.
01:01:37
Speaker
I give things to charity auctions and things.
01:01:41
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
01:01:55
Speaker
university art galleries and museums.
01:01:58
Speaker
And so I give away a fair amount of art and some of the objects that I have.
01:02:04
Speaker
I have a very interesting object during COVID when everything was closed, I couldn't sit still.
01:02:10
Speaker
So I drove around, you could park anywhere in the city
01:02:13
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.
01:02:21
Speaker
So we're closed, we can't do business.
01:02:23
Speaker
I said, can we do it in a medieval way?
01:02:26
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.
01:02:33
Speaker
And so we did, I found some interesting things that way too, so.
01:02:41
Speaker
You could park anywhere then.
01:02:47
Speaker
I think one thing that's interesting is kind of the ebbs and flows of the value of these objects over time.
Undervalued Collectibles
01:02:52
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?
01:03:01
Speaker
Yes.
01:03:03
Speaker
I think English furniture is very undervalued at the moment.
01:03:08
Speaker
And I think French furniture probably is as well.
01:03:12
Speaker
It's definitely a buyer's market.
01:03:17
Speaker
There's a, Clinton Howell has a magnificent serpentine chest, great patina, great color, just beautiful thing.
01:03:24
Speaker
We talked about it.
01:03:25
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.
01:03:36
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.
01:03:42
Speaker
I think you will first walk onto a booth, see what catches your eye, then ask, how much is it?
01:03:50
Speaker
And then you'll know, like I do that all the time, and I say, there's no way I can afford that.
01:03:57
Speaker
Or, hmm, that's something I can think about.
01:04:00
Speaker
And so do the same thing, and that way you'll know.
01:04:03
Speaker
Go to the 77th Street flea market on the west side.
01:04:06
Speaker
I've bought some great things there.
01:04:08
Speaker
That's where I have someone who sells things for me, too, actually.
01:04:12
Speaker
You might buy something that I'm selling.
01:04:14
Speaker
There really are opportunities, I mean, in New York in particular, everywhere.
01:04:19
Speaker
I mean, so one can begin collecting on any level in any of these flea markets or out in the countryside.
01:04:31
Speaker
You know, you just have to refine your eye.
01:04:34
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.
01:04:44
Speaker
I think antiquities too.
01:04:46
Speaker
Ancient objects are quite undervalued.
01:04:50
Speaker
I mean, imagine this 2,500-year-old mirror.
01:04:53
Speaker
You could probably find one of these for $6,000.
01:04:59
Speaker
You could also buy a Jasper Johns print for $100,000, right?
01:05:04
Speaker
I mean, so I think the most expensive antiquity that ever sold at auction was maybe $30 million.
01:05:09
Speaker
I mean, compare that to the contemporary market, which is, you know, that's half of what a Gerhard Richter painting myself for.
01:05:18
Speaker
Although I'd love to have a Gerhard Richter painting.
01:05:20
Speaker
But the antiquities, I mean, they're quite, I think, undervalued.
01:05:27
Speaker
It's hard as a collector not to see anything that you're interested in as being anything but undervalued.
01:05:34
Speaker
And of course we're all boosters, but I do think it's true.
01:05:37
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,
01:05:51
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.
01:06:15
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.
01:06:31
Speaker
These objects represented in many cases huge fractions of their net worth, 50%, maybe more.
01:06:39
Speaker
And I don't know about you, 50% of my net worth is not in my decorative arts collection, but it should be.
01:06:48
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.
01:07:02
Speaker
And how many areas can you think of where you can invest your money and get that kind of dividend?
01:07:09
Speaker
And so in that regard, it's, I would say pretty much everything is undervalued.
01:07:15
Speaker
Ben, can I just add something?
01:07:16
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.
01:07:29
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.
01:07:39
Speaker
Now, I also have a friend who loves Andy Warhol.
01:07:41
Speaker
He genuinely loves Andy Warhol.
01:07:43
Speaker
He reads books on Andy Warhol.
01:07:44
Speaker
He's got it.
01:07:45
Speaker
He's figured it out.
01:07:47
Speaker
That's great, too.
01:07:48
Speaker
And I just think it's important not to equate high value with greatness.
01:07:56
Speaker
Greatness is all around you.
01:07:58
Speaker
It doesn't have to be valuable.
01:08:00
Speaker
And if you think of the uniqueness of some things, I mean, these weren't just stamped out.
01:08:06
Speaker
These were, the template may have been cast and similar to others, right?
01:08:15
Speaker
But the image itself of the mythological story was all hand-carved.
01:08:19
Speaker
Each mirror was all hand, it's not an addition of something.
01:08:22
Speaker
So this is the only one that exists like this.
01:08:26
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?
01:08:40
Speaker
Any final questions?
Evolving Concepts of Possession
01:08:44
Speaker
One of the things that struck me listening to you all was sort of your relationship with the concept of possession.
01:08:52
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.
01:09:00
Speaker
And also feeling like you're in a long line of people who possess these objects and caretaking.
01:09:06
Speaker
And I'm sort of curious as you've continued to collect and sort of reflect on
01:09:13
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.
01:09:27
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.
01:09:44
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.
01:09:53
Speaker
And so possession is,
01:09:56
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.
01:10:05
Speaker
The way that it feels is more of a custodian sort of relationship, as Tom described about his mirror.
01:10:12
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.
01:10:19
Speaker
But either way, they move forward through time.
01:10:24
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.
01:10:35
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.
01:10:49
Speaker
That's the same exact feeling as I have for my mother's hawks crystal.
01:10:54
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.
01:11:07
Speaker
That's where we're going to leave our live recording, but thanks for joining us for an hour at the winter show.
01:11:13
Speaker
Even if you're doing it from your commute or your car or your shower or wherever you're listening, no judgment.
01:11:18
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed the panel and that maybe it'll help you catch the bug if you don't already have it.
01:11:25
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.
01:11:37
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Bellotti, with social media and web support by Sarah Bellotta.
01:11:44
Speaker
Our digital media and editorial associate is Sierra Holt.
01:11:48
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
01:11:50
Speaker
And I'm Ben Miller.
01:12:12
Speaker
As a raider scavenging a derelict world, you settle into an underground settlement.
01:12:18
Speaker
But now you must return to the surface where ARK machines roam.
01:12:25
Speaker
If you're brave enough, who knows what you might find?
01:12:29
Speaker
ARK Raiders, a multiplayer extraction adventure video game.
01:12:33
Speaker
Buy now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC.
01:12:37
Speaker
Rated T for Teen.